Author: zebulon

The avant-garde, in my eyes, is a venue for dissonance. My work attempts to re-and-deconstruct narrative, composing a series of images to refer to other images referring to other images that are self-referential. The avant-garde for the black poet or poet of color seems to be in conversation with Dubois’ thoughts of double consciousness. To endlessly aspire for a pseudo-identity one cannot achieve because of the one you were born with makes me believe that maybe the “avant-garde” is all the African, and her descendants, strive for; to push against some of the destructive notions of Darwinism, maintaining the philosophy of “as is-ness”. I denounce this New World through my art. Not only do I believe the avant-garde presents a kind of truth opposing dangerous, illusory ideas in regards to our current state of being, I believe this art playfully mocks it. In listening to Thelonious Monk, one senses a child present, another may sense a theologian, yet, they both provide insight. I hope my poems are seen as the literary equivalent of an A and Bb note simultaneously played; so close they seem to not belong, yet so close it seems the musician is searching for another tone further between.

The Hallways in This Hospital are Narrow

a little like little irises 
scrabbling in keyholes, 

seeing a coterie of doctors 
on the other side, dancing,
wearing coats of crows:

“the maniacal monarchs.” 

They play classical music. 
I didn’t come for Brahms, 
and the small room smells; 
metal, poison curing blood. 

Pollutant. My logic and my 
philosophy can’t touch on my 
plate. Pardon, I eat slow. My 

head’s cottage silvers and rots. 
There’s nothing here to distinguish
the self of something with another thing’s self. 

I’m going linearly crazy and the doctors hold a card for me 
to recreate with language. 
Is it a dark room, beetles scurrying at the fringes? 

No. Men running, with their heads cut off in the capital. 
No. Memories crawling out of the card like the eggs 
of small creatures, seeming to grow 
from a leaf’s face. 

They open my face,
 
and my face is on their faces (so is a face only a face if it faced faces?) 
if for a moment, 
until multi-realities fracture like a channel’s navigation 
to another channel. Another vision: I killed 

an ant and streaked its body across pages. 
There’s not enough hospitals for them. 
I think they leave their own kind 

for the earth to bury but the epidemic 
for the earth now is that there’s too many walls, 
for the earth is not large enough to keep its dead.

I think most think the walls can’t think, 

but everything holds both the intellect and the savage,
both the grave and the doctor: 
one who buries, one who unburies the buried. 

I found a roach dead on a wall near a door of mine, 
as if followed by some animal or some madman,

but if you could see it, 
you’d see it,
its skeleton, lonely, suspended. 

Wouldn’t it be momentarily fascinating, 
increasingly haunting, to see a human spread across 
the side of a building, their sides splitting, 

blood rolling from the inside of flesh 
to the outside of windows, the old blind folk 
thinking the taps on glass are rain, 

the eyes of the murdered, hanging 
from his skull. No diagnoses for that. 

Where the children play, they look up, 
but it’s me looking down, wondering 
on the methods of burial. 

Maybe we got it all wrong. If this life is too narrow, horizontally, 
why not vertical a death? 

All this time, physics made it so clear 

if a body could stick for that long, 
then maybe the walls 
do have teeth 

The Making of a Sculpture of a Black Greek God

                you can only Reduce:Descend into form. 

out of mountains (MMmm(mountains behind mountains)mM) 

are made cities of marble (mM(re-mirroring-er)Mm) hiding 
in valleys, in the oceans. We’re all mostly made up of rivers 
—
and fire. death // a union of the core with the out- 
side. That’s why we’re burning, we over-descend. we over- 
reach for the god caged in one of the faces of a stone’s carve-
able carnival. Water weeps on its only brother….. sea-

gulls hang in the grey air like bulbs, dust coated. the ship,
 
pregnant with men, coursing. To find the African under the exist-
ence of kept-out weather, hold your one good ear, bleed out 
the other like a ghost in a circumference of blue.
                                                                                                    —
i’m asking about dissension, i’m knowing more on the act
 
of descending. Children in the dark belly of mothers in 
the belly of boats in the belly of water in the belly of he-
avens mistaking us for the belly of a heaven. 
                                                                                                    —
we’re not that but we got math [godhood measured:assess-
ed]. Blade to chest. how far until [it hurts? I think] I got 
a soul in the front of the behind of a soul making ham-
mocks of my organs and their nearby highways.  

