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Cynthia Manick

Dear Prairie: A Brown Girl Letter

By Cynthia Manick How does it feel to be something man hasn’t touched? Nothing
feeds your shape – how tall you want to aim, the texture from
root to tip, or the colors you choose to shake off like makeup.
It must be nice to have no load bearing walls – nothing to hold
you down or box in all you want to be.
Jaden Fields

Just Is - Where There Are Black People in the Future

By Jaden Fields It is the steadiest “I love you”
Until the moon loses their footing in the sky
Which is to say - never
Or
I love you beyond time
Or
I love me beyond time
Ladan Osman

Silhouette

By Ladan Osman I enter: carpet, curtains,
large, framed pictures of robed white men,
a glassy glare over a forehead, below the voice box,
students in bland shades.
I don’t belong, the luxury of thinking,
the wealth of talking about thought,
privilege of ease among important people.
Kyle Carrero Lopez

Torricelli

By Kyle Carrero Lopez In 1994, U.S. Senator Bob Torricelli (D-New Jersey) introduced the Cuban Democracy Act, designed to “wreak havoc on that island.”

I’ll wreak havoc on that island I’ll ravage

that island I’ll plunder

that island see torn asunder that island
Vievee Francis

A WOMAN AT THE BOOKSTORE READING WONDERS HOW I MADE THE LEAP FROM MY FIRST BOOK [...]

By Vievee Francis A WOMAN AT THE BOOKSTORE READING
WONDERS HOW I MADE THE LEAP FROM MY FIRST BOOK
TO MY SECOND WHICH WON AN AWARD

She wants me to know how “different” my poetry is
one book to the next, preferring my second book that leaves her
blameless
Arumandhira Howard

Soft Black Girl Aesthetic

By Arumandhira Howard We are made shy / sun, kissing another heartless / night awake. We are made satin silking / pompon locs. Cotton, banana pudding, baby’s / breath. These cornbread thighs, our blessed butterfly / knives. We are made to de-stem hardened men like bull-headed / bougainvillea.
Opal Moore

Spring Mix, for Ahmaud

By Opal Moore A small bird built a secret nest
beneath my balcony. There must be
hatchlings there, out of view.
She flies back and forth, small prey
in her beak.

Some kind of wren, I think.
Small, brown and quick. No time for
singing midday. Duty
is her instinct.
Jada Renée Allen

To Love Somebody

By Jada Renée Allen There’s a light, a certain
kind of light that has never
shone on me—
Nina’s version.
Not the Bee Gees
or even Janis Joplin,

but the way Nina
sings it, almost a plea.
Gbenga Adesina

PARADISE

By Gbenga Adesina North of the country, a road led to the desert.
Dust was the first sentence. The Sahara
was a white darkness in the distance,
and beyond it the glint of a Great Lake.
We drove past fields of ginger and wild purple onions.
There was a public garden and a ring of white egrets
around still water.
Sasa Aakil

Black Mermaids and Swimming and Red Hair and Ancestry

By Sasa Aakil They say, Ariel could never be black.
That black folks don't have red hair and can't swim no how.
They list all the reasons we have no right to this title
and I can only think of Hasan.

Brown skin boy with hair red as fire.
Quick wit, quick smile.
Born with sunset resting atop his head like crown.
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