Gabrielle Civil

1 essay

these bodies don’t touch

the way those glass
 vessels hang in space 
out of reach 
in the art museum
in portland 

it’s raining outside
the day after
valentine’s day
and as usual
i’m alone 

yesterday
i went to the spa
a splurge!
to pay for 
ninety minutes 
of touch

now i’m here 
for dubois in paris
in 1905 his images 
and infographics show   

black people in a past
 we can’t touch
but feel every day
in our bones 

on the way
these glass blown
talismans
catch my eye
artifact panel
by william morris

i’d never heard of it 
before but still  
it makes me 
linger

 how something 
can stay safe 
without touch
how breath 
hardens into bubble

i should have 
known then 
this world would end
the signs were 
everywhere 

i was living 
in a bubble 
so what’s new 
now in a 
magnetic field  

if a body shimmers
with no one 
there to touch
is it really a body 
at all? 

half-life gleam
these bodies don’t touch
but arrive
in other ways
enclosed and exuding   

this tumbled from dreams 
washing and washing 
my hands 
with my mother 
right there

we don’t touch—
but then, I’m in jail—
with transparent bars
still made of steel

in this dream
i have Xs 
where my breasts
should be

i exist 
in an 
isolation chamber
cooped up stir crazy 
cabin fever
house arrest 
lock down

stop using 
carceral metaphors
when you don’t know 
what the fuck
you’re talking about

in solitary 
confinement
the one white student 
in my prison class
practiced
transcendental
meditation 
for hours  

this  
earmarked 
him as 
college
material 

when he says
don’t get it twisted
a lot of fags are strong
i say hey! in this space
we don’t use that kind 
of language

which language
bubbles up inside
or lives in a bubble
trapped in a closet
which words 
can’t we touch 

in the secret 
garden (closet)
i never touched 
the audience 
sitting on my bed

i only 
remember
disguising and 
shedding skin
my language 
of desire 

who 
actually 
chooses to live 
in a bubble
self-isolation or
self-quarantine 

jayy dodd 
tells our class 
this isn’t the first long 
stretch she hasn’t 
been touched 
me either

 a black woman thing
donna summer
turning into a machine
doing the robot 
and i feel 
love

in her talk
kara keeling shows
us this footage and that part 
of arthur jafa’s film
love is the message 

the message is death
where the stripper 
explains her body
is her work
place another
black woman thing 

now 
we don’t work 
from home 
if we’re lucky enough
to have one instead 
we live at work 
stuck inside 
a body  

in fuck painting #1
we see the balls
and cock inside
the cunt but no gloves
or fingertips 

i saw this 
at the pompidou
in paris years ago 
but wasn’t allowed 
to touch it 

the painter
betty tompkins
used a spray gun
to make this flesh
so she didn’t 
touch it either

this tumbled from dreams
my skin erupting
into flowers 
like ana mendieta 
on a postcard 
on my fridge

 pandemic
social distance
flatten the curve
these words like bodies
were once new 

and wearing gloves
to hold an apple
in the grocery store
and keeping the world
at arm’s length 

and tiger king
which made me
feel so dirty
and freaked out 
and never ending 
streaming 

moe! moe!  
there’s a pain 
in my chest 
and i can’t tell is it 
a lump in my breast?
what should i do? 

we face time
can you look at it
right here zoom 
in closer right here 
squeeze 
and pinch
the swelling 

the weight 
of my breast
in my hand
send a picture
he says without
touching it

 is this the curve 
to be flattened
not the virus but THIS
will this be
how i DIE?

 RAGE
at the talk 
of a new epidemic
what about the epidemic
of rape the epidemic
of opioids the epidemic 
of hunger of black people 
being killed 
by the cops

and the birds now so
loud like buzz saws 
a cross between 
church bells and alarms
full throated singing 
of what was drowned 
out before

 release 
non-violent 
offenders
reduce carbon 
emissions
de facto
 enact 
the new 
green deal

everything
impossible
now 
happening
instantly 

SO THIS IS WHAT 
you motherfuckers can do 
when you decide 
something actually 
MATTERS

 ghoul me mask me
take away my breath
take away my art spaces
take away my walks 
take away my bougie
black privilege 
double down on my exile
take away my yoga class
my only chance for touch
remove any gentle correction 

dennie says
gabrielle
you’re not taking
this seriously
thousands of
people are going
to DIE 

and i feel like
an asshole
caring about
my art body
my schedule 
my mental health
and i feel ashamed
and punished 
for my lonesome life

then she says
I’m so proud of  
mike dewine
for what he’s done 
here in ohio—

 and i know
something must be
wrong with my ears 
because my dennie
ardent protestor  

with her
BLACK LIVES MATTER
sign held high
would NEVER say 
such a thing and i say 

I WILL 
NEVER BE PROUD OF 
MIKE FUCKING DEWINE
FOR WHAT HE HAS
DONE IN OHIO 

in this bubble 
of time after 
relentless siege 
before uprising
i will never forget   

tamir rice
shot dead
at twelve years old
in a cleveland park
john crawford iii
shot dead 
in a beaver creek 
walmart   
the cops who did this
were never touched

and neither was ronald ritchie 
who called 9-1-1 
on john crawford iii
who was just
a black man in walmart 
on the phone 
with a toy gun for his son 
in his hand   

when our protest 
letters arrived 
on his steps 
attorney general
mike dewine 
refused to touch them  

 and the week before 
cops shot john crawford iii
my student leo 
went to that walmart 
to make a public
performance
for my class 

in an aisle 
of that walmart
leo got down 
on his knees 
and 
prayed 

when 
the walmart worker 
came to see
if leo was okay 
when 
the walmart manager
came to take him away
they never touched 
him either

what does it take
to be untouchable
or to be touched?
what could it mean
to burst the bubble? 

 tehching hseih 
and linda montano
lived for a whole year
tied together by a rope
and the whole time
they never touched

did they love each other
were they even friends 
without touch
what other kinds
of proximity
can emerge? 

this tumbled from dreams
memories of fucking 
over and over
to janet jackson’s
“i get so lonely”  

  living single 
independent
grown ass 
woman 
untethered
shut in
shut out
shut up

 you may not 
see the tether
loose or taut
but believe me
it’s still there

in her talk
lisa nakamura 
discusses 
a virtual reality 
game for people
to know what it’s like
to be a black woman

 wow 
how touching 
the game designers
market this as a way
to gain empathy
contact free   

clearly this game
is not for me 
because i already embody
the sensation  

on the sorority
prayer call our voices 
overlap each week 
in a din we’re supposed 
to stay silent

 but every time we arrive
when we get on the line
we still say our names
and i think this is 
the prayer 

keeping
in touch 
vibrating
shimmering
resolute radiation
black aliveness
ready 
to feel

Note: “these bodies don't touch" is used by permission from the déjà vu by Gabrielle Civil, forthcoming from Coffee House Press 2022. 