the American-African, rephrased in its self in its tenure 
of water. I walk to the shore, the shadow of my body 
—
flung into the eyes of a lake, Dying making gods of us

Twenty-Seven w/ Script

                for Anton Yelchin

“It’s like an exchanging of eyes,” Anton tells himself before
a window, his reflection seen just so, straining to visibility as the sun-
light severs the burning glass, obscuring his face enough to be mist-
aken for a haunted shadow— fading, but haunted.

                                    ***
(A boy scurries through the dark alleys, his hand bulging with cash as he runs to a diner to see the man he grew to love. The man talked low, as if something dangerous hid in the walls, something that smelled like a mask, masked by masks.)

MAN: You got all that cash. What’cha gonna do now? 

ANTON: Hitch a ride to the next planet off the main roads. 

MAN: And Atlantis?

ANTON: Sometimes you gotta leave it all behind.

(Anton runs back through the alley’s piercing darkness, and like the flicker of a bulb, he disappears through it, his face becoming numerous, a million selves trekking the lonely space. Is this how moons are made, wandering through a road-less country waiting for someone to raise the eye of a camera to a face and shoot?)

                                    ***
On Acting/ On Performance: “Is it like a nightmare,
to know you are acting in another boy’s dream?”
“Is it like, for a moment, your mind is riddled
with prophesies?” “Is life just like a journey
of masks?”

                                    ***
Yes, I do think Process is the machine waiting to turn
the performative self into darkness. The first thing you see
as you put on a new face is darkness. They say you are
your truest self before walking through darkness.
It is obsession that teaches how one could be lost to the mind
of darkness. Yes, acting is as horrifying as half the body
stolen by the mouth of a machine’s darkness.

Nkosi Nkululeko has received fellowships from Callaloo, The Watering Hole and Poets House. He has performed for TEDxNewYork and the Aspen Ideas Festival. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and finalist for both the 2016 Winter Tangerine Awards for Poetry and the 2016 Best of the Net anthology. His work is currently published in The Collagist, Third Coast, Pank, Apogee, VINYL, and more. Nkosi lives in Harlem, New York. 

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As my work is inspired by individuals who are attempting to reenter society after experiencing big T-trauma, I wanted to provide some of them with a time and place through writing; however, having grown up in a working class geography as well as experiencing trauma myself, there is a lot of difficulty in translating such moods and moments with plainspoken diction. Sometimes, the only way to communicate these experiences is to take off in a direction without knowing where the language is actually headed and strongly hope that it’ll either return to where it started or productively arrive in a new place. I feel these works do so in some capacity. Maybe the language represents a kind of growth in each speaker. Or maybe it’s necessary to render a situation complex to achieve respect–to earn the reader’s ear through its music without any expectation of return.

Derrick Ortega‘s upcoming chapbook, Habits (formerly known as Jigsaw Limbs), explores re-entrance sociality after experiencing trauma and touches on performative normalcy. It will be published with selva oscura press in 2018 with poems anthologized in Snorted the Moon and Doused the Sun: An Addiction Anthology and pieces published in Letter [r] Press, Fact-Simile Editions, and elsewhere. Ortega is currently Poet-in-Residence at the Idyllwild Arts Academy and a poetry instructor for Orange County School of the Arts. He received an MFA in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts from the University of California, Riverside and resides in southern California.

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I have a habit of becoming antagonistic to things that scare me. As a child I was immensely scared to die, the adolescence brought new negations of health, & life’s value became liminal. I am living now & that all I have to say about that. This work is the expository sunrise on the conceit of «Zumbi», the title & unlisted character of the collection. This collection is an experiment in re-animation. A scene set in the body of the performative Black space, dare I call it a stage, here I fashion it on the page, all this a gesture toward the anxiety of being seen. The characters, each fully (dis)embodied, are gender-neutral, until manifested by the reader. Because gender is your problem not mine, or Black peoples’s. Here, The Nigga-Siblings, (a triplet-like kin-squad of brilliant & honest Black minds) plan their own fates while Blxk (a host, or haunting, audience-addressing figure) sets up their set for the production. {i worry how much death lives in / parallel to / views my body & i want to imagine beyond the literal space to a fantastic time}

Zumbi Act I Scene I:

[scene: A’nigga, Dis’nigga, & Dat’nigga sit in a row comfortable, cozy even, facing the audience. They are lit from the front as if illuminated by the audience. They are already in conversation, though inaudible to the audience.] 

