Social Distance Theory
By Ashna AliOn an assemblage of screens on another firework evening
Ruthie Gilmore reminds us that abolition is not recitation.
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We
By Deborah A. MirandaThe people you cannot treat as people
Whose backs bent over your fields, your kitchens, your cattle, your children
We whose hands harvested the food we planted and cultivated for your mouth, your belly.
Hope is a Bruise
By Dasha Kelly HamiltonPaintball pellets batter shoulders
and thighs at 190 miles per hour
I count the purplish bruises and
smile at the post vision of us toasting
SELF-PORTRAIT OF THE BLK GIRL BECOMING THE BEAST EVERYONE THOUGHT SHE WAS
By I.S. Jonesthe moon is my first emotion then beast then happy rage
depending on a zealous appetite
i pull bobby pins from the kitchen of my scalp tear out nails
Ghosts of Abolition
By Carlos Andrés Gómezwhisper through tear gas—
remind of the original
patrols, ruddy-cheeked
Breaking & Entering
By Darrel Alejandro HolnesOnly beasts are supposed to hibernate.
But this brother has been lying there
for years. Truth isn’t a news headline.
I Was Wrong Running Doesn’t Save Us
By Yesenia Montillaonce at eight years old I nearly gave myself a concussion running
my mother would braid my hair and wrap the ends in the heaviest
hair ties with the biggest colorful glass balls; they were lethal; as
I keep lighting candles on my stoop and watching the wind snuff them out
By Amy M. AlvarezI keep thinking about Breonna Taylor asleep/ between fresh sheets/ I keeping thinking/ about her skin cooling after a shower/ about her hair wrapped in a satin bonnet/ I think about what she may have dreamed that night
The Proper Way to Prepare the U.S. Flag
By Carmin WongStart with something simple: 13 loosely lingering light-hearted lines that eventually morph / into crowbars ★ corps ★ prison cells ★ bylines.
Poem Resisting Arrest
By Kyle DarganThis poem is guilty. It assumed it retained
the right to ask its question after the page
came up flush against its face.