SELF-PORTRAIT OF THE BLK GIRL BECOMING THE BEAST EVERYONE THOUGHT SHE WAS
By I.S. Jonesthe moon is my first emotion then beast then happy rage
depending on a zealous appetite
i pull bobby pins from the kitchen of my scalp tear out nails
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Breaking & Entering
By Darrel Alejandro HolnesOnly beasts are supposed to hibernate.
But this brother has been lying there
for years. Truth isn’t a news headline.
This Event is For People of Color - Ages 16 and Up
By María FernandaWe leave our leather. Finding a spot on Miya’s
living room floor, we untuck our bound things:
a borrowed yoga mat, a stretched hair tie,
I keep lighting candles on my stoop and watching the wind snuff them out
By Amy M. AlvarezI keep thinking about Breonna Taylor asleep/ between fresh sheets/ I keeping thinking/ about her skin cooling after a shower/ about her hair wrapped in a satin bonnet/ I think about what she may have dreamed that night
we ask mama-n-em, “where is the motherworld?”
By Destiny Hemphilllisten.
it’s in, not at. in the whistle & hiss, the steam of your breath as you chant
we ready (we ready), we comin (we comin) atop of a jail
building in ruins. yes, it’s in your breath & in the never dwindling
kindle of your fingertips as you reach out & touch
The Proper Way to Prepare the U.S. Flag
By Carmin WongStart with something simple: 13 loosely lingering light-hearted lines that eventually morph / into crowbars ★ corps ★ prison cells ★ bylines.
Poem Resisting Arrest
By Kyle DarganThis poem is guilty. It assumed it retained
the right to ask its question after the page
came up flush against its face.
Birthday Poem
By Azia ArmsteadWe wait for the show to begin in an open field on a blazing summer night.
Fireworks are most lucent in the blackness of a sky with no sun which
makes me think of blackness as a metaphor, how colors shine brightest
when contrasted against it.
Again
By Daria-Ann MartineauI find myself noticing you again
eight years later,
you coming out of the earth, pale,
erect, shadow over men.
You can’t be buried.