Just Is - Where There Are Black People in the Future
By Jaden FieldsIt 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
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Jaden FieldsIt 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
By Jose Hernandez DiazI’m not sure if you knew it at the time, but you showed us, your younger siblings,
A great example. Maybe you were just happy going away to college,
Away from the responsibilities of watching over younger siblings all the time,
But I always remembered having pride when I’d tell people my sister
Is an English major and even more so when you became a teacher.
By Johnson CheuI should have figured as much.
After all, it took over thirty years
to realize Barbie’s Malibu
convertible isn’t accident-proof.
By Steve Bellin-OkaHow many years since we used
the potato masher, the apple peeler,
its stainless-steel blade and crank
tucked in the back of the bottom
kitchen drawer among the balled
clot of discarded rubber bands?
By Nathan McClainOn one of those evenings you found yourself walking back, now that much of what daylight was left had moved on, as though some argument had long been settled and nothing lay ahead but a row of muted streetlamps and the future, of course, immediate, shimmering which, let’s face it, you were always going back to despite any guilt you still carried like a flashlight
By Dare WilliamsAt the Best Western, he arrived in a Ford
with its burned-out back. We spent the day
driving while he pointed at ruins
of cars gutted on the dead lawns.
By Saúl HernándezThe day Amá stopped driving, her curls became undone,
her red manicure turned pastel pink, her throat lost the sound left in it—
when a car slammed into her, pushing it towards train tracks.
The wheels of her white Oldsmobile clenched to the tracks the way a jaw latches
on to a bite.
By Joshua NguyenTo begin, let us end
this sentence with no friends or en
emies. Just wrong destin
ations to sad desks in Am-
hurst.
By Travis Chi Wing LauI shrug off my messenger onto the floor and forget to kiss you when I walk through the door.
By Juan J. MoralesLike two hands pressed
together, they are twice as large
on the island. One feeds