SO WE GOT THREE THINGS GOING. WE GOT SOME GRAPE JELLY,
SOME HOMINY GRITS, AND AN EXTENSION CORD. Frequently people be impressed with some shit that I did that isn’t impressive For three hours a week, my nana in her usher uniform People like to fabricate nouns so white you can’t work in them No one rouged her cheek, none ran her or her stockings Like publishing Or stepped on her tennis shoes, sweated her lapel A cloth I have to launder once I wipe my face has no stamina Her man was dead or not your business I come to the table up, washed like I already ate, painted like I already slaughtered Baking soda somewhere seething among my bequests Frequently people mean to look like (that’s they) money Framed by a wicker-back I’m spooning Bleach and black share an etymological base sugar sheer as pestled glass from stainless Spent hours cleaning out, daydreaming cresting waves Stayed knives of a starched collar, whole moons stuck in the lobes of By the time we make love I’m exhausted and starving A stunning lover A contrived still life Who fingers cherry entrails With hive of muscadines While two thick peaches cleave to their pits And six-piece bone china set A set designed Daisies spectate from a standing planter box Xs and checkers of decadence rebranded as evident style suggest Sprays of metal petals, unwilting color happens at crossings Madam, I came with the house If you burnished all this we’d have a different conversation I mean shit I could go with it, too AND I LOATHED MY BEAUTY FOR THAT. this was always sposed to be a story of carnage. copper stripped from a basement. walls barged down the river, ruddy as the stain on the sister’s seat. [1] that day in the rain & the frame still smoking. in the chainlink fence’s revenge, it split her sole. rust grit & brick dust gripped in her prints. brush hisses in dense brown hush. horseshoe kicks what you tryna say (trap shut.) into snowbank the cricket twinkle renders. bring in the big evening. in its black continuity, we are outnumbered & maneuvered by memory. her beauty excruciates, emphasizes the cardinally directed reflections affixed to Marlene Clark’s face. we stop the motion of molten metal & beg it, frozen, reveal us intrinsically. the child born (e.g., Rosso), as creation, is a solicited solidification of interior crisis, a temporary & meaningful clot. someone chooses ruin for the wood. from that shot to this, both a cross cut & rip cut in which classical sculpture is an anachronism & a parallel becoming: [2] grave(n) woman / “wonderful girl.” “barbie doll,” the father calls the mother’s portrait: blush background, collarbones, curls, tinted lip. easy, the sands of his pharynx romance: waterfall, rose furls, cinnamon stick. this blood coupling’s a because of me, its symmetry & fuckery. thou art with me & once fine & ordinarily poured your good years into systems of profit, piecemeal pocket- booking stolen feed. grief, grief, relentless thrift. you suffocating burgundy apology. ----------------------- [1] What does it mean to me to be firstborn versus the first conceived? Little kidneys. I coax my fuel out of roasted beans. Often I write like a fossil, meatless & downplaying what died to get it done. [2] Gunn blackens “Western” time, or Gunn restores flux to the Real amid a fabrication of narrative etiology.
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Weniger, aber besser (Less, but better)
It’s fun to blame ourselves for things. It’s a relief. The puff of big dreams shrivels back to normal size. You think, Probably not. Probably I won’t get that done and it won’t matter. I’m not up for that today. It’s great to wrap our arms around No and stay put. I’m fine with failure. Only you know what you didn’t do. Palestine My grandmother knew the real treasure of the world was a pink line on the horizon. Owned by none, commanded by none. Every evening she climbed a rickety wooden ladder barefooted to the flat roof of her very simple home to gaze out over stolen hillsides and valleys and smile. The valleys were small next to the sky.  Keith Leonard is the author of the poetry collection Ramshackle Ode (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016). His poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming in The Believer, New England Review, and Ploughshares. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. Jukebox
To have a mind as categorized as a cupboard of song, to reach into a dark place and usher forth the exact tone of your infant's yawn, to hear completely your gone mother's bedtime song. And then to click the memory back into place. To even lift the same song twice.  CAConrad has been working with the ancient technologies of poetry and ritual since 1975. They are the author of Amanda Paradise, forthcoming from Wave Books in 2021. Their book While Standing in Line for Death won a Lambda Literary Award. They also received a Creative Capital grant, a Pew Fellowship, and a Believer Magazine Book Award. They teach at Columbia University in New York City and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Please view their books, essays, recordings, and upcoming events at bit.ly/88CAConrad 2 Shard our little places within are not dungeons remember remember astronomers point satellites into space the military points them down at us the inverse relationship between love we offer and what we give this on and off button is another opportunity to believe there are only two choices this too must end 4 Shard we wanted this thing crossing between us worming under foot a flavor revealing itself to those who open the mouth fully a taste tasting us back wide eyed before we learn to catch words midair snorting lines of coke off the biggest cock detecting additional minutes hidden in the cave we forge of one another 7 Shard