            (now audible) 

DAT’NIGGA: i mean real talk, i ain’t even scared of death like that no more. 
like you know how many niggas die every day? like ain’t one of us dying all that 
special. 

DIS’NIGGA: right, but like you can’t go out no kinda way. you gotta go out 
the right way—

DAT’NIGGA: what? there’s a right way for niggas to die now? 

A’NIGGA: well, ain’t no right way, but we ain’t gotta be scared of it. 

DAT’NIGGA: see, that’s what i’m saying here. niggas gonna go out 
all kinds of side ways so i’m not scared of how it happens to me. 

A’NIGGA: how y’all wanna go out? 

            (As Dat’nigga begins to speak Blxk enters stage left 
            crossing in front of A’nigga, Dis’nigga, & Dat’nigga. 
            Only A’nigga notices Blxk.)

DAT’NIGGA: nigga, i wanna go out with a fight. i wanna hollering & live. 
nigga, i wanna go out dancing till my joints becoming chalk-dust, with my hands 
calloused from clapping, my throat swollen from singing every song i know & then some. 

            (Blxk is so far oblivious to the scene already
            in progress, from stage right, they pull out a white obelisk & begins inspecting it.)

DIS’NIGGA: well, i wanna go quietly. want my eyes to simmer, my heart hum
a more docile lyric, for life to have laid me down gently by the shore, each tide, 
holding me deeper, i want my body to return to the water. 

            (A’nigga has completely missed Dat’nigga & Dis’niggas fantasies.
            A’nigga completely taken by Blxk)

DAT’NIGGA: yo, you being your-self again. returning to your own mind
instead of letting niggas know where you are. 

DIS’NIGGA: how you wanna go? 

            (A’nigga distracted.) 

A’NIGGA: what? 

            (Dat’nigga is clearly annoyed at A’nigga’s spacey-ness, Dis’nigga inarguably more curious.
            Neither Dat’nigga nor Dis’nigga can see Blxk.) 

DIS’NIGGA: how do you wanna go? wanna die alone? 
with friends? how do you want to be remembered? 

            (Blxk finally notices A’nigga fixated & begins to silently engage their gaze, 
            exploring the white obelisk with a new kind of intention, a seduction of sorts.
            A’nigga realizes Blxk is aware & immediately tries to re-enter the conversation.)

A’NIGGA: ain’t there anything else worse than death?  

DAT’NIGGA: what? ain’t no-thing worse than death—

DIS’NIGGA: you still ain’t said how you wanna die? 

A’NIGGA: but there are worse things, right? 
like what if you die but you ain’t go no-where? 

            (Dis’nigga + Dat’nigga look skeptically at A’nigga. 
            Blxk stops inspecting the monolith & listens to A’nigga). 

A’NIGGA: like what if your soul gets stuck here, like you die 
but you can’t leave the earth? like you really get caught? 

DAT’NIGGA: nigga, what? when you die you dead. 
over, done. 

            (A’Nigga looks to see if Blxk is still watching). 

A’NIGGA: right but like say when you die & you don’t go no-where? 
what if after death you still here just floating ‘round ghost of yourself. 
or better yet what if you came back better than before? your spirit caught, 
but your body free? 

            (Dat’nigga +Dis’nigga look almost hopeful.) 

DAT’NIGGA: damn, i mean i don’t mind coming back a moth or some shit, 
but you ain’t gonna catch me out here chasing after niggas when i’m gone. 

DIS’NIGGA: yeah, ain’t even too fond of graveyards now. 

