by Veronica Agard

contracting

not just literally

bodies that attempt to interface

with mine

finding out the responses

to naming what i am

responsible to

 

picking up things that cannot be put back down

masking a performance that i’m comfortable with

it’s not moving my heavenly body in a way

that garners too much attention

 

playing the wall that now helps me stand fully

my family always comments on my posture

my forces of nature adjust my shoulders for me

 

they are my antidote to

the contempt

the judgement

the misplaced rage

the hunger

that is placed on my personhood

my femininity

 

like a chiropractic realignment

there’s a stirring in my soul

a voice that is a myriad of tones

reminding me of my own

it has a mixture of sea salt and clay

speaking of permission to be

to be expansive

to be bold

to be rich in my pitch

 

they implore me not to limit myself

they invite me to soften

they courage me to let folks in

or even worship

dote on me

love on me

 

a sensation of care that is not pretentious

it is seen when i feel seen

in all that i am

all that walk with me

 

a kiss on the top of my crown

an affirmation of my spirit that is not transactional

a sense that i can swing and sweep on a dancefloor when i hear that song

a dispatch from Io, adjacent to Jupiter

that reminds me that

I am indeed worthy

 

of such exaltation that does not alienate me

instead allowing me

to fumble and be nuanced

receive and take

love and be loved

 

an illness of half truths

misguided projections

and assumptions

can only take root in my psyche and bodies

if i grant it permission.

by Dash Harris Machado

She grazes my neck
“You know you had a hernia when you were two years old. I was so scared. They wanted to operate on you but you got a fever, so I took you from there. Your belly-button went down good.” That was over 30 years ago and she still reminds me from time to time. And I let her.
On my grandmother’s sewing machine.
She tells me the first and last time my grandfather attempted to hit her. She stabbed him. Then nursed his wounds. And that was that.
On my grandmother’s sewing machine, the beaded curtain sways in the breeze as if in harmony with the buzz of the bobbin.
“Get down from there!” It was too late. I fell straight on my face. I climbed directly across my grandmother’s sewing machine, over her napping head, found my footing and then lost it right on top of that TV.
The tiles were mismatched in the room where my grandmother’s sewing machine is. The tables are wooden. The shutters are frosted glass. The sofa is plastic. The cup is tin. The fan creaks. After the water comes in after 4am and goes out at 11pm, the faucet still leaks. My grandfather is gone. I call for her to throw down the keys. I find her sitting at her sewing machine.

by Jasmine Knowles

Trimming the ends of the long finger like stems
I cut a 45 degree angle above the knuckle
The new ache oozes sap stored in the base of the stem
I toss the dismembered
piece and cut the friends one by one.
The precut thorns do no damage between my money grab fingers
I read somewhere that plants scream when you cut them
I often wonder if the other plants in my home understand just
How dying things look beautiful on my living room table.

by Judi L

you used to call me when you got to work to say hello even though you just left my bed a half hour ago. that was the beginning of a new, the new, when birds continually sang, the sun always shined at night.

my heart raced with me when I would run into target on the way home from work to pick up a pink top, because people say I look good in pink. so, I figured, you would say the same thing. I would smile leaping back into my car, thinking about how your lips would part as you said “I love you in this.” and you would put your hand at the small of my back and coax me to you and we would dance to our music in the kitchen while the chicken was frying and the biscuits were rising. right then I knew that pink was your favorite color too.

as part of our dessert, you would take me for a ride in your 1982 four-door blue volvo. it was always breezy on those hot summer nights. the car windows would be down, our heads leaning back in laughter. no care in the world. no care in the world.

by Starasia Wright

While we keke and skip along the sidewalk, we stumble across something resembling a sandbox, but instead, is filled with this dark substance that favors cookie dough crumble. It is brown with white speckles, green sprouts, and cold, moist worms poking their heads out, groping for air. Intrigued, we approach what we end up calling the dirt box, and agree that we would play in it in a way that is familiar to us. Curiously. Intimately. We sit in the dirt box with our legs folded, reach our hands in, and find out that the topsoil is the most malleable — easy to grab, but hard to hold. It races through the spaces between our fingers to return to its home but leaves our hands slightly blackened like mama’s Sunday sizzling tiger shrimp. We flip our hands over like pancakes and examine the remains. Puzzled, we take handfuls of the dirt again, and again, and again, and realize that each time we do so, our hands become more stained, more soiled than the last time. We realize, unlike sand, dirt tracks of all the places it resided. We now had ten miniature dirt beds packed beneath our nails, forming new homes, housing our curious nature, and deepening our intimacy.

by Jay Délise

You too young to be here
Snaggle-toothed
God messenger

Brown, round, little-bit

You goodwill shopping
Blue ring around your mouth
Scared of heights no-more

You friendship bracelet
Business woman

Pop star emerging

Back of the bus riding
Take-no-shit-er

Trading Post couponer

Talking until
The battery of your
Hand-me-down Nokia
Burns hot as the sun
Little Brown Girl

They’ll call me when you’re not there
And I’ll pretend we’re sisters
Suspend the disbelief that this much
Cheetahliciousness, could happen twice
In the same universe

We’ll write each other’s names over our hearts
Save each other from sharks in the pool
Laugh this hurt off our bones

I never got the chance
To say goodbye to you but
I hope your laughing now
Somewhere nestled in the sheets
Of your california king
The one you always wanted
Planning to send me flowers
After your first big movie deal

by Brandon Robert Watts

Isaac closed his eyes and, within moments, had fallen asleep deep into a world that was surrounded by utter darkness. It is in that limbo realm between reality and his imagination that he found a space where nothing mattered, and nothing existed. In this world, he worried not about what comes for tomorrow or the day after. Nor did he have to put on this facade that he constantly carried around when he was awake. Here, in the midst of darkness, he was just himself.

But still, he had a complicated relationship with this dark and silent world. For it is in this world that he feels a step closer to God himself. While lying there, he often wonders if the peaceful feeling he is experiencing is the same feeling God had when he created the universe. There God sat in the midst of a darkness that moved upon the face of the deep. And with the snap of his fingers, he created life. How powerful that must have been to make something out of nothing. Sometimes Isaac could sense that power near him. Whenever he did, he got a yearning to dig down and confess to God his deepest and darkest secrets. But what held him back from opening up his scars to his creator is revealing what that creator may already know to be true. After, God is all-knowing. So maybe this darkness that Isaac has found solitude in isn’t all he has cracked it up to be. Could it be possible that he had used it only as a temporary place to foolishly convince himself that he had discovered the ability to hide from the one who knew him before he even knew himself? Had Isaac become like Adam and Eve when they also foolishly thought they could hide in the garden? Perhaps he was nothing more than a coward that constantly evaded the pressures from the outside world and only desired for the sun to go down and for the bodies that lurk around him to fall asleep.

Isaac knows that there is truth in all of this, but something about this empty space still calms the frightened spirit inside his body. It’s as if he was fallen in love with the quiet darkness, for it understands and knows everything about him without saying a word. It’s healing. It’s calm. It touches him in a way a woman never has, for it knows that Isaac is angry. Isaac is conflicted. He is sad. He is empty of joy yet full of regret. More than anything, he wishes to bow down and confess his sins but fears he would only do it again when he was back in reality. In the real world, he is lost, but he has found a glimpse of peace in the darkness.

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