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Beginnings ~Mahtem Shiferraw This is not how it begins but how you understand it. I walk many kilometers and find myself to be the sa...

Incantation ~Chris Abani What words can you wrap around a dying brother, still dying, even now. A man who has not eaten for a month ...

Speak Now, Or Forever. Hold Your Peace. ~Patricia Smith Two weeks after 17 students were gunned down in Parkland, Fla., hundreds of worsh...

Cento Between the Ending and the End ~Cameron Awkward-Rich Sometimes you don’t die when you’re supposed to & now I have a choice ...

Boat Journey ~Ladan Osman Sunday afternoon on a city beach. No sand, slabs of manufactured stone. I watch two blondes, maybe sisters, ...

Headwind ~Amber Flora Thomas Weak motion of grasses and tern before the sea. Worry’s school cresting here and everywhere as failings. ...

The Crocuses ~Frances Ellen Watkins Harper They heard the South wind sighing     A murmur of the rain; And they knew that Earth was lon...

A Memory ~Saeed Jones When they finished burying me, what was left of me sent up a demand like a hand blooming in the fresh dirt: When...

Sea Sonnet: Dakar, 2018 ~Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon I begged for tongues the way that I was taught—: hanala si ke andana—: whispered close...

See links below for info on Kara Springer Sculpture With Fragments of Stuart Hall ~Christian Campbell “I would have gone back,” the voi...

The Dreamer ~Paul Laurence Dunbar Temples he built and palaces of air,    And, with the artist’s parent-pride aglow,    His fancy saw h...

Burn ~Janice N. Harrington The wind then, through seams of bluestem, or switchgrass swayed by a coyote’s passing. Where the fabric gap...

Where Is She ::: Koté Li Yé ~ r. erica doyle Long ago I met a beautiful boy Together we slept in my mother's womb Now the stree...

Violence, I know you ~Khadijah Queen so well it’s like you’re my real lover, the reason I can’t stay attached to anyone, making a heave...

But My Chains ~Kyle Dargan But my loyalty         points—my purchasing         power. Nothing. But my economies         of scale, my...

Oriflamme  ~Jessie Redmon Fauset               “I can remember when I was a little, young girl, how my old                mammy would si...

Improvisation on Them ~Linda Susan Jackson He courts her with Soir de Paris & braids myths in her hair. To hear time how they need ...

The Prophetess Sojourner Truth Discusses the Two Different Versions of Her Most Well-Known Speech, One Nearly Unknown and One Very Beloved Y...

west of philly ~Yolanda Wisher they asked me to write a poem like a lush life, a johnny hartman poem. a poem that would make your fake ...

Taking Out the Trash ~Kamilah Aisha Moon Someone else used to do this before. Someone responsible, someone who loved me enough to prot...