MIKAYAH PARSONS
Broken Black heart. / Tattered Black heart. / Broken Black fish. / Battered Black fish. / Black fish out of water. // I offered my Black heart on a silver platter, / And they took it for the slaughter….Continue Reading Broken Black Heart
TIIA MCKINNEY
Sparkling dark blue waters violently crashed over my head, / They pinned me under their strong currents, forcefully grabbing me in a chokehold / I desperately inhaled, trying to taste the salty air on my tongue,…Continue Reading Sea of Sorrow
ZOE ALARCON
You would approach your mother’s bed / Afraid of an intruder / Now you approach it / Afraid of yourself / Hoping she can save you from eternal tinnitus / Drown it forever with a peaceful sonata …Continue Reading Ruminations
SAM SPRATFORD
before i learned to swerve down / narrow city streets— / i fell / i fell in love with the existentialists’ sooty prose / peering into an opium abyss and seeing my reflection in obsidian and…Continue Reading the breakfast date (break, fast!)
PRISCILLA LEE
Λόγος σάρξ ἐγένετο, scan my pinking flesh, / dented divots from my inky pen, no / 墨 to drink. Excuse me, I play with babbles, / singing your scribbles. // Draw it out. Pray, jazz with me. Pluck the hairy / strokes and Trace calligraphy.
…Continue Reading I Broke My English
PAULINE BISSELL
So, the will still bends / Beyond the sentimental / And you, still / Wielding the fissured, the fragmented, / The crumbling under and cracking apart….Continue Reading Hamadryad
GRACIE ROWLAND
I slammed the door in Hope’s face and told Her / I was better off alone, my pride too brazen to realize that good intentions / Matter more than harsh words spoken over late night calls. / I was too ashamed to apologize back then, too ashamed of the broken hinges I left. …Continue Reading Broken Hinges
GRACIE ROWLAND
I dance under the imagined warmth of the moonlight, / Twirl from one end of the rose garden to the other / Until my head is spinning, spinning, with the / Stars like a laughing tapestry above my head. / I forget about funerals and fallacies, / Genocide and god under the moonlight….Continue Reading Not Let Go of Hope
LELAND CULVER
Your face I thought your face I wished your face would long have left me, gone away, above. / Unharmed, although below I go, except for silent wishing, occasionally fishing for unhurried hypothetic love. / But glinting in the dark, your eyes espy my every dreaming thought like burning violet embers I remember once were blue….Continue Reading Lamplight
ROSS KILPATRICK
Sometimes I think about / Nietzsche scholar Rob Solomon / Who died of a hole in his heart / Just past security / In the Zürich Flughafen / Did he bless himself / And wish that he’d live over again…Continue Reading On Robert C. Solomon (1942 – 2007)
KEI LIM
A lifetime’s worth of spinning, / and all virtue stumbles, / enmity circling pupils like rings of ebony / ink the bark of the persimmon tree. / Branches beckon like the arms of / my mother, calloused by the abandonment / of men who knew her fragility …Continue Reading The Persimmon Tree
KALIDAS SHANTI
1) Another boy can throw his ass within the pocket of your hips in public. 2) It is a way to show off one’s new kicks, and say, “I got more after wearing these down,” even if that is far from the truth. 3) We battle with the ball, so the court is where we learn what it is to win, what it is to lose. We no longer have to jump a boy, mouth loaded with threats and a knife or hammer at our hips….Continue Reading Top Ten Reasons Why Black Boys Play Basketball
CAELEN MCQUILKIN
In order to break, something once had to be whole / in a mosaic // Sharp cracked edges bring one another to light, make themselves cohesive not in spite of but because of the splits and gaps and shattered spaces between, an art form beautiful because it is broken and put back together…Continue Reading On Concrete and Basketball
A’CORA HICKSON
red button / bloodshot / blood’s hot / stinging of the eye / burning sensation / a very familiar sensation…Continue Reading There is no stopping Her
ROSS KILPATRICK
Honecker gave the order / To shoot on the inner wall / So comrades died, piled up / Under the American red and whites / Of western Coca-Cola signs // But before the BDR Richter, / Honekcer pleaded / ohne juristische oder / moralische Schuld / For humane end / And to Chile he fled…Continue Reading Staat und Mauer
QUINCY SMITH
Roads that lead nowhere / Cracked pavement snaps open under my toes // The trees bark at me / The leaves are still falling // My breath is shallow / A whisper // People cross paths / The skin on their arms only separated by pain…Continue Reading Stop and Stare
A’CORA HICKSON
There’s a difference / Between being alone and being lonely / You can crave to be alone / Crave to be still / In the room / In the space / In the world / But being lonely hits you like a speck of dust / Falling on your arm / It sits and waits on the ledge / Praying / Planning / Its next attack / It goes unnoticed / In the room / In the space / In the world…Continue Reading It Will Pass?
