Chasing Helicopters on the Way Home from a Bowl of Spaghetti
By Robin GowSomeone I love is turning into an asterisk
and so I am running and the vultures are
as hungry as they’ve ever been. The size of genders.
The size of fatherhoods.
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Soft Black Girl Aesthetic
By Arumandhira HowardWe are made shy / sun, kissing another heartless / night awake. We are made satin silking / pompon locs. Cotton, banana pudding, baby’s / breath. These cornbread thighs, our blessed butterfly / knives. We are made to de-stem hardened men like bull-headed / bougainvillea.
Burning Haibun as Portrait: 9 months on HRT, Georgia on MS Word
By Tonee Mae MollThe font, not the nation, nor the southern state where lawmakers are folding the idea of the monster of my body into votes from folks whose homes they know are marked for flooding. I suppose I mean typeface—I’m supposed to remember the difference— like all exquisite things, we’ve got this etymology that feels apocryphal anyway. Anyway, let’s suppose I am a transitional shape.
Spring Mix, for Ahmaud
By Opal MooreA small bird built a secret nest
beneath my balcony. There must be
hatchlings there, out of view.
She flies back and forth, small prey
in her beak.
Some kind of wren, I think.
Small, brown and quick. No time for
singing midday. Duty
is her instinct.
To Love Somebody
By Jada Renée AllenThere’s a light, a certain
kind of light that has never
shone on me—
Nina’s version.
Not the Bee Gees
or even Janis Joplin,
but the way Nina
sings it, almost a plea.
Training Wheels
By Joanna Acevedo“I just wanted to check in with you about your friend who passed,” my therapist says at the end of our session. “Yeah, he’s still dead,” I quip. We share a long laugh.
Black Mermaids and Swimming and Red Hair and Ancestry
By Sasa AakilThey say, Ariel could never be black.
That black folks don't have red hair and can't swim no how.
They list all the reasons we have no right to this title
and I can only think of Hasan.
Brown skin boy with hair red as fire.
Quick wit, quick smile.
Born with sunset resting atop his head like crown.
Ode to My Older Sister, Letty, for Being the First in the Family to Go to College
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.
Alias
By ChrysanthemumScheduling a follow-up with my PCP, I prepare
for disaster. Inevitable as flood, I hush a moniker
kept in confidence, wager my informed consent
for a Hancock granting passage. Gates are flimsy
metaphors. It’s more of a worn-down levee, dike
ready to burst without notice.
Becky Declines Barbie’s Dinner Invitation
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.