Gabrielle Civil is a black feminist performance artist, poet, and writer, originally from Detroit, MI. She has premiered fifty performance works and her performance memoirs include Swallow the Fish (2017), Experiments in Joy (2019), and ( ghost gestures ) (2021), winner of the Gold Line Nonfiction Chapbook contest. A 2019 Rema Hort Mann LA Emerging Artist, she teaches at the California Institute of the Arts. The aim of her work is to open up space.

Evie Shockley

1 excerpt

from “soundtracked: the 70s”

i. easy 

[the commodores] 

not like most sunday mornings of wake up bangs and hairbrushes get up tights and stockings come on dresses lipstick hurry up shaving picking out ties momma the thankless engine we’re running late the get-to-church-on-time show ~ but like those rare winter sundays when we woke to ice or snow fearing frozen pipes no one in nashville going anywhere in this weather my sister and i squeezing into our parents’ bed pink foam curlers still clutching their thrice-rolled ringlets momma’s nightgown gauzy yet modest daddy in his undershirt one arm crooked across closed eyes but a half-smile saying he’s awake under there the radio on and sweet hour of shared blanket when nobody fussed at nobody 

ii. the groove line 

[heatwave] 

the good kids partied at someone’s momma’s house parents talking just down the hall while we laughed and hollered up a roomful of 13-year-old hormones an explosion of sweat ignited by a funky electric bass line lights were allowed low but no slow jams so we were nonstop working the bus stop flare-legs flapping denim derrieres doing the bump jumping into it till homegirl’s momma’s candy dish rattled glass-on-glass on the coffee table pushed in the corner ~ everyone in their own groove until certain songs came on and called us into constellation the freak-twine everybody rocking side to side to the front to the back fingers and booties popping cool like it ain’t nothing but a thang or nasty like i got sugar in my bowl but together carried on horn riffs and a thumping beat into that sweet repeating moment when we ride the momentum of our hips and the 

Evie Shockley is a poet and scholar. Her most recent poetry collections are the new black (Wesleyan, 2011) and semiautomatic (Wesleyan, 2017); both won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the latter was a finalist for the Pulitzer and LA Times Book Prizes. Her other honors include the Lannan Literary Award, the Stephen Henderson Award, and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and Cave Canem. Shockley is Professor of English at Rutgers University.

Sade LaNay

1 poem

I say, “I am the sky now”

decide to tattoo my birth chart wind the constellations in a halo a lasso wound down to earth needling accumulative infliction in flecks wisperwhispers hold me all around you when we come together points of fading light rendered in black ink resisting the break in line refusing to draw it passing the needle through the camelskin stinging singing giddy flamepain unraveling rendition of prickly prism light transiting through states of matter and mediums all inhabited and harbored without any more understanding than sensation expands expansive sifting light through thin wet veils the gummy gossamer membranes of time and space spliced lashes congealed with the salience of tears a frothing ocean

Sade LaNay is a poet and artist from Houston, TX. They are the author of Härte, self portrait, Dream Machine, and I love you and I’m not dead (Argos Books).

Andre Le Mont Wilson

1 essay

Dreams

“Fred, is that you in this painting?”                                                                                       
  I squinted at the canvas on the wall of my father’s Muddy Wheel Pottery Studio in Albuquerque. Clay dust and the smell of earth drifted through the air. In the painting, the figure of a Black man reclined on his back. Facing the viewer, the top of his bald, clay-splattered head rested on a potter’s wheel for a pillow. One clay-speckled hand embraced a blue pot. As he slept, his creations—anthropomorphic vases that morphed into faces—stood or laid on the floor around him. Above his head floated a dream cloud in which a new creation formed—the face of a woman whose hair rose into a bottleneck. From the cloud, she ogled the potter who would create her when he awoke.                                                                                                                   
My father looked up from his work bench, his arms covered in clay, a lump before him. His eyes glinted as if I had asked him, “Tell me a story.”                                                           
He answered with a tale he had told many people, but never his firstborn son. “Once, I was doing an art show in Lubbock, Texas, when this painter, a white dude and his wife, came up to my booth and looked at my pottery. He got this real confused look on his face because he was looking at all of my fantastic sculptures and forms, you know, and he asked, ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ 
“And I told him, ‘Basically, my ideas and forms come from my dreams. Usually, I get up and draw immediately if it’s something that’s important, but if it’s bugging me, I get up and start making it.’
“This white guy was a bigot and real rude. He said, ‘A nigger with dreams? You got to be kidding me.’                                                                                                                                      
“But his wife was right there. She was looking at my candelabras and crying, because they were so powerful. Big tears came down her face,” My father swiped a hand across his face to mimic her tears. “She had never seen anything like this before. She said, ‘Bob, you got to buy this for me.’
“So now this painter, this bigot, Bob, was embarrassed because he had insulted the artist and his wife wanted to buy his candelabra. She got to have it and kept going on about it.                                    
“The guy and his wife went away, but before the show closed, he came back and gave me this painting, Asleep at the Wheel. He was a landscape artist but he painted a portrait of me. It shows me sleeping on a potter’s wheel and dreaming about my next creation, because I always tell people my ideas come to me from my dreams. He said, ‘Fred, I’m sorry I made an ass of myself, but will you accept this painting in trade for that candelabra? My wife keeps bugging me about it. You’re a great artist because you proved that your dreams can have a powerful impact on people.’                                                                                                                                     “So I accepted this painting in trade for the candelabra.” My father grinned at his prize.
                        I stood slack-jawed in front of the painting and examined it closer. “Wow.”
                       The face of the woman-vase in the dream—light-skinned and red lipped—resembled my mother. How did the painter know how my mother looked? 

