bitter crop
By Kelli Stevens Kaneblueberry blackberry as always
bleeding, back road or boulevard,
our boy crowned with baton,
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To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian
By Ross GayTumbling through the
city in my
mind without once
looking up
not an elegy for Mike Brown
By Danez SmithI am sick of writing this poem
but bring the boy. his new name
his same old body. ordinary, black
dead thing. bring him & we will mourn
Certain Seams
By Jill KhouryThe boy across the street points at me and lisps—now I know what they mean in books when they say children lisp. He wears a red and white striped t-shirt, addresses my friend who walks beside me. I ask people to please walk on my left side. It’s the eye that’s not completely dead I say. They always move over.
Anxiety Attack at 27,000 Feet
By Nicholas SamarasWhat is that red throbbing over the sound of engines?
Why is a distant war still being talked about in the media?
I can't see my home or Iraq or the Middle East
outside this bowed rectangle of blue altitude.
from Forgetting Willie James Jones
By David Tomas MartinezIt's not water to wine to swallow harm,
though many of us have,
and changing the name
“Baltimore Uproar” by Romare Bearden
By Reginald HarrisGet off here. This is a story you've
been told: these streets before the trash,
the rats, the crack-heads nodding to ghost
A Building Away
By Denise BergmanShe is a neighbor a building away, we talk weather and potholes, exchange
names Mary same as her daughter or is she Marissa or Maria I was distracted
her nephew was chewing the leg of his doll and the day was disappearing before