“I wouldn’t leave it for nothing only a crazy man would So, if you catch me in your city, somewhere out in your hood just say…”- Nelly
If I’m brought back in a new act as anything, let it be some mean mugged, black lipped,
thicken mouthed man’s gold fronts. Let me know the spoils of being in a black body
without cessation. I want to be like Trayvon’s grill all gilded and gleaming, proof of our stunt
both nuanced and ancient. In this life let me know the front of a nigga’s prayers. The floured
will float to their god and go to war. And whatever they’ve shut their eyes to envision some sort of end to
will do that. End. Cause who could say no to gold dusted prayers. Every word worth something then.
In every picture you’ll know me. Don’t care what they say we ain’t supposed to do. We’ll eat
together. Even when the world rather his jaw hinged I will rip apart things in the fashion that teeth do.
only this time in luxury
Jo’Van O’Neal is a Black poet, content creator, and teaching artist currently based in Savannah, Georgia. He is a fellow of The Watering Hole and a Hurston/Wright Foundation workshop Alumnus. In 2018, he was an inaugural Open Mouth Readings Writing Retreat participant. His work is featured in Foundry Journal and Tahoma Literary Review.
Many years now owned by you. [ x ] picked from close clone family on high shop shelf of safety; bought and brought to your lonely low home; packed up dragged across countries; used; and now, [ x ], a holey tri-eyed matted grey jagged tooth torn tired worn out case; now, just because Maggie gave poetic exercise, you think it’s OK to come invade [ x ] silent protection; OK to get all up inside and colonize [ x ] headspace; think, speak for [ x ]; steal [ x ] only pot- ent power? Your human and humane God given right, right?
But all this stretched time [ x ] been a quiet sentinel of your life. Since High School when [ x ] watched you fear filled and freaking out in science, the vitriolic H2SO4 carbon snake experiment gone wrong, burnt [ x ] first hole. [ x ] pencil pen eraser compass logged all lessons. Scribes of your life journey in journals, they highlight highs, depressed points, then whisper your noted secrets back to [ x ]. [ x ] knows all you write, rub out, choose to forget. Silently sees and listens.
[ x ] was background there when you discussed Popa’s Little Box. [ x ] bristled. [ x ] knew what Box had felt: all talking about Box; forcing formed thinking into onto Box; another powerless portal that swallows the world; takes inside what ever is shoved in. [ x ] knows that universal emptiness; knows all about wishing really hard. You imagine what [ x ] dreams too; freedom, flight, a new skin, colour, different shape, a simple bubble bath by candlelight…with a sentient [ y ]; a say in when [ x ] is opened and closed; unguarded sleep. All eyes open watching worried when stationery protections are plucked out of [ x ] safe warm womb and forced to work against their will.
Quite happy? You think you have animated me? Last night, green ball point told me about the lines copied from Gibran; You and the stone are one. There is a difference only in heart-beats. You may still remember the separated solid illusion of science. Quiet, you still might learn my true atomic universal lingua franca. Listen! Let me be now. I thought I had a constitutional right to remain silent. You go ponder more on what you read. Your heart may beat faster than mine but whose was the most tranquil?
Celia A. Sorhaindo was born in The Commonwealth of Dominica. She migrated with her family to England in 1976, when she was 8 years old, returning home in 2005. Her poems have been published in several Caribbean journals, ANMLY, New Daughters of Africa Anthology, and longlisted for the UK National Poetry Competition. She is co-compiler of Home Again: Stories of Migration and Return, published by Papillote Press and her first poetry chapbook collection, Guabancex, was published in February 2020, also by Papillote Press. Celia is a Cropper Foundation Creative Writers Workshop fellow and a Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop fellow. celiasorhaindo.com
There are no bars in my eyes, see. My experiences keep staring at the arts made by my footsteps. Above this statement sits a history asking for a recall: moments that became keloids. My great grandmother’s lineage has the marks of abandonments and her palms are memories of skived poppies. I keep asking for the meaning of love and progress and institution and preservation and memories and gardenias and reformation and librarians and reinstallation and liability and functionality. My people have known the whips of wadding in water. Where should I character in this story? How should I tend and tender these mistakes? The godheads and ghosts in collared coats keep burning the evidences, burning the facts, and clipping the anabasis. Is knowing the golden handle of voice? Is knowing a rebellion conceived? Our children are shielded from the colour of our teeth. Our children don’t know. And our children are walking with eyes open yet blind. At my backyard I am growing a garden where flowers remember. I can mail you the scents. I am arranging the un-deductibles into catalogues. It’s such a burden caring alone, asking alone. It’s such a drowning that you don’t care about these things and pasts.
Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto (@ChinuaEzenwa) is from Owerri-Nkworji in Nkwerre, Imo state, Nigeria and grew up between Germany and Nigeria. He has a Chapbook, The Teenager Who Became My Mother, via Sevhage Publishers. He won the Castello di Duino Poesia Prize for an unpublished poem, 2018 which took him to Italy. He was the recipient of New Hampshire Institute of Art’s 2018 Writing Award. His works have appeared in Lunaris Review, AFREADA, Poet Lore, Rush Magazine, Frontier, Palette, Malahat Review, Southword Magazine, Vallum, Mud Season Review, Salamander, Strange Horizons, One, Ake Review, Crannòg Magazine, The Question Marker, and elsewhere.
It’s true. I cannot kill a pig with my bare hands. It’s a hard rule to live by— not distancing ourselves from the terror that brings us joy. I want to feel good after a meal without the smell of death on my hands. After all, unfortunately, the pig gives me so much pleasure. Every morning, I wake up & offer myself humanness. What does it mean to be human? To be the opposite of a machine, of course.
I want to be as flexible as my glass-covered father. Instead, I bend to the mistake of the habitual; mess up until the messiness compounds into something I can’t ignore. I gave up womanhood to be a cyborg. I want to be as impulsive as a computer program—everything all predetermined & bending
to human composition. Every need thrusting into me long enough to drain the womb from my palms. Let’s continue lubricate my vessels & store my emotions in a blender. Pick a task for me to do over & over— wash the dishes— fetch the remote—
suffocate the girlhood from me— I’ll shoot up any microchip if it makes me into a god. The god that I know even said I look more like him.
It’s true. I cannot kill who I used to be even with technology. What does that mean for me then?
KB is a Black queer genderless poet, educator, organizer, and student affairs professional. They have earned many fellowships and publications, most recently from Lambda Literary, Cincinnati Review, The Offing, and Equality Texas. Catch them talking sweetness and other (non)human things online at @earthtokb.
Clayre Benzadón is an MFA graduate student at the University of Miami, managing editor of Sinking City, and Broadsided Press’s Instagram editor. Her chapbook, “Liminal Zenith” was published by SurVision Books. She was also awarded the 2019 Alfred Boas Poetry Prize for “Linguistic Rewilding” and has been published in places including SWWIM, 14poems, Crêpe and Penn, and Fairy Tale Review’s Gold Issue. You can find more about her at clayrebenzadon.com.
The last three movies I’ve watched depict nature and sexual violence. Been trying to speak for hours, but my lips are fish fading in the dirt. My wife holds my head in her lap, and snot rivers from my nostril to her thigh.
There is something broken. A moment ago, I was laughing. Now, I am a berry bush, trying not to be poisonous. I think, I am not good enough. And the sentence wraps my body like a ring toss. Again and again, until I cannot tell the age of the rot.
I splash water on my face, a self-baptized flower, and wipe the weakness away. I can’t help but consider it all a waste of time. I could have been doing more productive things. Like ridding myself of the infected trees. Like deforestation. Like spray painting a bright red X on my bark.
Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry; the winning chapbook, Strange Furniture, is out with Neon Hemlock Press. She is also a back-to-back finalist for the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 Glass Chapbook Series and back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry 2018 and 2019 Chapbook Contests. Lannie currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Barren Magazine and is a member of the MMPR Collective. Find her on Twitter @LannieStabile.