#

After my father died, I packed his slides, poems, and other documents into boxes for their long journey to California. The damp smell of mud had subsided in his pottery studio since work on the potter’s wheel ceased, but I dispersed more clay dust into the air when I grabbed art binders and ledgers, which had not been moved in years.                                                                
 I studied the wall above his work desk, strewn with tools he will never use again. Asleep at the Wheel, my father’s portrait, hung unclaimed. I knew he left me instructions to get his papers when he died, but who will get his portrait?                                                                                               
I left the pottery studio and entered the main house. “Kristen, can I have Fred’s portrait?”            
The widow’s eyes gazed at me with a question. “Which one?”                                           
I had forgotten that several artists had given Fred portraits over the decades.                                     
My hands trembled as they removed the painting from the wall, leaving behind a rectangular ghost. I never dreamed I would own this portrait. Most portraits showed a person’s face. This showed my father’s bald head—his most distinguishing feature. During the Black is Beautiful movement of the 1960s, an old newspaper clipping showed my father wearing a “Bald is Beautiful” button. I ran my fingers over my scalp. I wish I found that button, too.               
At home, I unwrapped the painting and hung it above the entrance. My father’s bald head shunned the viewer. I imagined he ignored my comings and goings as he dreamed.             

#

            I awoke from a fading dream. My partner slept beside me. Our Chihuahua, Mina, nestled against the warmth of my body beneath the blankets. Before the dream vanished in my transitional state between sleep and awake, I closed my eyes to prevent myself from squinting in the dark, darted a hand from beneath my bald head, and grabbed a notebook on the nightstand. My fingers felt along the book’s edges until they found the last entry. I fumbled a pen, wrote a few ideas, and resumed sleep.                                                                                                                    
Thirty minutes later I woke again. My partner and dog slept. My ideas did not.                              
But if it’s bugging me, I get up and start making it.                                                                                
I moved Mina aside, threw my legs off the bed, and grabbed my notepad and pen. I staggered from the bedroom, leaving behind warmth, companionship, and sleep. Adjacent Asleep at the Wheel at the entrance, I closed the bathroom door to write.

Andre Le Mont Wilson was born the son of poets in Los Angeles. His work has appeared in Rattle and The Sun Magazine. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He teaches storytelling and writing on Zoom to adults with disabilities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Pendambaye Zenisha Smith

3 poems

Black Blues

of the hold. of the bones. of the born.
of boarded storefronts. of sharded glass
of headless manicans. Of rolling heads .
of the axiomatic. of the aftermath.
of the structure. of the teargas. of the milk magnesia.
of the eye shield. of the mask. of the gas tanks.
of the white. of his AK 47. of his proximity.
of the handcuff. of the othering. of the peace signs.
of the new normal. of cotton mouth. of frankincense
of  hunger. of  thirst. of  march. of funky feet. 

of gesturing towards. of grief smoke. of gestured rocks. of grief wait. of naked racks.
of frantic’s mother. of bull horn. of siren’s milk.
of curfew. of grief god . of flames. of possibility 

// 

of curfew. of grief god . of flames. of possibility
of the lung. of the unconsciounsess.
of the ocean. of the f(l)ight. of the closed.  

of the hypoxic. of the convulsion.
of the sinking. of the airway. of the haunt
of the float. of the remains. of the
phosphorous. of the oxygen. of the carbon.
of the calcium. of the blood. of the shark
of the now. of the here. of the am.
of the mississipi. of the river. of the  elegy. of the water. of the limbs. of the  extension. of the me. of the ask. of the  calling. of the pulling. of the me. of the in. of the way. of the usher. of the backing.  of the saving. of the eulogy. of the still. of the not. of the safe. of the no of the hold. of the bones. of the born 

// 

of          hold   not           safe   eulogy     still
pulling     me     ask           the  elegy       water
of              the          now          here
of              blood   of               the
sinking       remains  closed         lung
of                the ocean         f(l)ight
flame           possibility  mother        siren’s
rock             naked  grief            gesturing
hunger          thirst      cotton       mouth
of              othering    of             the
shield         tank   structure     teargas
of            the   manican     rolling
storefront   sharded  

// 

sharded storefront&therollingmanican&theofteargasstructure&tankshieldedtheofotherinof&
mouthcottonthirsthunger&gesturinggriefnakedrockssiren’smotherpossibleflame&f(l)ightoceanth
eofclosedlung&remainssinkingtheofblood&herenoftheofelegywater&theaskmepullingstilleulogy
safe&notholdof

The then

First gossip then lobby floorboards stripped then elevator works
then linoleum floors then security guards then construct tion dusk
then play ground removed, now then, street lights
come on, my daddy voice, booms then flee home
then new kind neighbor then my breasts perk 
then new spiked benches then glass doors then i lock
lips with zaire then i am caught in her arms long
ing then new gravel then i perm my hair then every
body wants me including zaire’s boyfriend
then i sit with him in the closet then it is good to
feel wanted 

then she finds us then she swings
then I grab her shirt then it rips then bloodfist lips then
my mother sells our mattress then the then
then we move then blood rushes down my blkthighs for the very first time.