            (Blxk laughs & rolls the white obelisk off-stage right, then proceeds to pass
            downstage, exiting stage left. A’nigga notices Blxk’s whole path.) 

A’NIGGA: i’m just saying, i believe there are worse things that simply dying.

DIS’NIGGA: but do you really believe in ghosts? 

            (Off-stage Blxk’s laugh is echoed. Dat’nigga &Dis’nigga jump. 
            A’nigga looks directly at the audience & smiles.)  

jayy dodd is a blxk trans femme from los angeles, california– now based on the internet. they are a literary & performance artist. their work has appeared / will appear in Broadly, The Establishment, Entropy, LitHub, BOAAT Press, Duende, & Poetry Foundation, among others. they’re the author of Mannish Tongues (Platypus Press, 2017) & The Black Condition ft. Narcissus (Siren Song / CCM Press, 2018). they are a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-editor of Bettering American Poetry. their work has been featured in Teen Vogue & Entropy. they are also a volunteer gender-terrorist & artificial intellectual. find them talking trash online or taking a selfie.

“Used” is part of an exercise in queering Black, masculine narratives in popular music through blackout and erasure. Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” are two commercially successful, recognizable songs, but through erasure, the narratives have been altered and merged into a new reality—creating space out of narratives where queerness was not previously present, permissible, or made visible.

In a way, after some stripping away, these narratives already existed, they were just obscured by other noise, just as Black queerness has always existed. In this new form, these narratives, originally about heterosexual relationships, take on new layers of meaning.

Used

Steffan Triplett is an instructor and MFA candidate at the University of Pittsburgh. Some of his work appears or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, The Offing, Wildness, Ghost Proposal, Kweli Journal, Foundry, and Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color. Steffan has been a fellow for Callaloo and Lambda Literary and is a VONA/Voices alum. He was raised in Joplin, Missouri.

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The act of art itself is in fact “radical” and poetry as a medium is a constant exercise of experimentation and expression attempting to serve the purpose of serving those who read them. 

In terms of content, my work in this collection aims to critique the results of eating habits within POC communities. What we choose to put into our bodies can essentially prevent Heart Disease and Cancer, the two largest causes of death in America.

“In the Chopshop: 100 Names” you can find the speaker (and audience) bearing witness to the fact that they are hacking at — and most likely consuming this other body that is similar to the self. “(insert family member here)” is another poem of realization, acting as the linkage between the first and third piece.

“On Video Playback – Vida” is essentially about the war we choose to have inside ourselves as well as highlighting the loss of this fight. 

(insert family member here)
milk = 80% Casein     Casein  =  cancer     cancer = Casein
 Casein = milk       milk = 80% cancer 

Casein   the main protein present in milk 
strong bones strong muscles
kids drink your milk!

Casein   the main protein present in milk
a building block for strong bones strong muscles.

Casein in our processed foods. it’s stuck around so long 
because it’s used in our adhesives.
Casein in tape.   Casein in our glue.
it holds together wood. Casein laminates doors. 
they fireproof the west coast Casein seals aircrafts shut
and you could paint a picture 
of the same plane with Casein paint 

Casein, the main protein present in milk 
            which means it's present in cheese 
            which means it’s present in yogurt. 
it’s giving cheese to mice. Casein injected into mice,
                        tumors the size of rats.

kids drink your milk with your school breakfast.

Casein   the main protein present in milk
            they put a name to the thing in the 18th century

                        caseus is Latin for    cheese.

Cheese    a food consisting of the coagulated
                                    compressed and ripened
                        curd of milk

cheese
            curd   a food of semi-solid milk clots
                        a sweetened/soured milk-paste.

kids, drink your milk with your school lunch  
                                                bottoms up!

milk paste, a semisolid sourish food 
prepared from milk fermented 
through added bacteria 
often sweetened and flavored.

eat your yogurt kids. get your probiotics. drink your milk 
as an afternoon snack. 
drink milk warm before bed.

milk = 80% Casein Casein  =  cancer  cancer = Casein
     Casein = milk       milk = 80% cancer 

cancer killed my (insert family member here)

2 cups of coffee a day 
            cream and sugar.             cream and sugar.
she walked everyday with a coffee in her hand, 
                                      light and sweet was she. 
            her coffee light and sweet as she.