ANNA ZHOU
Draped in the Moon Goddess’ waning light, / I write secret love letters: / to a motherland I’ve never felt the right to know / to warm bowls of bean curd flowers and soy milk, / so white and weightless and pure / I imagine Chang’e herself adorned in flowing robes / of rich jade amongst the stars….Continue Reading Dear Shanghai | 亲爱的上海
TARA ALAHAKOON
I adapted to life out of focus. // My world was an impressionist painting: earthy hues blended the landscape as swaths / of grey streaked across the sky. // Silouettes danced in and out, / their edges fuzzy. // Like an artist, I played with light….Continue Reading In Focus
ROSS KILPATRICK
Though rivers make untrue / that Land is borderless / (we aren’t mermaids / to intermingle with the sea) / I wish I were / a freshwater octopus, / all kisses and soft touches, / For bones are such a burden / to us, the nationless / and lying in the depths / letting little death sing / there’d be no shame…Continue Reading Though Untrue
TAPTI SEN
Please come sit next to me- / I want to lay my head in your lap and / whisper about the boy you love / as you braid flowers in my hair. Once, / I knew you like I knew myself, and / now, I wonder if history is all we / have left….Continue Reading Reunion
ZOE ALARCON
As the leaves succumb to a coral shade / You’re reminded of your own freshness / How with each summer comes as naturally a deep renewal / A solidifying of insights / But its fragile underpinnings are also suddenly more visible / And the trees’ tactless, rapid shedding / rekindle your sympathy for your own dead leaves…Continue Reading Fall Relapse
A’CORA HICKSON
insignificance. you would say. little you feel. / passing is what i feel. but in reality i am the one stuck. // breezing past like a leaf caught in the wind. / i am the tree. // the motion of the picture. / i am that one, still shot….Continue Reading i am what you don’t see
KALIDAS SHANTI
Maybe I should reconsider my position / on the camera. Maybe it is worth / that last smile inside the apartment, / the room that I gave up on (the one / with bullet holes but in which I could never / find the bullets), the vacuous spider…Continue Reading Absences in Personal Narrative
QUINCY SMITH
The inside of my palms are dirty / From the concrete blocks I sat on // The concrete was pressing against my palm / Creating a print in shape of pebbles // I look down and see the shape this concrete drew on my hand / My fists clench and unclench // Almost as if its searching for feeling / Almost as if i’m not feeling and I need to move to feel…Continue Reading If I Let It Happen
KALIDAS SHANTI
McDonald’s pancakes sink / the only place to eat / this breakfast before the 6 am bus / this dinner once it drops you off late / never for you, for them on odd days / who live under your roof? / Your son in the Navy to go sea / where you only dream of / maybe you’d call that attachment…Continue Reading Food For Thought On Even Days
ROSS KILPATRICK
You’re nothing but a simple minded bot. / And before algorithmic gods give true accounts / Performing tasks without our feeble minds, so fraught // Click on all the hydrants, or sinners will be caught / And captcha will proudly announce / You’re nothing but a simple minded bot….Continue Reading Captcha: A Villanelle
ZOE AKOTO
It’s something like six a.m. when I roll downstairs / and you’re already there, making coffee. // We manage smiles, faint good mornings / pre-caffeine triumphs, even on a good week, / and I slip past you, put on the tea kettle / and settle in at the end of the counter. / It’ll take longer than it should. / I still fill the kettle for two cups, / less on instinct now and more / in defiance / and I wonder when I’ll quit that….Continue Reading A Brief Odyssey of Grief
SPENCER WILLIAMS
I, Spencer Williams, hereby pledge I will return to this city. / I will watch the gray pavement dark with rain,
the steaming carts pushed by the street vendors / with ripped pantsuits and crooked smiles….Continue Reading Ecology of a Dark City
SPENCER WILLIAMS
kind sun and gentle light / flutters rosy fingers behind pale curtains / and dips over your shoulders to settle and sleep. / at our feet the dog / siiiighs / and his lazy head drifts / upward…Continue Reading Ecology of a Beach House Love