A Small Litany of Disasters

my father is a trump supporter; i lose sleep over a man; my first crush asks me on date; it’s a bet;
i yearn for the confidence of a man with wack dick; the first woman i sleep with; throws up in
my bathroom; she shits in my tub; they say the best way to cum is to let go; i let go & pee comes
out; white people analyse a poem about police brutality; this trigger is visceral i say; the class
takes notes; i can feel every disaster biting in to me; the class takes notes; i have memories of
lives i have never lived ; the class takes notes; the abortion; the class takes notes; my mother is
lonely; it is generational; Playhouse night club in LA; Beverly Hills; the white boy sophomore
year says he loves me; he overhears a man call me jungle pussy; no one loses sleep; a box braid
falls out; it takes my edges with it; college; what happens after i eat ice cream; i’m drowning
without a body of water to name; the class takes notes; if i ain’t kill me, what makes you think i’d
let you? the class takes notes; my father believes trump knows what’s best for america; my
mother believes God knows whats best for america; my god is fragmentary; part-object; never
arrives on time; but in due time; my god said let there be light & then failed; my god saw a man
touch me when I said no; my god is fragmentary; my god is blue; my god; my god; i run out of
anti-depressants; the medication makes me numb; it leaves my pussy dry; i am a bad bitch w/ dry
pussy; i bump heads ; when i kiss the woman i love; she is miles away; my mother makes me
promise her i do not like women; i lie over and over again

Pendambaye Zenisha Smith is an emerging poet and scientist/researcher who is invested in how Black women sustain themselves amidst antiblackness. She holds a degree in neurobiology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a Ronald E. McNair Scholar, she has done research on Black Infant Mortality and the effect of childhood maltreatment on neural regions. As a poet, she is the co-founder of the UpRise Poetry Collective, the assistant poetry editor for New Delta Review, guest editor for the 2020 Tennesee Literary Writing Festival, and a First Wave scholar. Her work has been published by Rattle Magazine, Wusgood.black, and Decomp magazine. Currently, she is a First-Year MFA candidate for poetry at Louisiana State University.

Erick Msumanje

2 videos

92903

OVER DRIVE

Erick Msumanje is a visual artist and filmmaker. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the Film and Digital Media Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His research and creative practice explore various topics like violence, music, popular culture.

Mimi Tempestt

1 video poem

The Unreliable Narrator

Mimi Tempestt (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist, poet, and daughter of California. She has a MA in Literature from Mills College, and is currently a doctoral student in the Creative/Critical PhD in Literature at UC Santa Cruz. Her debut collection of poems, the monumental misrememberings, is published with Co-Conspirator Press (2020). She was chosen for Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices for poetry in 2021, and is currently a creative fellow at The Ruby in San Francisco. Her works can be found or are forthcoming in Foglifter, Apogee Journal, Chaparral Press, and Honey Literary.

jennifer jazz

2 erotic code texts

jennifer jazz is a New York writer, musician and performance artist closely associated with the Basquiat Lower East Side. Her writing has appeared in magazines that include Moko, Sukoon, Booth, Warscapes,Sensitive Skin and Afropunk. jazz has performed mixed media shows at venues that include The Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, The Kitchen, Wow Cafe Theater, Dixon Place and Bandini Espacio Cultural Gallery in Mexico City. jazz’s memoir Spill Ink On It was published by Spuyten-Duyvil Press in 2019.

Alan Antonio Peral Ortiz

1 video

ill-defined visions

Alan Antonio Peral Ortiz is a writer, filmmaker, and creator that likes tinkering with different media. He is a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an apprentice for a master glass blower in Santa Cruz. He is inspired by the concept of access and how it transmutes people's experience of the world.

L. Lamar Wilson

4 poems

Shoveling, or Winter in America

~after Mrs. Brooks & Gil Scott-Heron

We learn from your mistakes, even if you don’t fight 
Fair. We’re neither the diviner’s scrying mirror first
You divined, nor the devil’s door. Forced open now & then,
We slake the blame, wail in your project hell, fiddle
Tunes of victim hoodwinks & blues-tinged metaphors, ply
Your bell jar with daddy experiments gone awry, the 
Fall imminent for all ussin. We narrowly escape slipping
Past your Svengali grin, dismissed like second string
Bit players. C’mon, gimme some! you bark, with breath feathery
As whitleather each time lips part. Honeychile our sorcery,
We crimp/walk on your amour fou for brown flesh, no muzzle 
To mask your incestuous predilections. (Now hooooold the note!)
Whiteness cannot save the soul of America. Lies made myth with
ProRegressive repetition forever enslave. As your fathers’ hurting
Hanker leads, you charge. We, pens shivs steady, await, love.

I Held Hope in My Hand

& then I dropped Hope, dropped 
the slip of paper gifting Hope 
to anyone who needed to tear her 
from the wall in the clinic surveilling 
those living & loving with the scourge 
of living & loving with cells wiped clean 
by pills. I dropped Hope by accident. 
I’ve never been intentionally reckless. 
I swear ’fo’ God. They’ll tell you, too. 
They saw each tongue yapping its
languid, foreign language on my flesh 
& orchestrated it all, according to Their 
perfect sequencing of pareidolias, right? 
Instinctively, I rushed Hope
to rescue her from the open palms 
of leaves autumn had grounded for being 
the bad girls leaves can be, stomata all open 
& tantalizing, just waiting to be gathered, 
piled, renamed, & sold to keep men’s gardens 
properly mulched, but before I could arrest 
her little cells, the wind kissed Hope, 
& she blew from that hand to the curb 
before circling back into the other hand, 
the one you say I shouldn’t speak of 
anymore, because you think me beautiful 
& more than that. But how could I not speak 
its beauty—how in its inability to grasp
a thing, its excrescence held onto Hope,
kept her tangible —&, yes, Uncle Jesse, alive—
if not felt, since the hand cannot feel 
anything nerves disclose—pain, heat, 
objects that men’s malevolent minds 
fashion to pierce. But for a moment, 
this misshapen mound, firm as a boulder 
over a cave door you see blocking your way 
into the depths of the something-more 
you want here in this poem gave Hope 
something Faith, Love, Peace, & Courage
—all huddled on that wall, waiting
to be wrested & useful—cannot live without: 
the masquerade of It gets better with #TimesUp.
See, I, too, sting, America!      
Then, I slipped Hope in my right pocket, 
where she’d be safe & in good company 
with all I’d need to conquer the day: pens, 
the wallet of cards that make me 
a compliant capitalist, all the keys, 
keys, keys my overpriced degrees 
afford me. Knowing Hope was there, 
t’was easy to ignore the sleights & 
entitled white cats blocking my path, 
the I-didn’t-mean-to-offend-you hollowing 
their vacant stares. Then, like clockwork, 
Agent Orange tweeted some affront 
to all grammarians & advocates for 
common sense & human kindness &
I went foraging.  I needed to 
look Hope in her cataracts, savor her
smize. But somehow, in keeping track 
of all the distractions, Hope had fallen out. 
It’s what I deserve, I tell myself, too free 
as I was to pay attention to her crying out
as she drifted to another tom’s back door.
Guess I’ll go back to Absolute Care, 
genuflect before that wall—built 
to protect paying patients’ privacy, 
of course—& cleave another piece 
of Hope. This time, I’ll put her 
in the pocket next to my heart, where,
I’m certain, she’ll go untouched.
look away, look away, look away …

