As I Pay Forty Dollars
By Susan Eisenbergfor my asthma inhaler that
last year cost fifteen
I pause for the mom
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Saraswati praises your name even when you have no choice
By Purvi ShahYou had a name no one
could hold between their
teeth. So they pronounced
a good woman would never
By Sylvia Beatofor years you told no one
how you cried yourself to sleep
after the doctor held your hand
Pause Hawk Cloud Enter
By Lauren CampThe soup cooks for an hour while vultures and buzzards pluck the market.
My father wipes his forehead with a white cloth.
Once, each day began with khubz and samoon
Drought
By Teri Ellen Cross DavisWhen you were inside me I could feel you thrive
your rounded kicks, my body your taut drum.
Now I beat these breasts, betrayed by a landscape
that wilts, a place where even tears won’t come.
And Still They Come (for Dr. Sue)
By Gordon CashYou scream your bullhorn lies, intimidate,
Harass, respect no law of man. You speak
Of scalpels, sutures, and sterility,
Dismemberment, death by regret, all lies,
And bear false witness with each one against
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.
#flyingwhileblack
By Imani CezanneThere is no moment when I am more reminded of my Blackness
than when I am at an airport walking through TSA
The Security Administration
Whose job it is to keep the planes from terrorism
13 Hours in the Future
By Caits MeissnerI am 13 hours in the future & it is night / the rain is holding her breath
my friend, isn’t Penang opening to us! / a lotus unveiling a carnival
the paper lanterns are skirts / or balls pushed along by tiger’s nose
our smoke is a canon / dare devil on its way to an unnamed star
The Mind in State
By Fady JoudahDoes consciousness exist only when
you name it? Was the double helix a
stranger, the nucleus the first brain?
I feel therefore I am. This is more