Sarah P. Strong is the author of two poetry collections, The Mouth of Earth (University of Nevada Press, 2020) and Tour of the Breath Gallery (Texas Tech University Press, 2013) and two novels, The Fainting Room (Ig, 2013) and Burning the Sea (Alyson, 2002). Their work has appeared in The Nation,The Southern Review, Poet Lore, The Sun, River Styx, Southwest Review, and many other journals. A recipient of grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and Connecticut Arts Council, they teach creative writing at Central Connecticut State University and live near New Haven, Connecticut with their spouse and daughter. www.sarahpstrong.com
arousal the harbinger of a flood of blood blood sprinkles on a country’s fresh map vermillion—
vermillion parting desire on a wife’s perceptible head head butt to crash a legendary World Cup dream—
dream emboldens synonyms into antonyms’ golden teeth teeth not transmitting from master to apprentice smiles—
smiles an earnest man signing his marriage certificate certificate the nature of my clumsy talents forgettable—
forgettable first words of manhood clasping a cresting wonder wonder how you tolerated for so long my gasoline breath—
breath taken away from those who went to schools unblessed unblessed light in sooty warehouses crossing out little cheeks—
cheeks docile turning right to left found blued indescribable dead dead clad themselves in shrouds of roses smelled wholesome sad—
sad the untainted hurt of fruit ripened swallowed unbitten unbitten remains the altar of my tongue’s accomplished lack—
lack in the shape of grace every vanquished body realized realized a future mother waist deep in marriage miscarriage—
miscarriage a world I sailed past pushed by inconceivable arousal
Satya Dash is the recipient of the 2020 Srinivas Rayaprol Poetry Prize. His poems appear in Waxwing, Wildness, Redivider, Passages North, The Boiler, The Florida Review, Prelude, The Cortland Review and The Journal among others. Apart from having a degree in electronics from BITS Pilani-Goa, he has been a cricket commentator too. He has been nominated previously for Orison Anthology, Best of the Net and Best New Poets. He grew up in Cuttack, Odisha and now lives in Bangalore. He tweets at: @satya043
Stone trees laden with pendulous fruit Clack: We’ll be your volcano, Grant you just the absence of the boot For one spurt of lava. Go Baltering then to defy the storm
Your dreams are now entangled With the threads of this tapis woven By small hands gnarled and mangled Hunting in lurching looms their stolen Bread, water, school uniform
Hibah Shabkhez is a writer of the half-yo literary tradition, an erratic language-learning enthusiast, and a happily eccentric blogger from Lahore, Pakistan. Her work has previously appeared in Bandit Fiction, Shot Glass Journal, Across The Margin, Panoplyzine, Feral, Literati Magazine, and a number of other literary magazines. Studying life, languages and literature from a comparative perspective across linguistic and cultural boundaries holds a particular fascination for her. linktr.ee/HibahShabkhez.
Every morning ‘I want the President’ to answer the invitation— not crime but aftermath of statistics laws colonised language
I babble in aching logics, curling watchful onlookers into microselves. My rage writes Nudity’s script
soothes tired habits. A deregulated algorithm observes every precipice, kicking words won’t cut it still I come to them Flesh ushered
onto an upholstery train can only follow the Paddy Wagon of direction ancient rhythms humming their lines
Love is rejuvenated in spectral conspiracies against the woman’s protest. She consecrates every sin Naked passion postpones catharsis, is catharsis
Pulled out of the building, she swims strange backstroke through the camera’s gaze reordering distress with the authority of an apocalypse
Reckoning maps around her ankles her movement an ablution releasing
genderless strength, loosening along its equations. And in that dream my woman laughter wanders forever. She is narrative unmoored throwing facts into the sea
Morning spills out infecting neighbouring villages I am just a schoolgirl sampling the cave’s warm tang—clothes around myankles—
And in that dream I fall but I keep moving. Her protest shapeshifts, slicing waves alive to the body’s continual palimpsest how it remembers backward to an unmade choice
Fleur Lyamuya Beaupert (she/they) is a queer Australian writer of Tanzanian and Anglo-Indian descent. Fleur’s poetry and prose have recently been published in Not Very Quiet, Speculative City, Rigorous, Social Alternatives, Scum and Meniscus. They work as a policy officer in disability advocacy.
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