In the Cat’s Cradle, An Embrace

I am such a weepy bastard. Nothin’ but the dog 
In me, Uncle George mewed. Since I’m a cat man, 
I recall what MaMary taught me. A hit dog will bark, 
She said, & yet I run over puppy dogs’ tails 
On a daily basis, don’t look back as they howl. 
I can smell their mange a block away, & here I am
Itching. Beloved, your kitty Noma loved me more 
Than you did, & I loved your kitty more than I loved 
Your cat, which you loved a lot. You leaned 
On your counter & writhed without me once 
While I watched, ate the bread you’d baked 
& thought, This is how loving yourself tastes. 
I sit in this stuffy office in a chair whose back 
I have broken, surrounded by the backs 
Of two other chairs I have broken & a leather bag
Whose zipper is broken because I carry too much
Litter on my back, which was millimeters away 
From being curved enough to require a brace. 
Wouldn’t you know? I was disappointed 
About that news. There’s only so much this bag
Can take, son, Cat Daddy said on Christmas Day
As he thrust its patent slickness into my lap, grinning,
Which is ironic since the man who says he’s afraid 
Of nothing said he once jumped to the top of 
A barn’s heap of hay to hide from a feral cat. Said 
I got to go feed my cows when I said if God hates fags 
He hates me. There’s only so much this page can take. 
Loving our selves is hard work, so don’t cry out loud,
My pretty. Don’t be like Grizabella. Her pain never 
Sounded sincere to me. That’s why I couldn’t shed tears 
For her. Or you, ’murica! (Cue “Memory” here.) You 
Sons of bitches & toms & hairy queens: Get thee hence 
& don’t forget to swallow your hair balls. I’m a gib, dawg, 
A gimp, dawg. Stand clear of the door to what’s left 
Of this barn this year’s storms have raided, dawg, or I’ll 
Scratch your back, & you’ll scratch my patchy mane, & 
You’ll love it. You’ll be itching for the rest of your lives.

PrEPositions*

Lodged in the back of my throat, held as tightly 
As the slack of a man’s johnny-come-lately soul I sup

To the quick, make thicken, & dissolve into the symphony
Of my selves sieved & open, I implore you, O friend I refused to take

Inside for years.  O to see your wonders performed, how trill the sound
Of my perfidious blood honeydewed! Look at us & marvel 

At whose we’ve become: Big Pharma’s sugar mamas hankering
For daddies’ diamond DNAs unfiltered. I’m always dropping you

In sentences these days, with a question mark, as I whisper to you
With the same breathless assurance I want to give my every corpuscle 

To the ones who choose tenderness when most herald Savage. Woke. Petty 
af on the online market to the highest bidder. It took years 

Before I realized I’d forgotten to let you in, forgotten to say 
With with in tandem in a last will, in a love letter I’d left 

To the flesh of my flesh not-yet-birthed into this nation 
In which I call our clan’s father lit & beautiful. 

For he is, so much so I would cuss God & dye my soul blacker  
If I could. If I could, I’d sing my selves happy, kissing every crater

Of our fathers’ fathers’ father’s pale face, kiss his woman’s lips, too. 
For this slave wrote us a love letter once, when she spied a glimpse

Of our bicontinental future body-bagged. Who can sing thy force? she extolled,
With palms outstretched. Imagine that! O bittersweet pill we take & feast

Upon where’er we go so that no one sees the secrets we carry 
In our pockets now. Squares that we are, we’ve swallowed hope & shat fear

Of the truth we know: We are so good to gather. We do the police 
In different voices, too. Our self hoods & hoodies, our woadies wildin’

Upon the dancing machinas of our woulda coulda shouldas, our shekinahs 
To a glory made whole. By you. We’re so pregnant—thanks to you— 

With possibilities. Let us swallow our souls’ salvation, commence 
With this born-again Earth’s new covenant. PrEP, are ye the way of the Lord?
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
*Originally published in now-defunct online magazine HEArt.

L. Lamar Wilson’s poetics appears in two collections, Sacrilegion and Prime; the stage production The Gospel Truth; and the film The Changing Same, a Rada Film Group collaboration. He teaches at Florida State University and Mississippi University for Women.

Cornelius Eady

1 video, 1 song

“The Dead Mother” (For Korryn Gaines)

Mississippi Summer

Cornelius Eady’s seven poetry collections include: Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize; The Gathering of My Name, nominated for a 1992 Pulitzer Prize; and Hardheaded Weather (Putnam, 2008). He is co-founder of the Cave Canem Foundation.

sidony o'neal

1 drawing & 1 scuplture

Pseudoprime for Isle of TDMR

solid marker transfer on paper 11 x 16.5 in 2020

meet cute 2: not wanting to say anything about m at Ω

2018- cast iron tub, pork rinds, thermoplastic rubber, acrylic dimensions variable

Images courtesy of the artist and Fourteen30 Contemporary

sidony o’neal (b. 1988) is an artist and writer based in Portland, OR. Recent group and solo exhibitions include Sculpture Center and Fourteen30 Contemporary. Performances in non-band DEAD THOROUGHBRED have been presented at Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Volksbühne Berlin, and Performance Space New York. o’neal’s writing has been published at Arts.Black, and their chapbook LYFE IN A BOTTLE TREE BOTTLE (2020) was published by House House Press. o'neal is represented by Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland.

R. Erica Doyle

5 poems

Excerpts from A Dreadful Mortality: The Fanon Suite

The Black Mothers: A Dialogue

But did he rape her?
No one will say.

But could he buy her?
That says it all.

Were the babes born alive?
Of one hundred, five.

Did the adults survive?
Of 100, 80 died.

And those who lived?
At five years in cane, for each 20, 5.

And they came again?
And again, For everyone
you know, and for everyone
they know.

And the black mothers?
We carry their names on our cells.