I remember buying her dunkin donuts, 4 sugars 3 creams

I’d watch the barista—    1 casein, 2 casein, 3 casein—    into a styrofoam cup. 

honey nut cheerios were her favorite. the box is heart healthy. 
helps lower cholesterol, it says. drowned in milk, 
helps build strong bones. Casein drinks milk everyday 

                                    osteoporosis— 
broken bones—  
                        a crooked back—  
milk = 80%   Casein Casein  =  cancer    cancer = Casein
   casein = milk       milk = 80% cancer 

cancer killed my (insert family member here)
  
Casein ripped her 
            from her stomach. 
cancer in her stomach! 
            milk settles in the stomach.
Casein in her stomach!

her mama got no legs!

 osteoporosis is the “o” in cheerios!

no legs! no legs!

osteoporosis! 
                        CANCER       AND       CASEIN 
in osmosis

cheerios! 

coffee! 

milk 

            milk 

                        milk

                                    milk

                       milk

            milk

milk

            milk 

80% Casein

Casein = cancer 

cancer = Casein

have you had your milk—  
have you had your casein— 

have you had your cancer today?

In the ChopShop: 100 Names
Family Pack Chicken Legs/ Family Pack Chicken Thighs/
18 Piece Chicken Fryer Pack/ Family Pack Boneless Chicken Breast/
Family Pack Leg Quarters in a 4 Lb. Bag *contains up to 4% water/
Oven Roaster Chicken/ Oven Broiler Chicken (Thick & Juicy)/
Whole Chicken/ Whole Chicken Halves/ Cut Up Whole Chicken/
Chicken Wings/ Chicken Thighs/ Chicken Leg Quarters/
Boneless Skinless Chicken Thighs/ Boneless Chicken Breasts/
Cubed Chicken Breasts/ Chicken Split Breasts/ Thin Sliced
Chicken Breasts/ Chicken Liver Cups/ Chicken Gizzards/
Chicken Tenders/ Chicken Hearts/Chicken Bones/
Chicken Backs/ Chicken Feet/ Pig Feet (Pickled)/ Smoked
Pork Feet/ Smoked Pork Neckbones/ Smoked Pork Hocks/
Pork Hocks (Fresh)/ Pig Feet (Fresh)/ Pork Fat Back/ Bone
less Pork Loin Whole/ Boneless Pork Loin Half/ Bone
in Pork Chops “thin cut”/ Bone in Pork Chops “regular”/
Bone-in Pork Chops “thick”/ Rib End Pork Chops/ Bone
less Pork Chops “thin”/ Boneless Pork Chops “regular”/
Boneless Pork Chops “thick cut”/ Pork Shoulder Bone-in/
Pork Shoulder Boneless/ Pork Spare Ribs (fresh)/
Pork Spare Ribs (frozen in plastic)/ Pork Leg Joint/
Pork Belly/ Pork Belly Joint/ Baby Back Ribs (frozen)/
Baby Back Ribs Smothered in “Sweet Baby Ray’s” Barbecue Sauce/
Lamb Rack/ Lamb Chumps/ Lamb Chops/ Lamb Flaps/
Lamb Neck/ Lamb Backstrap/ Lamb Shoulder/
Whole Turkey/ Turkey Legs/ Turkey Wings/ Turkey Necks/
Turkey Tails/ Turkey Giblets (hearts, gizzards, livers, genitals)/
Ground Turkey/ Ground Chicken/ Ground Pork/ Ground Veal/
Ground Beef 90% “Lean” 10% Fat/
Ground Beef 80% “Lean” 20% Fat/
Ground Beef 73% “Lean” 27% Fat”/
Ground Pork, Ground Veal, Ground Beef (Meatloaf Mix)/
Chuck Steak/ Cubed Steak/ Hanger Steak/ Skirt Steak/
Sandwich Steak/ Beef Chuck Stew/ Beef Chuck Arm/
Beef Sirloin Tip/ Beef Brasciole/ Beef Chuck Bone
in/ Beef Brisket (thick)/ Beef Brisket (thin)/ Beef Shoulder/
Beef Short Ribs/ Beef Stir Fry/ Beef Strip Steak/ T- Bone
Steak/ London Broil/ Rump Roast/ Beef Caps/ Beef Knuckle/
Beef Eye Round/ Beef Heel
Round/ Tripe/ Ox Tails/
Lard / Cow Feet/
Cow Tongue/

