By Kai Coggin a praise poem, after JP Howard, for my Sisters praise you Black Woman because you never be praised enough let me lift your collective name here let me strip you of all your forced-on shame here praise you for the stars that unfold when you smile praise you for the way moons [...]
Summer 2021 By Erin Murphy Everything is free, it seems: parking, treats for dogs whose owners browse free-range brown eggs. Last month scores of documents were found in a nearby attic, dry rotted and tattered. One offered 30 dollars for the capture of a Negro man named Amos with coarse trousers, a tolerable good felt hat, [...]
By Pat Andrus For Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, George Floyd, seven-year-old Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones, Eric Garner, Dante Parker, Atatiana Jefferson, ninety-two-year-old Kathryn Johnston . . . A broken baton a dead rat 5 jailers with guns. How the life loses its state of pure being. How a bone breaks and one rose falls. [...]
and Black Lives Matter By Patricia Aya Williams From the un-masked and (turtled nooks) of home to the socially - distanced and sanitized patios of coffeeshops, I greet you. The world spins on an axis of livid proclaiming and bulleted majesty while vultures circle the [...]
By Mary F. Lenox I can’t breathe the words said written on a waste container near the sidewalk I wondered what other unheard voices say I can’t breathe Dying fish of the sea echo I can’t breathe as they navigate through plastic and oil invaders Birds call out through polluted air I can’t breathe Children [...]
By Karen Morris Garcia Lorca called me last night (Before you get in a twist, he called you too. You didn’t pick up.) He said, “Disappearance and Death are real.” I suggested he text but, texting’s too flat for the poetics of death. “Sure,” you said to no one out loud, ridding yourself of the [...]
By Geoffrey Philp After Jericho Brown I ride around this city feeling as if I’m always a target, like the one at a gun range where cops used mug shots of African-American men to improve the shots of their snipers—photos of black men who weren’t dead, but whose images would be useful to kill the [...]
By Mark Williams after Walt Whitman O Captain! Some Captain! Our fearful trip’s not done, The ship is foundering, front to back, the prize we sought’s not won. The port is far, the chants I hear, the people all protesting, While follow eyes the unsteady keel, the vessel grim and shaking; But O heartless, heartless heart! O [...]