And the white fathers?
Gave us land and made us their shields.

And the children of their name?
Poor in land, but ply their shade.

And will we forget?
Not yet.

What will we say?
We were never slaves.

How true will that be?
Is blue the sky? Is salt the sea?

Then both no, and yes.
Oui, papa. Kel commess.

there must have been a dreadful mortality among the negroes,

as notwithstanding 6037 new slaves
the census of that year
gives us an addition of only 3734.
And those, who were so unfortunate
to purchase
will sadly remember
the losses they sustained
in those slaves.

-A Gentleman of the Island, in a letter to the Duke of Portland, 1802

upon my soul, Bayley, the colored women all look innocent in Trinidad;

then they have more of the olive,
and less of the burnt umber stuff on their skins
than those of the other islands that lay
between Cancer and Capricorn.
I will acknowledge I prefer the complexion
that is tinged, if not too darkly, with all the richness
of the olive. They are extremely fond of dress,
and make their toilet with much taste and extravagance.
I do wisely opine that they are the cause
of much of the immorality
that prevails in the West Indies.

- Letter of Major W.—to Frederic Bayley, 4th May 1827.

my soul in Trinidad;

more

burnt skins

of the islands;

I prefer

tinged darkly richness –

extremely fond.
.

I the cause

of the immorality

that prevails

Constructs

So much depends upon
A black abject

Toppled far and
Whee

If you take the road
Less trampled by

This will make all
The dissonance

For every day something
Has tried
To grill me

And flailed

R. Erica Doyle was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Trinidadian immigrant parents. She is the author of proxy (Belladonna Books), winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. A Cave Canem fellow, Doyle has received grants and awards from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others.

Heather Bourbeau

3 poems

Six Weeks

Six weeks, come to take “the cure”, break the marriage knot. High desert air.
Clear the mind. Short time, small price. For freedom. Of a sort.

Six weeks, wedding rings in the Truckee, divorcées on the prowl. Disillusioned
bride clichés for celluloid and vinyl. Reno, the shorthand. Reno, the punchline.

Six weeks, white women-in-waiting transform into waitresses and ranch hands,
card dealers and clerks. Sample Virginia Street. Roulette lessons, risqué shows.

Six weeks, Blacks barred from the Mapes and the Riverside, dude ranches
and motor lodges. Bills but few work options. Hunger but few eating options.

One Chinese restaurant, Club Harlem, Woolworth’s, Bethel AME church socials.
Biggest Little City becomes smallest little East Side. Douglas Alley.

Six weeks, Emma Allen, 23, from Richmond, California, rents $8-a-week boardinghouse room,
referred by Bethel AME. Ebony Magazine photographs her throwing dice, walking Virginia.

Caption notes Harold’s Club has no locks, doors always open. Does not mention
Emma could not enter. Casinos hang signs “No Indians, Negroes, or Dogs.”

Six weeks, Emma hires white lawyer. Shops for groceries. Meets local NAACP leader. Says,
Reno in the Dark Ages. Says it will be pleasant when she gets back home. Waits. For freedom.

The People’s Champion

September 14, 1911. 12,000 people witnessed saddle bronc final and
history in small eastern Oregon ranch town. West’s best riders.
Three men. Three biographies. Brown, White, and Black.

Jackson Sundown, middle-aged nephew of Nez Pierce Chief Joseph.
John A. Spain, Oregon son of white “pioneers.”
George Fletcher, African-American, came to Oregon as a child.

Sundown born Waaya-Tonah-Toesits-Kahn, Blanket of the Sun, Nez Perce and Salish cowboy.
At 14, forced north with tribe. Joined exiled Sitting Bull and Sioux in Canada,
became breeder and breaker of horses. Adopted new name for rodeos.

Sundown knew the power of spectacle. At 48, six-foot, long braids tied under chin,
wide brim hat wrapped with silk scarf, beaded gauntlets, spotted wooly chaps.
Rodeo circuit legend. Scared competition from entering.

John A. Spain, Oregonian son of Nebraska farmers. Fled abusive father.
Saw Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, vowed to become showman. Earned enough bucking broncs
to buy ranch, create pageant. Four-horse chariots, hippodrome races.

“Last of the Real Wild West Shows.” By 1910, Umatilla County Sheriff Tillman Taylor
founded competition. Pendleton Round-Up. Wanted Spain’s bucking stock.
Invited John to compete.

Fletcher, Kansas-born, as young boy came to a state that did not want him,
that taxed and exiled Blacks for the crime of being in Oregon. Pendleton public school,
slurs and attacks. Moved to mission school, Umatilla Reservation. Learned language,

customs and horsemanship. Practiced bucking on barrels. First rodeo at 12. Bulls and
buffalo. He and another rider on same horse, same saddle, opposite directions.
Third place at District Fair. Only African-American in first Pendleton Round-Up.

In 1911. Three men. Four horses. No eight-second rule. Sundown first.
Rode Lightfoot. 25 seconds. Horse tried to bite his leg, ran into judges’ mount,
threw Sundown to ground. Knocked unconscious. Disqualified. No re-ride.

Spain rode Long Tom. Broke through fence. Showman stuck.
But some cried foul. Said he grabbed leather, touched horse
with free hand.

Fletcher first rode Del. Horse refused to buck. Crowd demanded new horse.
Loose and limber, “like rubber band,” Fletcher stayed on. Clean.
But Spain crowned champion, awarded silver-trimmed saddle.

Crowd cried foul again. Sheriff Til grabbed own hat, cut it into pieces,
sold each scrap for $5, turned $700 over to Fletcher. Double the saddle’s worth.
Declared him the “People’s Champion.”

Allensworth

When you reimagine landscapes and liberties, you must remember
who controls the drip and drought controls the dream.

Allen Allensworth, born a slave, became seaman, minister, Kentucky delegate
to Republican National Conventions.

1908 Owens Valley farmers were cast aside for aqueduct to slake Los Angeles.
1908 Allensworth left the City of Angels to build a new Eden—

Central Valley railroad depot, fertile soil, access to water. Founded, financed,
and governed by Blacks. Free of racism. Able to blossom and thrive.

