dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/dem Blessings #34
By Sharon BridgforthRemember.
You were wild
and you were free
and you felt unloved
and unseen
and you ran the streets
and you Loved hard
and you were Loved deeply
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Sharon BridgforthRemember.
You were wild
and you were free
and you felt unloved
and unseen
and you ran the streets
and you Loved hard
and you were Loved deeply
By Emma TrellesAfter winter rains
The hills
Are velvety beasts
We pretend
We have nothing
To worry about
Except for the usual
Minuet of dying
Scraping the corners
By Kay Ulanday BarrettThen how does candy spill? This way? Stare at the sky
as the MyChart results record blood levels. Peach laden,
cherry lacquer, lilac blossom marathon more at a window
sill on any almost-evening in... what month is it? When
statistics splay, when the masks are forgotten, there'll be
more of us we'll have to teach: catheters are ivy, monstera
fenestration consoles when you're on hold with the pharmacy
again.
By Hayan ChararaThe Arab apocalypse began around the year
of my birth, give or take—
the human apocalypse,
a few thousand years earlier.
By Liza SparksWhen a ponderosa pine
is over one hundred—
it sheds a layer of bark.
By Tamiko BeyerDear child of the near future,
here is what I know—hawks
soar on the updraft and sparrows always
return to the seed source until they spot
By María FernandaWe leave our leather. Finding a spot on Miya’s
living room floor, we untuck our bound things:
a borrowed yoga mat, a stretched hair tie,
By Noor Ibn Najamto become earth’s sugar, to be a seedless
orange offered. to want fruit
to unwind from the concept of sex
By Elana BellWhat else to call the way the bare branches
I’d bought at the neighborhood bodega
came back to life that winter.