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      January 27, 2020When You Ask Why My Arms Are EmptyAmy Alvarez

      Why on this march toward forty, my man
      and I live in a house with more bedrooms
      than bodies, I say I’m not ready, I say art
      is reproduction, that I teach—so don’t I
      already have so many children to love?
       
      What I cannot say: I was twelve, the only
      one home. My mother wept on the throne.
      I begged her to let me call for an ambulance,
      but she shook her head between sobs, would
      not release my hand as our bathroom filled with
      the copper of her blood. She held out a tissue
      to me with something pink, only little larger than
      my thumb: This was your brother. Oh god oh god oh—

      from #66 - Winter 2019

      Amy Alvarez

      “I am the daughter and granddaughter of Caribbean immigrants and a native New Yorker. I decided to become a poet at fifteen after a poetry class at my public high school in Queens, New York, helped me realize the immense power that comes from putting one’s ‘best words in their best order.’ I became an educator so that more young people might realize how poetry can set them free. I taught in New York City and Boston public high schools and now teach in the Department of English at West Virginia University.”

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