dat Black Mermaid Man Lady/dem Blessings #34
By Sharon BridgforthRemember.
You were wild
and you were free
and you felt unloved
and unseen
and you ran the streets
and you Loved hard
and you were Loved deeply
Calling poets to a greater role in public life and fostering a national network of socially engaged poets.
By Sharon BridgforthRemember.
You were wild
and you were free
and you felt unloved
and unseen
and you ran the streets
and you Loved hard
and you were Loved deeply
By Emma TrellesAfter winter rains
The hills
Are velvety beasts
We pretend
We have nothing
To worry about
Except for the usual
Minuet of dying
Scraping the corners
By Vickie VértizThe men inside the Pep Boys wear blue work shirts. Fingerprints on the hems. That’s
how I’m going to be: my hands with grease that won’t wash off. Like Apá buying Freon.
Fenders. My sister sniffs the little trees, outlines the posing girls with her eyes. We buy
peanuts and their candy turns our palms to red
By Tala Khanmalekunbound pages carry my inheritance from Baba
a strategy to get around the system, like Baba
By Cintia Santanainside
a cell
a heart
(my cousin’s)
inside
his heart
(inside
a cell)
a cluster
of cells
arrested
By Allison Adelle Hedge CokeYour arm was twisted, bone exposed
face past point of wet stained,
fledgling fell there
By Michal 'MJ' JonesYou are [found] in
cherry blossom trees / heron bird flight /rib-
bon of night / space between stairs / rose
By Aideed MedinaDe piedra, sangre.
I make my own heaven. I drag it out of the streets, and inhospitable terrains. I mixed "tabique", brick, mortar with my hands, kneading,
I need, to make my own heaven
By Jennifer FoersterThe war appeared to be coming to an end.
The no-name people not yet taken
left their crops for summer’s drought.
By Leticia Hernández-LinaresTus pómulos, the historic shape of your
temporal bones imitating the pirámides we carry, beating
blueprints inside of our lungs, stencil the heart
with the angles of the architecture we were born in.