In Memory of Kamau Brathwaite
By Safia Elhilloi sat by the lake & ate five tiny oranges & every strand
of flesh & pith was my teacher
i grew warm & soft in the sun & from this ripening
made a poem to search for my teacher
Search Results
What To Expect When Traveling with Your Arab Wife
By Shatha AlmutawaWhen they ask you
How many days were you away?
Don’t say two weeks
They want to know the exact number
Tell them 11 days
darkskin
By Maren Lovey Wright-Kerrwhen the makeup aisle stops at “caramel”
it means
the makeup industry just thinks you already too pretty to need they products
A Water Poem for Remembering
By Kimberly BlaeserYes, it’s true I speak ill of the living
in coded ways divorced from the dead.
Why Lyla June fasts on capitol steps.
Remedial Heteronormativity
By Kyle Dargan“Man-law” I first violate at age ten—
my wandering fingers not appeased by picking
through my cousin’s video
game cartridges, Sports Illustrateds.
Immigrant Confession
By M. Soledad CaballeroThe Cherokee are not originally from Oklahoma. Settlers forced
them to disappear west, into air and sky, beyond buildings,
beyond concrete, beyond the rabid land hunger. There was
a trail. There was despair. Reservations carved out of prairie
grass, lost space and sadness in the middle of flat dirt.
[Untitled]
By Trevino L. Brings PlentyTo acknowledge so-
cietal micro-systems
as a poet means I
will continue to be
emerging within an on-
slaught of the macro-
system submergence
operations.
from GIRLS THAT NEVER DIE
By Safia Elhilloi was invented by them the women
steamed & sweating in the kitchen
soft bellies a memory of money
fallen princesses headdressed in rollers
Elegy Ending With a Cell Door Closing
By Reginald Dwayne Betts& the Judge told him to count
The trees in the parking lot
Where there were only cars: Zero
The same number of stars
You could see on a night in the city.
Deadlocked
By Brandon DouglasScrolling thru my newsfeed
I saw a snapshot of a klansman with dreadlocks
It baffles me
How loud the white obsession is with blackness