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By Khadijah Queen
Let’s skip past the facts, uncounted
deaths, pretend the seas of free faces soothe &
vaccines can protect us, you, me, my loves, stuck home
since early 2020, but I saw the slide
happening sooner, got sick mid-fall
2019 on the plane home from London, locked myself in
my cold bedroom so no one else would suffer,
held my sick breath under blankets &
heated ginger & honey & lemon & garlic &
clove & cayenne concoctions on the stove for six days.
Recovery took the rest of October & November too
but I kept my family well & since the pandemic is
over, I’m often the only masked one
left in any room
By Walela Nehanda
I am run ragged by another woman’s
immunity transplanted inside me.
I am not myself on a cellular level.
Somewhere, in my biology.
I am in Greece. I am a good woman.
Thirty five and Santorini chic.
By Rose Zinnia
a trick
of light
a sleight
of hand
a contused
grammar
By Suzi F. Garcia
It is April now, with its mix of sweet and snow. I stand barefoot on an apartment patio to vape. My toes curl on themselves to fight off the cold and my legs shake under my leggings. I have been drugged officially and unofficially, some would say gone, but I can feel light in my hips as they sway to the song I’m playing in my head.
By Kay Ulanday Barrett
Then how does candy spill? This way? Stare at the sky
as the MyChart results record blood levels. Peach laden,
cherry lacquer, lilac blossom marathon more at a window
sill on any almost-evening in... what month is it? When
statistics splay, when the masks are forgotten, there'll be
more of us we'll have to teach: catheters are ivy, monstera
fenestration consoles when you're on hold with the pharmacy
again.
By Ashna Ali
On an assemblage of screens on another firework evening
Ruthie Gilmore reminds us that abolition is not recitation.
By Tala Khanmalek
unbound pages carry my inheritance from Baba
a strategy to get around the system, like Baba
By Hayan Charara
The Arab apocalypse began around the year
of my birth, give or take—
the human apocalypse,
a few thousand years earlier.
By Arianna Monet
I say Well, it is a compound word, so..
Code. Noun.
A system of marking things with different colors
as a means of identification.
By Aurora Levins Morales
Why do they call us "the patient"
We are not patient. We endure.