My Tongue

On Video Playback
“I want to be remembered for helping
            and I don’t want to go
            I want to take you to a level
            where you could make it
                        on your own

I want you to remember that when Christmas comes
I was there for everyone
            keep tradition
            keep everyone together
            everybody united
            this is what I want—
                        for youse to stick together

at the end of all this I don’t know what to call myself
a good person? a bad person?
            did I try hard?
            I still think I didn’t do enough
don’t you know where evil comes from?
            I’m a good person but I could’ve given more
                        I wish I could

don’t think like me— I’m doomed.
you are still too young when your time
comes it will come

            I don’t really want to go
            god has given me his chances

the last time I went to the hospital I was thinking
I was going to die.
mhm I didn’t want to go but now I’m ready
            and I can’t run anymore
            you came out to be a very good kid
            I am very happy I am very proud
                       that you never gave up
                       that now I’m ready,
                                  if I go. I go.
                                  And now I can go in peace.
                                  I’m not scared anymore
                                  I am not scared because no 
                        matter
                                 what happens you will 
                        keep going”

On Video Playback 
 “I want to be remembered for helping
            and I don’t want to go
            I want to take you to a level
            where you could make it
                        on your own

I want you to remember that when Christmas comes
I was there for everyone
            keep tradition
            keep everyone together
            everybody united
            this is what I want—
                        for youse to stick together

at the end of all this I don’t know what to call myself
a good person? a bad person?
            did I try hard?
            I still think I didn’t do enough
don’t you know where evil comes from?
            I’m a good person but I could’ve given more
                        I wish I could

don’t think like me— I’m doomed.
you are still too young when your time
comes it will come

            I don’t really want to go
            god has given me his chances

the last time I went to the hospital I was thinking
I was going to die.
mhm I didn’t want to go but now I’m ready
            and I can’t run anymore
            you came out to be a very good kid
            I am very happy I am very proud
                       that you never gave up
                       that now I’m ready,
                                  if I go. I go.
                                  And now I can go in peace.
                                  I’m not scared anymore
                                  I am not scared because no 
                        matter
                                 what happens you will 
                        keep going”

Dimitri Reyes is a Puerto-Vegan educator, writer, artist, and community organizer from Newark, New Jersey. His work has been recognized locally in the Star Ledger, and internationally in Australia, Singapore, and the UK. He is the recipient of the SLICE Magazine’s 2017 Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets, and a finalist for the Arcturus Poetry Prize by the Chicago Review of Books. Dimitri is a candidate in the Rutgers-Newark MFA program, and is published in Acentos Review, Kweli, Verity LA, Eunoia, and others.

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“halloween in college” and “a few things you should know about the universe without swings” use alternate realities to reimagine the past. They both explore language and spacing to give new, radical life to situations that seem unalterable.

halloween in college

IS LIKE when i went downtown to catch the blue line         a Black woman fell on the tracks
and didn’t die          when i got to jake’s place he asked me if i was okay      i said yeah but
              he didn’t get it        she reached out her hands        no one would grab them           maybe
                            they wouldn’t touch her because she smelt       dirty or drunk   or maybe       she
looked too            black to survive another day       jake wanted to go to the movies
get high       get my mind off it       or something       but he didn't get it       the train
came three minutes later       it took me one       and a half minutes            to get her up   we all
got on anyways       no one cried

BUT ON the actual day of halloween       i decided to put my body in a room full of other
bodies       i guess it’s my fault but I was the only black girl at the party       i still
thought i looked nice       and i wanted someone to look at me      or something
when too many drunk and white bodies shoved me       i fell over      searched for an open 
fist       there wasn’t one       it’s the scariest halloween party I've ever been to
       if i had three minutes       left to spare       the music would       just   get
louder

