It’s a passive act (1)

to survive entirely on spinach (2)

& food textures more usually chewed (3)

in the thick of an apocalyptic-type emergency (4)

bones are so full of gravity it’s hard for us to (5)

be patient, I’m trying, it’s for you (6)

& now when your voice comes to me (7)

& leaves holes in the (8)

wet plaster (9)

we are alone because someone forgot our names (10)

1. Nikki Wallschlaeger, ‘Mosquitoland’, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/mosquitoland
2. Jan Kemp, ‘The Ballad of Donna Quixote’, https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/ballad-donna-quixote
3. Kris Hemenskey, ‘Tangley Lodge’, https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/tangley-lodge
4. Richard Wehrenberg, ‘Epistemological’, https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/epistemological
5. Kaveh Akbar, ‘Morning Prayer with Rat King’, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/145990/morning-prayer-with-rat-king
6. Gail Mazur, ‘I Wish I Want I Need’, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46806/i-wish-i-want-i-need
7. Alistair Pasterson, ‘a cappella’, https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/cappella
8. Yusef Komunyakaa, ‘Instructions for Building Straw Huts’, https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/instructions-building-straw-huts
9. Marge Piercy, ‘To have without holding’, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57672/to-have-without-holding
10. Antonino Mazza, ‘Forest’, Canadian Literature n o 111, University of British Columbia, 1986.