by T’challa Williams

“Bootsie.” I said plainly.
“Like Bootsie Collins? Man, hell naw! You can’t play like no damn Bootsie, I don’t care what yo’ nickname is.”
“Okay! Pea-Nut!” I yelled. Everyone got quiet and I kept eating sunflower seeds. Peanut turned his small head and body slowly in my direction.
I looked him up and down. Then raised an eyebrow. He acting like turning slow made him grow or something.
“You know good and damned well don’t nobody call me that no more.” He said slow and in a voice so low it could have come from hell.
“Ayo Pea, on some real shit, I changed ya diapers. I don’t know what kinda new shit you on But I know ya’ motha’ and your grandmother. I cut ya’ Aunt Lauren grass last week. So unless ya chest swelling to do some work, get the fuck outta here Bee.” He was heaving now. Eyes glazed over in rage, Staring me down like he was really contemplating something.
Everybody on the block was frozen. Stuck as if this lil cat sparked fear in them. I rested my elbows on my knees. My feet were laced up in my Nike running shoes hanging half off the step. Ihad on grey basketball shorts and a t-shirt that said, ‘Try yo’ momma, not me.’
He was at the sidewalk in a white A-shirt and some jeans hanging off his ass. He rocked a gold chain and the newest Jordan’s but the wasn’t laced. A grimace of evil emerged across his face.
“My name is steel muthafucka. You know what that mean?”
His hands were by his side. He was swaying trying to calculate the best way to grab the piece in his back. Even though he was on the sidewalk, and I was sitting on the steps, we were eye to eye. Told you his name Peanut.
The people that were next to us had already tipped off during the tension. Enough of this!
I reached with my left and slapped the shit out of him. I halted his recovery and slapped his fronts out his mouth with my right. Staving off his stumble, I grabbed him by his pants and throat. Proceeded to pick him up over my head and dropped his ass on Ms. Jenkins’ patch of grass. I leaned over his moaning body, waiting for him to stop wincing from the pain and look at me. Just as the slits of eyes revealed pupils I smiled.
“Hey Peanut! I’m K. O. The Great!! You come over here with a gun again, Imma kick yo ass all the way to ya grandmother house. And I know ya whole crew. So don’t go getting no fancy ideas. I’m big with bigga friends. So what we doing?” I stood over him still, calm and back on my sunflower seeds.
“We good K.O. I gotchu man. Damn!” He rolled around some more searching for his roll up to his feet.
“That’s what I thought young blood. Be easy now.” I turned and walked up the street to the park. There were ice cream trucks and kids on bikes and me. It felt good to be back in the neighborhood. They need a brotha like me and I’m here for all of it.
“Hey Mr. Johnson” the beautiful brown vixen said to me.
“Hello Mrs. Wolcott.” I replied with a smile, she blushed.
“Uh, that’s Mizzzz you trying to marry me off Mr. Johnson?” she giggled that seductive way a sistah does when she already bending and folding for you in her mind.
“Let’s make sure your son passes my physics class first.”
“Always business.” She rolled her eyes at me in pity then slipped her business card in my shorts pocket as she whispered, ‘for pleasure’ right into my ear as she planted the lightest half kiss onto my cheek.
I smiled and watch the richness in her hips hypnotically pull away from my glare in giggling glee.
“Hell yeah, it’s good to be home.”

by Erin James

I grew up in the Northeast, a very specific mosaic of immigrant communities where the same English vowel can be stretched curled and clipped into a million dazzling tones. The rich peat moss that absorbs and transforms until it gives way concrete and center hall colonials muffling that holy cacophony. I grew up in one of those prized boxes eating cereal and watching Rugrats. There I remember learning the concept of an “old country.” It came rolling out of the TV in Tommy Pickle’s grandmas thick Yiddish accent.
There is no old country for me or at least no far off place a grandparent, a great grandparent or five times great grandparent could speak of. There’s no Ellis Island for some of us.

And that’s okay.

History unwritten isn’t history erased, it’s scattered and unbound and dances and twists and shouts; it makes mixtapes and says “on punishment.” It weaves rows in hairs and claps and skips. Sometimes it leaves traces and sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s always there and rushes to fill the space when needed. No concrete can stop a thousand ghosts. African American is history in motion.

