Above Average
By Lindsay VaughnWomen who are not ready we have our own ways
we take pills lie in our lovers’ beds
curled like blades of grass we wait for the writhing wind
that aches and rocks our slender bodies they whisper
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Ways to Count the Dead
By Persis M. KarimTake their limbs strewn about the streets—
multiply by a thousand and one.
Ask everyone in Baghdad who has lost
from “Offering”
By Shailja Patelsing history
back onto itself, sing tearing
whole again, sing altered
juxtaposing the black boy & the bullet
By Danez Smithone is hard & the other tried to be
one is fast & the other was faster
one is loud & one is a song
Eighteenth Century Remains
By Tess TaylorThe ridge a half mile down from Monticello.
A pit cut deeper than the plow line.
Archaeologists plot the dig by scanning
Elegy for Kimani Gray
By Kenji LiuSharp tenure of boots in this callow country
grown from open skulls. A raw harvest of bullet casings
arranged in a perfect ring around you,
Margins
By Heather HolligerShe and I, our silences,
hesitations--at the grocery store,
in the taxi, on the street.
Mess Hall
By Solmaz SharifYour knives tip down
in the dish rack
of the replica plantation home
Split
By Cathy Lihn CheI see my mother at thirteen
in a village so small,
it's never given a name.
Migrant Earth
By Deema K. ShehabiI could tell you that listening is made for the ashen sky,
and instead of the muezzin's voice, which lingers
like weeping at dawn,