Four years later, 100 residents welcomed Alwortha Hall, the first baby born.
Two general stores, post office, school, library. Bakery, drug store, hotel.

Poultry and sugar beet farms, plaster and carpentry shops.
Girl’s Glee Club, Children’s Savings Association, Debating Society.

But Railroad built a spur to avoid town, refused to hire Blacks as depot’s
manager or ticket agent. Pacific Farming never delivered enough water.

And as James Meredith was shot trying to march across Mississippi Delta,
arsenic was found in Allensworth water. Town was scheduled for demolition.

In the Golden State, all roads begin and end with water.
At town’s dedication, Allensworth, the man, had said, “We must do as they did—

settle upon the bare desert, cause it to bloom like a rose.” (But Adam and Eve
had Pishon, Gihon, Chidekel, and Phirat pouring forth from a single source.)

In 1908, Tulare Basin fed artesian wells, alfalfa, corn, and livestock.
Men harvested fish with buckets. Twenty years later, Tulare Lake had been drained dry.

Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have been published in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, Francis Ford Coppola Winery, Short Édition, The Cardiff Review, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, she is the winner of La Piccioletta Barca’s inaugural competition and the Chapman University Flash Fiction winner. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia.

Lolita Stewart-White

3 poems

Self Portrait as Hoodie

black
woman
be
hoodie
hovering
ovah
what
remains
of
her
husband’s
woolly
mane
she
be
angel
of
fleece
kissing
his
scalp
golden
she
be
blockin’
blows
with
crushed
softness
she
be
darkness
clinging
to
his
skin
she be black ten/ der/ ness lingering

Afro Beautiful

We are cuddled

in a breakfast joint.

Our feelings

simmering

like fish & grits.

I gaze at his full lips.

He blows the

black

in his coffee & sips.

I swear this yellow boy

be Afro beau /

ti /

ful

My heart be the steam

in his cup.

A Song for You

Come, my love. Drape your whiskey-colored skin
around my brown flesh, cape-like, so we can wear each other.
Bless me with the fullness of your body on the porch
of my imagination. Come, and I promise to touch you whole.
Please hurry, hurry, my love, before I am a field
of daffodils out yonder.

Lolita Stewart-White is a poet who lives and works in Miami. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and Cave Canem fellow. Her work has appeared in Callaloo, Kweli, Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal and Green Mountain Review.

A.T. McWilliams

4 poems

arrest the cops

who killed breonna taylor. that is to say,
handcuff their hate until their wrists
clang like liberty bells. make them listen
to how her freedom still rings (not in steel
-clad chimes, but in stories). tell them that
breonna was so cool, her uncle called her
breezy, as if she loved in gusts (strong enough
to shake us like trees until we remember
our roots). tell them breonna’s friends didn’t
mind when she napped through movies or be
-tween hospital shifts. tell them breonna was
essential because black women are essential.
tell them only a coward can take a life spent
saving lives — or worse, steal it in her sleep,
as if afraid to
let her dream.

what do you want to be for halloween

BLACK PANTHER, the boy yelled
to his mom, then dug his tiny fingers into
his tiny palms as if to choose fight over
flight — firm fists over frightened
feet. by the time his mom could say
again? of course, the boy had closed
his eyes, tossed his two tiny fists across
his tiny chest, and hugged his anything-
but-tiny heart (as if he knew that Wakanda
Forever means love yourself, always,
and that loving yourself always means
always loving your people). the boy’s
mom, who echoed his war cry in kind,
let forever linger for so long it almost
remembered its name. but as soon as
she’d crossed her arms to make an X,
the boy opened his eyes and his fists
and his arms to hug his mom even
tighter than he’d hugged his heart. do
you want to be Black Panther because
you want to be king? she asked her
son with a smile. yes, he said, before
closing his eyes again, as if to choose
flight over fight. i want to be king, he
said, but not as much as I want to be
bulletproof.

mr. wilson said

in memory of Michael Brown

the boy grew to bear size of ten little tiny bullets
grizzly and standing not bouncing but
at attention until he trembling on his patient
became nothing tongue and waiting for an
less than a mountain open throat or songs even
casting a shadow dark but no thing came and
on all sides and city- i thought what if he too
shrouding no different is just a peach treeless
than the shadows but not dried or crusted
doubts cast reasonable not a boy just a peach
enough to weld key pitted against my world
locks so tight they and thinking me less than
forget the affliction fuzz sprouting from his
of openness just rind to make my life
like the boy growing known because after all
and gaping his lips it is not important
until their clean split where his hands were
too shadowed songs of the only matter worth
i am hungry but not for swallowing whole was
food or time just that this boy was
bullets yes bullets not just alive but
i swear i watched the living fast and out
boy swallow each one loud and growing like
by one by one by one voices filling streets
until they too sought and melting into one
freedom in shadows hymnal hum so yes
bouncing against teeth i watched the mountain
backs to clamor like fall like a child
protest feet or breathing uncradled and forgetting
drums now muted and to run and thought how
brackish from summers’ can every one of them
bang bang bang bang be small and black
until this very moment enough to sink like my
too became a symphony bullets but never make a
sound?

black math

ADD twelve-and-a-half million, torn from their
homes like pages from genesis where god lived long
before men turned men into un-precious cargo —
bundled like sticks that begged for a flame, tossed
like holy water into ship hulls and reminded that
being a slave means breathing your last breath over
and over and over and until your oxygen becomes a
snare drum, increasing its tempo until it can do
nothing but stop.

SUBTRACT one-and-half million — the
fortunate few who never saw the shore (the
starved, the scurvied, the dehydrated and the
dystenaried) commonly referred to in u.s.
history textbooks as “collateral damage”.

SUBTRACT the thousands who saw the sea
raging just feet from where they stood, and
jumped, some holding hands, seeing not death
but baptism and knowing how god gives life
through water.

ADD my great-great-great-grandfather, turned from
a king to cattle by men who feared the way he
wielded his crown.

ADD my great-great-great-grandmother, singing
freedom songs that shook the chains at her hands
and feet until they chimed like church bells.

ADD thirty million more, plantation born and power
stripped, pulling their hands from cotton bales to
push their palms together — locking lifelines before
bowing their heads and digging their elbows into
their ribs and praying to find their north star or
simply tomorrow’s sun.

