One day, when your fluttering arms reach around the full mountain of me, I’ll tell you how a chirp past your first year, we soared far from our predictable streets and toxic leaders to where la gente muy amable showered you in sweets: princesa, muñeca, so you learned to walk in song; we feasted on […]
Sara Ries Dziekonski
Sara Ries Dziekonski (she/ her) was Runner-Up for the Press 53 Award for Poetry for her manuscript, Today’s Specials, which was selected as a finalist for the Woodrow Hall Top Shelf Award for a book of poetry published in 2024. Sara is a Buffalo native and holds an MFA in poetry from Chatham University. Her first book, Come In, We’re Open, won the 2009 Stevens Poetry Manuscript Competition. Her chapbooks include Snow Angels on the Living Room Floor and Marrying Maracuyá, which won the Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Competition. Her poems have appeared in American Life in Poetry, Slipstream, Potomac Review, SWWIM Every Day, Connecticut River Review, and LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, among others. Sara is the co-founder of Poetry Midwives Editing and Submission Services.
Smoke Alarms
Dinner’s destroyed and the smoke alarm screams its plastic head off. Teddy’s face is emergency-red, tears flooding his cheeks. Beep beep bye bye, he pleads, pointing at the smoke alarm, which I silence by beating with a towel, but Teddy’s still hysterical even though every last beep has died. For weeks, Teddy points to every smoke alarm in […]