That last thing is what you can’t get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.—Jack Kerouac, On the Road What is to be said of the days when you feel nothing.The blank of the paper tearing through your eyes. You floata film of foam …
Don’t be afraid to weave your truthinto a duvet. Sing your demon a lullaby, let it sleep. Give existence a name, a lucid flameyou wear without fear on your flesh—peel your lips, and tell me how freely you allowedyourself to taste life. Shapeshift. Remember to thrust your handinto the depth of your soul. Watch yourself …
Next time. It will be worse. Oh much worse. Enraged inferno, guns, and young men. Weapons for the destruction of the masses. Sent out amongst the virtuous. To set terror alive. Never seen in this land of strangers. Where just the other day 1300 died for a point of view. Hacked down by missiles of …
Here we are in the middle of a country of bonesIt’s midnight and there’s moonlight streaming through the window The light falls into my palm and I put it in my mouthI pray that the night does not leave me behind I pray for the abundance of sightTell me how to make a person Tell …
The Greatest Country in the World, by Rafiat Lamidi Keep Reading »
My fleshpreserves his memories,his desires, his unfulfilled dreams of brotherhood. I carry himlike a mother, my boy wholoved to sweat under the stars. I buried him myselfunder lipstick and clothand the body I needed to survive. Still, his little bonesjut under my cheekssome mornings, and I remember I don’t hate him. How can Ihate a …
Even now I see the gifts of patient windows keeping watchas the road grows damp and the ravens gather razor beaksunder iridescent wings. Our porch light flickers oncetwice and the sidewalk’s sharpened shadowsfold up like paper stars. And stillI linger. I feel the ache of meof Death who is the spacebetween my footstepsmoving as I …
If I Leave You with Moonlight, by Felicia Martínez Keep Reading »
This beach with sand impersonating stars dead is longand all this wood has drifted farto be here out of water we don’t know how rareor how or why each has livedin forces under the speed of lightyour hands will also drift in wind to hold them a hungerfor smooth skinfeeling for a pulse from another …
Her father’s family wants everything lush the first time. An eagle’s feathers soft as rainfall, coins pouring thick as magnolia blossom, excess slicing from the belly to the shaking of the world. There is a luxury in being asked twice. The sugar cubes ignored beside the porcelain cup made from bone ashes in a process …
Persephone Takes Up the Garnets, by Ursula Whitcher Keep Reading »
Questions and Answers س و ج what do you know about home? – سi know of voices that swivel into purple song, – جtongues forced to sleep under the clouds of their mouthlike how قل — to say in Arabic, mutate to hold your tongue hostagewhen I say it in Hausa, عقل. what do …
Questions and Answers, by Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi Keep Reading »
For Lunda, chi hollo li Someone once told me That the weight of the unfinished story of you is too/ much/ to carryI had never seen things this way because it has been my reality for twenty-two years to piece together your dark mythos butIn this poem I will attempt to put the weight down and imagine something other than how …