he said breathe like you read your poems what the hell does that mean then suddenly I'm breathing it look at our hands baked into being by a fleeting magic bark with dogs to let the neighborhood know you can go to the address knock all you want no one is there now where the exit signs are burned out the preexisting condition is not cancer but the glass of polluted drinking water  A Bronx, New York native, Roya Marsh is a nationally recognized poet, performer, educator and activist. She is the Poet in Residence at Urban Word NYC and works feverishly toward LGBTQIA justice and dismantling white supremacy. Roya’s work has been featured in Poetry Magazine, Flypaper Magazine, Frontier Poetry, the Village Voice, Nylon Magazine, Huffington Post, The Root, Button Poetry, Def Jam’s All Def Digital, Lexus Verses and Flow, NBC, BET and The BreakBeat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket 2018). In Spring 2020, MCD x FSG Originals published Roya Marsh's dayliGht, a debut collection of experimental poetry exploring themes of sexuality, Blackness, and the prematurity of Black femme death--all through an intersectional feminist lens with a focus on the resilience of the Black woman. for (insert name)
never knowing how to label a dream until you want to tell your children apart you'll forget how to tell your children apart not wanting your baby to die on a cross like (insert name) or in a cross walk like (insert name) not wanting him to be like (insert name) lying in middle of the street not another (insert name) crying he can't breathe or (insert name) shot at the doorstep 'cause black fist against door equates fist against body 'cause guns ring out more than doorbells or (insert name)'s brains splattered in that alley 'cause a cell phone could be a lot of things in the dark but an unregistered 9mm semiautomatic fired over the shoulder can only be one thing an eraser a broken taillight in broad daylight a reaper eye contact, a counterfeit bill a death wish you ain't gon let your son go out like how they let (insert name) run just far enough to think himself safe before they shot you won't let the last time you see him whole be like when they threw (insert name) in the back of that van hands cuffed behind his back like (insert name) but he still managed to shoot himself like (insert name) his spine in pieces like (insert name) you want him home like putting curfew on (insert name)'s soul - too black to be out at night you ain't gonna be asking the news why they say (insert name) when they really mean (insert name) got Obama and Kamala callin' us (insert name) like they don't sit around callin' him (insert name) 'cause isn't that the right word? ‘cause you know ALL lives matter except (insert name) how lucky am i, to have (insert name) in my bloodline holy the way (insert name) keeps pushing my pen from heaven i flap my gums show the world the fist in my throat in honor of (insert name) but my mother begs me home from the protest says she can't go through what she went through with (insert name) says this hype over (insert name) will die just like (insert name) and i tell her i'd rather die for (insert name) a million times than die like (insert name) once  Stephanie Kaylor is a PhD student in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. They are Reviews Editor of Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Her recent work can be found in publications including Hobart, Protean, and Softblow. LONG DISTANCE
I photograph the ocean to show you there was a moment in which I remembered our smallness, in which I placed the shell to my ear and heard not the roar of past lives but the miles between us. I was never faithless enough to believe there is no smell of salt. Once it meant closeness, the peeling of earth-worn limbs folded into themselves, an indiscernible core. I cut apples into spears when you feared a bite would break your teeth. how effortlessly we crumble. I photograph the ocean to show you I remember life before the weight of bone, before the need for knives.  Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, "Someone's Dead Already" was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book "Heaven Is All Goodbyes" was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award. A Sketch about Genocide
A San Francisco police chief says, “Yes, you poets make points. But they are all silly,” Police chief sowing a mouth onto a mouth Police chief looking straight through the poet Flesh market both sides of the levy Change of plans both sides of the nonviolence On no earth Just an earth character His subordinate says, “Awkward basketball moves look good on you, sir... Yes, we are everywhere, sir... yes, unfortunately for now, white people only have Black History ... we will slide the wallpaper right into their cereal bowls, sir ... Surveil the shuffle.” I am a beggar and all of this day is too easy I want to see all of the phases of a wall Every age it goes through Its humanity Its environmental racism We call this the ordeal blues Now crawl to the piano seat and make a blanket for your cell Paint scenes of a child dancing up to the court appearance And leaving a man, but not for home Atlantic ocean charts mixed in with parole papers Mainstream funding (the ruling class’s only pacifism) Ruling class printing judges (fiat kangaroos) Making judges hand over fist Rapture cop packs and opposition whites all above a thorny stem Caste plans picked out like vans for the murder show anglo-saints addicting you to a power structure you want me to raise a little slave, don’t you? bash his little brain in and send him to your civil rights No pain Just a white pain Delicate bullets in a box next to a stack of monolith scriptures (makes these bullets look relevant, don’t it?) I remember you Everywhere you lay your hat is the capital of the south The posture you introduced to that fence The fence you introduced to political theory If you shred my dreams, son I will tack you to gun smoke The suburbs are finally offended this will be a meditation too  Despy Boutris's writing has been published in Copper Nickel, American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Currently, she serves as Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast, Guest Editor for Palette Poetry and Frontier, and Editor-in-Chief of The West Review. BLOODTEETH