THE DAY after halloween   i dreamt about the woman who fell on the tracks   she turned 
       green and big   stopped the train       with her pinky       jumped       to sky
blocked       the sun       tinted the earth       green       the men

with closed fists       hid underground       and never       came   out
 
BACK TO the sticky frat floor       here’s how it happened       for real       i melted 
through the ground   deeper and deeper    i made it to the center of the earth    it wasn’t hot
like people say       i felt a nice breeze    met lots of    other       people       we all
said hello        and     danced and danced and dance

a few things you should know about the universe without swings

1.
i didn't know he was dead until i checked
Facebook.       hadn't posted in a while. 

his kid said dada first
and scratched          a lot

came back to chicago
incase he need to help out or something

but he should've
just left.

2. because

the park don't have swings no more.
it's the Black kids' fault

                                they like
                                the swings too much 

and swing too high 

the university don't like 

moving targets. said it's a safety concern. 
i don't think it was. 

3.
i haven't been home since 

the university and the ghosts decided 
they don't want me to have 

too much       fun       without them 
so, now i live. 

4. 
in a universe without swings 
       i guess you could call it parallel 

or imaginary  all i can tell you is 
that we usually lay down here 

tough  to get outta bed sometimes 
and, yeah. there are still 
                       flying things. 

Asha Futterman is a poet from Chicago. She is currently a student at Barnard College in New York studying English with a concentration in Race and Ethnic studies.

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First off, I’m a blerd. Many of my poems speak to or are inspired by video games and other aspects of popular culture. The poems in this folio are celebrating black feminism, womxn’s sexuality, and black joy while reclaiming what’s been taken from us: our language, our bodies, and our agency. “ode to Tone that ends in a revival.” is an important poem for me especially, because it’s a video game poem that’s directly resisting the idea that video games are electronic garbage.

In terms of form, my poetry is really concerned with white space and how that speaks to the silence that black queer womxn face on a daily basis. In each of our communities, we face an erasure that is both precise and haunting, which can lead to both an inability to use our voices and self-entrapment in the “superhuman” matriarch stereotype. The white space in these poems is an acknowledgement of that silence, of the many black womxn before me who lost their voices, and a reclamation of those words that were stolen. I see them as little containers to pull and trap trauma within the page so that my ancestors’ words can breathe and exist freely.

ode to the walk of shame

an homage to nigga in two parts

ode to tone that ends in a revival

dezireé a. brown is a black queer woman poet, scholar, and self-proclaimed social justice warrior, born and raised in Flint, MI. They are currently an MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University, and often claim to have been born with a poem written across their chest. A Poetry and Non-Fiction Editor for Heavy Feather Review, their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Kweli, BOAAT, decomP, Cartridge Lit, RHINO, and the anthology Best “New” African Poets 2015, among others. They tweet at @deziree_a_brown.

Website: dezireeapoet.wordpress.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deziree.a.brown

radical / avant garde / poet of color

to be radical / to be experimental / fundamentally positions a kind of marginality to mainstream practices / a correlation to the systematic marginalization poets of color live experientially / lived experience and experimentation emerging consciousness / bounded by words internalized from languages intersecting at borders / as always bound by these linguistic interactions between and through languages / conflicts and congruencies of languages / dynamically pushing back against the power to marginalize / to make for innovative poetry 

Steven Alvarez is the author of The Codex Mojaodicus, winner of the 2016 Fence Modern Poets Prize. His work has appeared in the Best Experimental Writing (BAX), Berkeley Poetry Review, Fence, Huizache, The Offing, and Waxwing. Follow Steven on Instagram @stevenpaulalvarez and Twitter @chastitellez.

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These poems were written in California and New York. “Versus” reconciles the differences between two towns in Southern California, Fontana and Bloomington, one incorporated and the other not. Each line contrasts elements and characteristics of each. Each line blends. Every “vs.” is a line-break that is not a line-break. I think that this poem shows that while we belong to our hometown, we exist and depend on others. “XXXO FM” is what my friends, visual artists, call “box poems,” and it contains fragments that are assembled in a way that generates poetry. Or, these fragments create a poem from materials that were not meant to be poetic. I feel that this aesthetic speaks to my identity and upbringing. I am gay, chicano, and from San Bernardino, California. 

