love isn’t
By Pat Parker (d.)I wish I could be
the lover you want
come joyful
bear brightness
Search Results
‘I am broken by the revolt exploding inside me’
By Minal HajratwalaYour rage is pomegranates spilling open on ice, is the flute’s thin silver seam, is a volcano spitting rivulets of fire to wash clean these corrupt lands.
conditions
By Jen Hoferwhat dateless body what we exacted or nixed or hexed in the eternal present of not being able to – what not being able to not be considered garbage or trashed by the bag
How to make love to your beloved when she grew from rape
By Sarah Maria MedinaLearn to attend the fire, learn that breath between stones & flames lets the fire burn. Notice her breath, give her breath from your mouth, heated from your pink tongue.
God Is Brown
By Lorenzo Herrera y LozanoBrown is the color of my god’s skin.
Gentle, curvy, older than a Spanish whip.
My god abides outside of sin,
no water needed to baptize the newly born.
WHAT IT WAS LIKE
By Catherine KlatzkerThe world was always a place of silence,
of congenital shame—even before those days
in 1967, four years before you met your love. Your
strength grew belatedly, fertilized as it was in the
knowledge that you were nothing. Your life did
not matter to anyone, except to hurt you.
How Hard Is It to Write a Love Song?
By Sholeh WolpéLast night a sparrow flew into my house,
crashed against the skylight and died:
I want to write a love song.
Twinkle, Twinkle, Morning Star
By Craig Santos Perezkaikainaliʻi wakes from her late afternoon nap
and reaches for nālani with small open hands—
count how many papuan children
still reach for their disappeared parents—
The Opposite of Holding in Breath—
By Hari Allurithe tea in her glass. It glows the brocade.
Her grandmother picked that tea
on a mountain—a mountain in a war
whose shores were her bed. Steeping, the petals
The Newer Colossus
By Karen FinneyfrockMy feet have been wilting in this salt-crusted cement
since the French sent me over on a steamer in pieces.
I am the new Colossus, wonder of the modern world,
a woman standing watch at the gate of power.