I went blackberry-picking, looked down at my index finger, & watched a wound bloom with blood. To compare this plasma to a flowering thing: amaryllis, orchid, chrysanthemum. To memorize creases, freckles, the sight of the thorn finding its way into flesh. All day, the breeze burns my ears, eyes blurring at the sight of sunlight filtering through oak branches, that golden color unbearable, the haze hard to believe as fable. My mother organizes her top-drawer & finds a box of my teeth. My mother tells me love never lasts, a river dissolving into a ravine with parched rocks. Nothing left to drink. I call my father to say I dreamt I swam the span of the Pacific, fled from everything I know. He reminds me my name is mythic—body built for saltwater, memory spanning centuries, trident still stuck in my spine. & what do we really have to count on but the sea, water, the light of the sun turning on the city? Hands made stiff from the cold, distant smoke rising, the scent of anise in the air.  Khalisa Rae is a poet and journalist in Durham, NC, and author of Real Girls Have Real Problems chapbook. Her poetry can be seen in Crab Fat, Damaged Goods, Hellebore, Terse, Sundog Lit, PANK, Tishman Review, Occulum, the Obsidian, among others. She is the winner of the Bright Wings Poetry contest, the Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the White Stag Publishing Contest, among others. Currently, she serves as Managing Equity Editor at Carve Magazine and Writing Center Director at Shaw University. Her debut collections, Ghost in a Black Girls Throat are forthcoming from Red Hen Press in April 2021 and White Stag Publishing Summer '21 Belly-Full of Gospel
Each morning my grandma rises to find her Bible still breathing, belting her favorite aria. A lion, a well, a sacrifice. Crack-of-dawn, coffee-stained, scrolls making music at 6am. Each page turn a chord she knows better than hot water cornbread and collard greens. Wailing Blessed Assurance, What a Friend to crackling bacon– all a belly-full of gospel summoning spirit to be there in the midst. Her back buckle and hand wave awakening a holy ghost- Bash-sha- Shadrach, Meshach- tongue-speaking spells cast out the demons haunting this old house. “While I’m on this tedious journey”— a sovereign song soothing her aching, calligraphed hands. Walk with Me, she asks, inviting Him in the room. What a meditation, a ritual to welcome Holy into a place held together by broken bread. A sacred invitation to dine with her and the browning hash. Nothing but the Blood and sunrise slicing sound-- stirring a tent revival lasting ‘til nightfall across her wobbling kitchen table. Ode to Uncommon Things for Pablo If this world has taught me anything, it has taught me we are obsessed with naming, with calling a Ren a Ren, with deciding the weeping willow was heavy with grief, with echoing the words Nightjar and picturing nocturnal hawk. Maybe it's the god-like power of it all, the villain of conjuring titles, calling a thing broken and watching it fall, then calling it chosen–phoenix, and watching it rise. Who are we to be cataloged and filed? All of us just common things waiting to be named uncommon, waiting to go from bird to Nightingale, from pigeon to white-wing, crest-backed Long-tailed widow. The sonnet we hoped would be written for our raised backs and color stripes— unwritten. Instead, we watched while handkerchief and pitch pipe got 83. Mementos to things less miracle than we. Time spent crafting sestinas to penny loafer, and pocket watch. But we are not listed-- we, the uncommon, silvery tokens.  JinJin Xu is a filmmaker and writer from Shanghai. She has received honors from The Poetry Society of America, Southern Humanities Review, and the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. She is currently an MFA candidate and Lillian Vernon Fellow at NYU, and her chapbook There Is Still Singing in the Afterlife was selected by Aria Aber for the Own Voices Chapbook Prize and is forthcoming November 20. Days of Hourless Mothers
i. Herbal, thick, my mother’s insomnia wets my nose, You are leaving me again – My mother’s insomnia wets my nose, exhales her abandon again – into the muffled orifice, Exhales her abandon into night, guilt unclenches the muffled orifice, old tissue, balled-up grief Of night, guilt unclenches, herbal, thick, balled-up tissue, old grief. I am leaving. ii. Each hour an organ, a zodiac beast, twelve hours separate my mother and me, our days halved, up hanging down, shadows splitting this American sun. Hour of the tiger: my mother calls on the tip of night, her sun spitting my American shadow, sorry, sorry for disturbing your sleep. Midnight tips me into my mother’s lonesome noon, always, I apologize in my sleep. Only one is allowed pity, Pity my mother’s lone moon. Double the organ, double the beast, only one child is allowed to flip the zodiac onto its knees. iii. Hour of the lung and its cyclings of qi, vital, untranslatable beasts wailing songs of abandon into night, I wake to Your call, vital, untranslatable, my abandon strains your voice, Why are you awake? Organs need sleep to heal. I abandon you to the bright of day. Listen, your daughter is sleeping， her organs unclenching your night’s far shore. Soon, your tomorrow will ring her into yesterday’s outstretched lungs, and when she wakes, forgetting to call, let her - |