By Lady Nzima

When the love of power is swallowed whole
__by love
memory of egos’ and this is mine
you betta get yours will rest in peace
sisters from all wombs
and hoods will birth
realness and truths lettin go
foolish conveniences

The sky will witness
the unseen
Black women
like neva before

Sashay uncrooked
unbent walks
with the I got this
twist on harlem blocks
clearing ghosts from throats
webs from self assembly
and exist
exist in around open free spaces
on the edges of everything

The taste of water
will run down throats differently
jail cells bars would be
flipped to schools
and make it easy Mary Jane
tote and pass cafes

Black lives matters signs
would be arrows
not murals
pointing to both Carolinas

Georgia Peach women wearin gardenias
tucked in nappy red n black fros
Nina Simone Mississippi goddam be
oh Gods’ n Amens’
Tulsa Oklahoma rich soil growing up
fresh Black Wall Streets

By Mel

As a little girl, Karen often wondered what was possible outside of 55 Belmar Drive. Karen always had an eye for colors and drawing. She looked forward to art classes. On top of her artistic skills she had a vivid imagination. She would often picture herself in one of those fancy houses with the elegant yet creepy looking willow trees with a view of the lake right outside her window. In her dreams, Karen became a well renound painter and traveled the world. She didn’t have to attend school and had access to the finest tutors available. She was smart and bright. Karen’s dreams didn’t focus on the amount of money her family had but more so on the ability to be free and focused on her talent. Her dreams focused on not being judged by anyone. Perhaps the most important focus of Karen’s dreams were the ability to rewrite her reality. Instead of the giant mansion on the lake, her reality was she was living in what was left of her neighborhood in the Ninth Ward after Katrina. Instead of traveling the world with tutors as a painter, she was instead struggling to stay a passing student in a school that was under staffed with no decent art program. And instead of being liked by everyone and adored, she was ostracized because of her tall lanky build and lazy left eye. The one thing Karen could count on was her family. The family that encouraged her to dream big. They taught her to always believe that she could achieve the impossible even when it seemed everyone outside her family told her the opposite.

Cloud Nine

As a little girl, Karen often wondered what was possible outside of 55 Belmar Drive. Karen always had an eye for colors and drawing. She looked forward to art classes. On top of her artistic skills she had a vivid imagination. She would often picture herself in one of those fancy houses with the elegant yet creepy looking willow trees with a view of the lake right outside her window. In her dreams, Karen became a well renound painter and traveled the world. She didn’t have to attend school and had access to the finest tutors available. She was smart and bright. Karen’s dreams didn’t focus on the amount of money her family had but more so on the ability to be free and focused on her talent. Her dreams focused on not being judged by anyone. Perhaps the most important focus of Karen’s dreams were the ability to rewrite her reality. Instead of the giant mansion on the lake, her reality was she was living in what was left of her neighborhood in the Ninth Ward after Katrina. Instead of traveling the world with tutors as a painter, she was instead struggling to stay a passing student in a school that was under staffed with no decent art program. And instead of being liked by everyone and adored, she was ostracized because of her tall lanky build and lazy left eye. The one thing Karen could count on was her family. The family that encouraged her to dream big. They taught her to always believe that she could achieve the impossible even when it seemed everyone outside her family told her the opposite.

A Magical Place

I envision a world where I can fully laugh and play outside. A world where children are safe. I imagine growing up in a house so big I get lost and where I can safely walk to school. I arrive at school and sit in my nice neat classroom where my teacher pays attention and notices me. I wake from my dream to my reality of not being able to walk safely to school because my friend Jimmy who was eight like me was shot by a stray bullet. There is no place to go after school or play because our playground is a war zone riddled with bullets and blood. When I finally make it to school, my over worked teacher is stressed teaching a class of forty kids and rarely remembers my name. As I look out the class window my story has jumped forward ten years ahead. I’m still in my Southside Chicago neighborhood but own the housing development I grew up in. I have my own real-estate empire and brought and redeveloped all the housing and playgrounds in the area. All of the area violent gang bangers are gone. I funded new charter schools filled with teachers and administrators that care about the children attending. I am free and I am at peace. My work is done. Southside can now be appreciated for all its glory. I wake up from my day dream hopeful, determined and sure no matter what I will make it and I will make sure Southside makes it. We are more than just crime statistics. We are lawyers, doctors, teachers, motivators, artists, change makers and doers. I am at peace because we are not forgotten or foresaken. I am at peace because I am an extroidinary child made by God’s creation. Peace is the foundation of my existence and fabric of my being. Bang, Bang and just like that a stray bullet crashes through the window and Ms. Tetterton is slumped over her desk. The End.

By Alejandra.

Fool—for the ever impending revolution.
Sell it on Instagram
to get back to the village you’ve never seen and only exists on the map of your marrow.
Money can’t buy you a ticket back there. We live in the village of diaspora now.
Money can buy you a therapist and a soft couch to wail on.
It must become your ruler though, if you want the soft private space to expel your despair.
If you do it in the streets they’ll call you an animal as though they don’t know we are all but shards of Gawd.
There are laws against that you know; remembering that you’re a Gawd has consequences.
Mostly for the rulers, but they’ve convinced us it’s the other way around.
Fool.