Versus

Coyote’s neighborhood vs. Imp’s. Fontana vs. Bloomington.

More taxes, sidewalks, street lights vs. parties and gangs.
Mechanized Fontana P.D. vs. Highway Patrol in khakis and wanna-be sombreros. 
Parking in the yard vs. the garage.
Fire hydrants vs. roads ending in sky. 
Murky dawn vs. the salivating song of the Ice Cream Man. 
(The loudest thing) Imp playing Call of Duty vs. Chevy Impala playing 
            Kendrick Lamar. 
Sirens, hoots, howling wind vs. growling, purrs, toilet flushes. 
Gas stations vs. liquor stores. 
Feathers vs. chasm.
Chasm vs. feathers. 
Hills vs. fields. 
Fans vs. air-conditioning. 
Blur vs. Atmosphere. 
A clogged sink vs. potholes in the road.
Kids blocking the driveway vs. Fernando leaving the fridge open. 
A power box vs. poles and wire. 
Afternoons of machines idling, humming vs. mornings smelling of dirt.
In both eggs, used cars and blankets sold on the side of the road. 
Go outside to talk on the phone 
            in the cascade of the freeway 
                        houses never buildings

XXXO FM

DJ Ashtrae (Joshua Escobar) was the Dean’s Fellow in Writing at the MFA Program at Bard College (Class of 2017). He was a Merit Fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley (Class of 2016). He is a CantoMundo Fellow. Caljforkya Voltage, his first chapbook, was published by No, Dear/Small Anchor Press last fall. 

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I began “Portrait of a Lady of a Certain Age” a couple of years ago and didn’t finish it. Back then, I thought there was no room for an anti-capitalist, genre-bending poem. Feeling rather anti-capitalist, I needed to return to the poem after November, 2016. I worked on the form, not wanting it to look like anything normal because I didn’t feel like anything was normal anymore, and extended it quite a bit. I wanted the poem to be a dreamscape that is not quite nightmare, then a waking where life still is surreal somehow. And I wanted the woman to be straddling the world of consumerism and disgust, I wanted her to be obviously black without calling her black. Lastly, I wanted it to look like prose, but not necessarily make sense as a prose form—not an essay, not quite fiction, and too long for a prose poem. 

Portrait of Lady of a Certain Age

I’m in a department store in the women’s accessory section. Elevator music is playing, though I don’t think I’ve ever heard elevator music in a department store (or in an elevator) or anywhere and I’m looking at pairs of pantyhose, or tights, or Lycra or Spandex, and nothing is quite my size. Almost my size—too small or too large. I take folds of Nylon or Lycra or Spandex between my index finger and the tall finger and run my fingers along the smooth, tiny bumps. They won’t fit.

Someone is feeding me something sweet and they ask, “Do you taste the honey?” And I’ll answer, “Yes, yes, I taste the honey.” “Do you taste the brown sugar? It’s rich. It’s organic.” And I’ll say, “Yes, I do taste the brown sugar.” “And do you taste the vanilla?” “Yes, I do taste it. I taste the vanilla.”

My hair itches, but I won’t scratch. I hit my head swiftly with my flattened hand to disturb the scalp—the closest I’ll come to scratching. I either cannot mess my hair up because I’m going somewhere or because I am getting a relaxer.

I am breathing both silently and heavily. I am crying into my pillow. I shake lightly. I don’t want to disturb the person I am in bed with. I am not married. I do not know if there is someone in bed with me. I cry more because I do not want to die alone.

I wake up. I go to the department store and circulate through the men’s accessory section. I say to a clerk, “I want to buy a wallet, but I don’t want it to be leather.”

DeMisty D. Bellinger’s writing has appeared in many places, including WhiskeyPaper, The Rumpus, and Blue Fifth Review. She is a contributor to Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, edited by Grace Bauer and Julie Kane. Her chapbook, Rubbing Elbows, is available from Finishing Line Press. DeMisty teaches creative writing and lives in Massachusetts with her twin daughters and husband.

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