SUBTRACT those whose prayers were left
unanswered — the ten million whose hands
built the white house and the capitol building
and america only to rest beneath its soil
shouldering the weight of the world that they
made.

ADD their children and their children’s children, the
emancipated, those born out of bondage, bouncing
on their mothers’ laps and laughing from their
bellies to learn how freedom sounds.

ADD my grandmother’s grandmother, a
one-room-church preacher who could read the bible
and nothing else, including the deed of one hundred
acres of land she signed away — stolen by those
who feared black land because black land was black
power.

SUBTRACT the millions more who upon
gaining freedom lost everything because back
then being black meant nothing belonged to
you.

SUBTRACT the massacred and murdered, the
garroted and guillotined, the burned and
buried.

SUBTRACT the lynched.

then, ADD the brave who joined together to stop a
nation from breaking black bodies. the hundreds of
thousands who wanted to work and vote and learn
so they marched and marched and marched and
sang we shall overcome until the buildings that their
grandparents built shook beneath their soil as if to
say what i gave you i can take away.

ADD one man who spoke for millions and sought to
awaken a nation with a dream.

SUBTRACT him.

ADD my father at fifteen years old, riding his bike
across town to catch a glimpse of that man floating
through the street in an unadorned casket, carried
through a crying crowd as my father bowed his head
and closed his eyes and then opened them again.

ADD everyone my father saw, unlocking their
elbows to raise their arms and clench their fists and
reach one towards god as if waiting to be counted.

A.T. McWilliams is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist living in Brooklyn, NY. His poems, which predominantly focus on his experiences as a Black American, have appeared in the Missouri Review, Southern Humanities Review, Prelude Magazine, Main Street Mag, Radius Literary Magazine, Rogue Agent Journal, Storyscape Journal, Blunderbuss Magazine and elsewhere. His essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Slate, The Guardian, Complex, Mic and elsewhere. You can find more of his work at atmcwilliams.com.

Malcolm A. Robinson

1 poem

A Foreword for my American Patois

I am spread eagle before cops
and grown men, before cashiers
and passerby who pry into the white
space between my thighs, shoving cold
hands up my skirt for a title to cling tight to.

But the words for me and my history
are too much and too little, too sporadic
in their earthquake waltz to be bound.
I tucked it deep into bottle cap bodies
of text I pop the top of, using two Black

fingers and smooth lines from granddaddy.
The text speaks only to my stroke,
stripping down to barebone words
and lucid dreams. Inside, I spot my home city
who preys on blue roses, crushing flower boys
and clipping my wings from a cage.

I am a rooster bound for slaughter, locked
in a chained fence room I bust out of, the iron
alloy crushed beneath teen spirit. I sprint past
the synonyms Disney and plantation;
Zora Neale Hurston and the cherry blossom
sunrise; bright light and a black future –
but the Orlando PD parked at the top

of the seventh stanza, their cop car shuttling
siren sounds into the heart shaped box
my text and I live in. When they prod my dark meat,
I buck and scream while they gouge out my breasts,
the blood-filled ventricles oozing

sweet ink in Rorschach shapes. Some see blood, sugarcane,
and other things discarded after use. I see America, but with
my skin hue the new fad. The soot blots dribbled by my wounds
are combed into words weeping the tongue of verse:
nappy-headed, slave-funk, sexy, sharecropper, ship-

wrecked, Mississippi, buoyant, trauma, triumph
the lexicon lifeblood breeds contradiction
and conflict into verse. The Buddhists call it a Kōan;
I call the moans and morphemes a poem.

Malcolm A. Robinson is an English student at FSU. They previously attended Georgia Southern University and hold an A.A. in creative writing. They live in Orlando, FL.

Mel Sherrer

3 poems

Collision

-after Breonna Taylor

The scariest part about crashing
is having no control.

You are powerless
against the forces
which hurl and drag you,
unable to overcome the
maddening spiral.

You may know it is coming
or you may wake to the sounds

of doors splintering open,
the intricate shuck and click
of guns being drawn
your lover at the helm
doing what any decent man
might do

and you
ripped from a dream by bullets.

Crowd Sourced Savior

-after George Floyd

I felt like this once before
at a funeral
one of my best friends
a heroin overdose
the putrid smell
of flesh and flowers
a mother’s red-rimmed eyes
the guilty faces encircling the dead
so many of us knew about
the junk.

I feel that way, as I watch-

-another Black man die on television
a knee on his neck, people all around.

Explicit

Brown skin means moving
around in this world
is like jogging on the ocean floor.

On the other hand,
some things are simpler.
Those things which are simpler
are ancient and miraculous
moments of colloquialisms
and common language
which make life
an endless, cool drink,
a sandy shore.

I can operate in subtlety.
I don’t have to go around
defining my desire
saying who and what I want or why.

I can point to you and say, “that’s all me, that’s mine”
or just take out some braids, let kinky hair fall, while you watch.

Mel Sherrer (She/Her) is a writer, editor, and educator. She received her B.F.A. from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia, and her M.F.A. from Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She is the Social Media Editor for South 85 Literary Journal, and she teaches private lessons. Mel also conducts Creative Writing and Performance Literature workshops. She currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Duriel E. Harris

3 images

jive turkey

(est. 2018) (3.5" x 3.5" - ink, paper)

funky chicken

(est. 2018) (3.5" x 3.5" - ink, paper)

play rug iii

(2020) (9" x 11.5" - ink, paper)

Poet, sound artist, and scholar, Duriel E. Harris is the author of three critically acclaimed volumes of poetry, including No Dictionary of a Living Tongue (2017), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and Publishing Triangle Audre Lorde Award finalist. Multi-genre works include her one-woman show Thingification, the poetry video Speleology, and the conceptual project Blood Labyrinth. Appearances include performances at the Black Midwest Initiative, Lake Forest College, Naropa, the Chicago Jazz Festival, the Votive Poetics Workshop (New Zealand), the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Festival Internacional de Poesía de La Habana. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Best American Experimental Writing, Letters to the Future, PEN America, and Poets.org, among others. Harris is Professor of English at Illinois State University and Editor of Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora.