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Jesse gabriel gonzalez poetry october 2025

When the flooding starts, and the rich flock to

their yachts, the rest of us will inherit the beach-front views

only to climb up trees and whine at God—but you promised!


And God, starting his Prius, shouts back something about carbon

footprints: his but the size of a seraphim’s, ours lug-soled

and everywhere, even the damn Moon.


And that will be that; we’ll re-draw the maps and

eat more fish. Eventually, tired of tuna, the yachts

become rockets, sailing through the thickened atmosphere.


When the terraforming starts, wheat will be the first to fail;

the last will be rice, abandoned in the smaller craters.

In the end, palm trees will populate the Moon.


It makes sense, the Moon having everything they need:

sandy dirt, unfiltered sunlight, and islands, which,

in the absence of liquid water, deliver the seas


and wide-open shores palmeras crave, deep in their green hearts.

If the Antilles can hook-and-crook the Caribbean from the Atlantic,

surely Tranquility can be found cleaving to its own islands:


the wreck of the Ranger; the breezeless flag; the sunken

heel of a tall boot…indeed, palm trees were made for the Moon.

Too frugal now for fire, the rich will scrap their ships by hand,


committing to this one last colonial undertaking.

Foundations will be dug, small houses hammered out

and thatched over, all beneath great glass domes and the future.


Back on Earth, most of us will be dead, but hey—we got a

brand new Moon, which, as always, watches, spinning

its gears against gravity, the tempo of the spheres.


The palm trees, in their understanding, try to show the Moon

what comes next. It’s one thing to be a fixed point in an idea

of the sky, eclipsed at a distance by the transit of catastrophe—


it’s another thing entirely to brace against a heaving chest, carrying,

not by choice, the shadow puppets of fire and smoothbore bullets.

But matches are rationed now, posing too great a risk to the domes,


guns a laughable waste of precious metal.  Yes,                 

World War Moon will be fought with sticks and stones and

coconuts. And the domes will hold up marvelously.


And when the Moon spins on, with no one left to inherit the shade,

maybe the few of us on Earth will look up and whisper blessed be

the palm trees, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven — or, at least, good night.


Jesse Gabriel González is a poet from the great state of New Jersey. He holds an MFA from the University of Oregon and a BA from Cornell University. He was the recipient of a Contributor Award from Bread Loaf and an Anaphora Arts fellowship. His poetry appears in The Seventh Wave. He serves as an Editorial Assistant for Poetry Northwest.

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yanis iqbal poetry september 2025

the soil does not shake—
it memorizes.
here, even the stones rehearse their lines
in syllables of smoke.
a man’s words dry in mid-prayer,
still tasting dust from last week’s funeral.
the wind is a radio station now—
it plays a scream remixed into pop beats,
“go back, snake, traitor, rapist, rootless goat,”
the chorus looped with the smell
of sandalwood and burning tires.

a pony rider in the hills
bled into a pine tree,
and the sap does not know
whether to clot or to weep.
he was reciting,
not a creed,
but the names of his daughters.

in the plains,
a woman strings her silence
into a necklace of broken SIM cards,
walks sideways past the temple’s loudspeaker
blaring the anthem of a war
she never enlisted in.
her grocer now sells her rice
as if measuring gunpowder.

every window is a gun barrel,
every child’s name
a reason to evacuate the future.
in Agra, they buried a man
without his name—
only a label:
“retribution.”
it is easier that way,
easier for the press release,
easier for the bullet.

who attacked whom?
the question dies in the first comment thread.
facts are too slow.
truth is throttled by 4G
and dressed in a uniform of pixels—
AI-generated martyrdom,
HD nationalism with export-quality rage.

they uploaded a song
before the blood dried.
it asked us to leave.
leave what?
the land that remembers our ancestors’ coughs,
the wells we named after heartbreak,
the callouses of our dead
still softened in its soil?

He wears his beard like a crosshairs.
his name is a GPS tag.
he walks into a clinic,
and the doctor’s eyes
scan him for nations.
no illness,
only allegiances.

tell me,
how shall i carry my skin
when it is now a declaration?
how to walk into a school
where history has been rewritten
as an eviction notice?

the country
is an anthem sung backwards.
its rivers choke on slogans.
its justice is a bulldozer
that has forgotten how to pause.

and still—
we mourn the dead.
even when mourning itself
is suspect,
surveilled,
licensed.

they ask:
why didn’t you go?

but tell me,
what do you call leaving
when your body itself
is the country’s last remaining witness?


 Yanis Iqbal is studying at Aligarh Muslim University, India. He is the author of the book Education in the Age of Neoliberal Dystopia (Midwestern Marx Publishing Press, 2024) and has a forthcoming book on Palestine and anti-imperialist political philosophy with Iskra Books. His poems have been published in outlets such as Radical Art Review, Rabble Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Culture Matters, Live Wire, Apocalypse Confidential, Neologism Poetry Journal, Bitter Melon Review, Cafe Dissensus, Palestine Chronicle, Frontier Weekly, and others. Two of his poems were also selected for inclusion in The Anthology of Contemporary Poetry: Meet the Poets of Today. You can find him on Twitter/X at @yanisiqbal.

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serhat tutkal flash nonfiction september 2025

I remember a little kid who spent his summers at his grandparents’ house.

He stayed out most of the day, but he really liked their house. He was fascinated with the backyard, a backyard without fences or anything separating it from the path leading to the mountains. He used to take a walk to the mountains. He loved that.

He spent most of his days going around mountains, eating lots of blackberries. He drank water from the river. When it was late, he came back to play football with other kids on the street. They set up two stones as goalposts on either side of the street. He thought the games were fun.

At night, he sat on the small balcony that served as the entrance to the house. He read whatever books he had brought with him from the city. Having no TV in the house didn’t bother him at all. His grandmother sometimes complained that he was wasting too much electricity, but she let him read his books anyway.

Unless it was one of those nights.

On those nights, they had to turn off all the lights. Then, close the curtains tight. And get away from the windows. The kid knew that he shouldn’t make loud noises. He knew he should act as if he didn’t exist. They all acted as if the house didn’t exist. Or the neighborhood. Or the city. Or the entire people. They didn’t exist according to official reports, so they had to act accordingly. The kid knew it was time to make himself invisible, imperceptible, inaudible.

Then, the noise started. Guns screamed. Humans screamed. Animals screamed. The kid didn’t know which side the screaming guy was on. He learned that dying men scream alike. He was scared. He was embarrassed by his fear, but he couldn’t help it. He hid under the divan. He remembered when his grandfather said, “If you recite Al-Nas and Al-Falaq, you will be protected from anything.” He had already memorized them even though he didn’t understand Arabic.

The kid started murmuring with a Basmalah, “Qul auzu birabbin nas…” Then, “Qul auzu birabbil falaq…” He repeated all the verses in Arabic. Again. “Al-Nas,” “Al-Falaq.” He didn’t understand what he was saying, but he kept saying it. The noise went on. People screamed. The kid repeated Arabic words.

The noise died down. Just like other similar nights. The kid was fine.

He planned to go on with his day after sunrise. Unless there was curfew. Curfews could last for days. He read when this happened. He never had many books with him, so he read the same books again and again.

 The night the kid violated curfew, he wanted to watch the final game of Turkish Sports Writers Association Cup between two major İstanbul football teams: Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe. He walked a couple of minutes to his friend’s house, just down the street towards the feeble stream.

After the game, he wanted to go back home. His friend’s mother told him he should stay, but the kid thought it wasn’t a big deal. He left the house to go home. Then, he heard the noise created by lots of gunshots.

His mother and aunts told this story so many times that he isn’t sure if he remembers it or if he just recreated the whole thing based on what he was told. What he thinks he remembers is that he hid behind the stone wall, terrified, waiting for the shots to stop. They were most likely just warning shots. Then, a bright light emerged from an army vehicle. The kid put his hands up and slowly walked towards the vehicle. He vaguely recalls a couple of surprised soldiers. But who knows if he just made this up at some point? He barely remembers his aunt coming from the house. He remembers returning home. He doesn’t think he knew how to recite “Al-Nas” and “Al-Falaq” at the time; he must have learned that later.

When the kid played football in that street, another kid screamed, “Tank!” Then, they took the ball and the four stones that served as goalposts and ran. They returned after the tank passed. They put the stones back and continued playing. None of them were surprised. Tanks passed at least once a day.

If you ask me now, I’ll tell you the kid doesn’t exist anymore. I’ll tell you he became a grown man.

I won’t tell you that he still remembers how to recite “Al-Nas” and “Al-Falaq.”


Serhat Tutkal is a Kurdish academic. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Secretariat of Science, Humanities, Technology and Innovation (Secihti) in Mexico. He has a PhD from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá) with a dissertation on the legitimation and delegitimation of Colombian state violence. He teaches courses on armed conflicts, dehumanization, racism, colonialism, and qualitative research methods. You can find him on Mastodon and Bluesky.

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lauren mcneil creative nonfiction september 2025

The first time I saw her, she stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction. I’ve never seen God, but I imagine it’s like taking in the ocean for the first time. The ocean was my home — the only home I ever knew. The ocean kept me alive and gave me hope for the future.  

A future where I could be with her for all eternity.

At eight years old, I came home to an empty house, overwhelmed, scared, and exhausted. I could only call my mom in case of emergencies. Unfortunately, fear was not an emergency. I pulled my blue beach bucket out from the closet and meticulously laid all my shells on the floor. I carefully placed each one on paper towels and sorted them according to how they made me feel. Now, I realize why the bucket was so special to me. It represented freedom. The freedom to cry, the freedom to be heard, the freedom to be seen, and the freedom to live judgment-free.  My life seemed full of struggle, even my early years reeked of trauma.

My childhood wasn’t the worst, nor was it a cakewalk. It was marked by abuse, emotional neglect, and abandonment. I grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood and attended a private Catholic school where I was one of six Black children. I endured years of being made fun of for having “nappy” hair, being “ashy,” “too loud,” “too ghetto,” and “too fat.” When I went home, the neighborhood kids called me “White girl,” said I “talked White,” told me I tried to sound “too smart,” and teased me for wearing a uniform.

I look back on those times, and I’m grateful my mother didn’t keep a gun in the house. Kids can be cruel. I lived in a constant state of anxiety, fear, anger, and self-loathing. I remember longing for death in elementary school. Why am I here? What’s the point of living? No one wants me here. In those moments of desperation, I imagined the ocean’s waves crashing on the shore and beckoning me to reunite with her. The second my feet hit the sand, none of that mattered. The warm sand on the soles of my feet and the grainy beads between my toes instantly cheered me up.

I always bring books to read at the beach, but I never read them. You would think that after decades of going to the beach, I would have learned to leave my books at home. I haven’t. The beach awakened my inner child — the child who didn’t get to exist outside of the beach, the latch-key kid, the kid who had too much responsibility, the child whose dad left and whose mom emotionally departed around the same time, the kid who was misunderstood and bullied.  

She came alive at the beach.

My favorite beach gift was sand dollars. I kept them on top because they were fragile, and I loved them the most. The bumpy, slightly porous texture of the outside and the beautiful pentagon star-shaped holes in the middle made them priceless to me. I held each one. I relished feeling the cold, hard shells in my hand, tracing each groove with my fingers. I rubbed the textured ones against my cheek, closed my eyes, and imagined myself lying in the sand. I felt the waves pulling and pushing my body. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was these small moments of visualization that rescued me from darkness. 

No beach trip was complete without seashells. I came home with my bucket full and happily relived the day. The beach is one of the only places on Earth that bestows gifts freely. As a kid, I remember the shore being filled with shells of all sizes. Perfectly shaped, no cracks, no holes, for as far as the eye could see.

Now, the beach gifts have changed. There are no more sand dollars. I would have better luck finding an intact kidney than an unbroken conch shell. All the years of being polluted and pillaged have finally taken their toll on her. Despite this, she still provides food, life, and shelter for countless species, including us. I decided to stop taking shells and enjoy her beauty while I still can.

The cool air reignites my childlike innocence. The saltwater, dripping down my face, cleanses me of all emotions. The once-cold water now feels like the most heavenly bath. I never want to leave. I long to be a mermaid who can swim away from this life on land and be amongst those who accept me in the sea. The ones who love me no matter the color of my skin, regardless of my pants size, and despite my shoes. They embrace me. Submerged in the blue-green water, I feel the comfort of being in the cosmic womb and the unconditional love and scorn of a parent who disciplines me whenever the limits are pushed.  

Looking out into the distance, I feel humbled by the vast open ocean. Water to my left, water to my right. The powerful waves knock me down and lure me back for more. Now and then, I feel something brushing past me, a colorful fish or a sprig of seaweed. I’m delighted and fascinated, watching schools of fish swim so close. Bright blues and pale yellows dance in the water around my feet. The water is so clear, I can see through to the bottom. No lifeguard forces me to take a 15-minute break.  I happily float for what feels like hours on my back.  The heat from the bright white sun beams down on my skin. I feel like the happiest Thanksgiving turkey.

The ocean saved my life on numerous occasions…I wonder if she knows.

Does she know that other than my daughter, she was the only one who stopped me from hurling myself off a cliff in 2023? When I lost everything within a couple of months. When I discovered the love of my life lied about our entire relationship. Resented my daughter and me. Lured me to Durham under false pretenses. Strung me along with talk of marriage. Lied about me like a dog, painted me out to be a narcissist, posted my intimate photos and videos on websites for all to see, and created fake profiles using my information to spite me. Does she know that the grief almost broke me? That the embarrassment destroyed me? I lost all trust in people. 

Can she sense that it was only memories of being with her that comforted me? The solace of feeling her warm embrace enveloping my body. I closed my eyes and imagined I was there, with her…in her, and for a moment, thoughts of her gave me respite from the torment. Focusing on her relieved me from intrusive thoughts. The times when doors were broken, laundry baskets thrown, and threats made. When I ignored red flags and inflated green ones.

It was only the smell of salt and seaweed carried by the breeze on a humid day that eased my pain. 


Lauren McNeil is thrilled to make her literary debut on Decolonial Passage and grateful for the opportunity to share her voice. Before this publication, you could find her writing in random notebooks, on scraps of paper, or on the Notes app on her phone. A former nurse turned budding creative, she eagerly seeks out opportunities to share her unique perspective. She is a beacon of light in dark places and hopes to inspire future generations. You can find her on Substack and on YouTube.

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gemini wahhaj creative nonfiction august 2025

When my daughter was in daycare, I wanted to let everyone know about Eid. I bought dates, teamed up with another mom, asked to go to a class and share what Eid was with the class. I read a Bengali folk tale for children from a children’s book.  Then, we lit candles, and the smoke alarm went off. It was her third year in daycare — a time when my daughter was falling off the end of the world. In her first year, she was happy. At first, she didn’t know the language, so she would wait the whole day until she saw me, then run towards me and burst into tears.

 But the third year, it was the bullying. She wanted to be white. She drew herself white with blonde, straight hair and blue eyes. When a friend bleached his hair white, she kept asking him questions. Another friend and I locked eyes. We both knew what was going on in her mind. At that time, I asked many friends what to do. I asked my classmates who then referred me to other moms who also spoke to me about what children of color face in school at a young age and how to deal with it. So much figuring out, how to fit in, how to make things better for my daughter — a child growing up in America. 

“I sacrifice so much for her. Why doesn’t she understand how loved she is?” I said to my husband. “I don’t even brush my hair!”

“Why don’t you brush your hair? Why do you look like that? Maybe if you dressed nicely, she would look up to you.”

In the end, this was the strategy I chose, which seems strange to me now. I’m not the same person. I dressed up in shalwar kamiz with the gold earrings my mother had given me. I also wore a teep on my forehead.

 I went to pick up my daughter.

“What’s that on your head?” a child asked, pointing.

“Hush,” the teacher said, as if what I had on my head was something shameful.

I brought teeps for all the girls as gifts. I went to Bangladesh in the summer, and I brought back bangles and little cloth dolls to give away. We watched Hindi movies on a VCR, and I dressed my daughter in gaudy dresses, jewelry, teep, so she would have her own standard of beauty, her own role models, her own cheap, cheesy way of being feminine. 

The atmosphere among girls at that age in America is toxic. Girls watch Disney movies and dress and think of themselves as Disney princesses. She didn’t watch TV. She didn’t know anything the other girls were talking about, so they excluded her. But also, the clownish racist exclusion of someone with dark skin and curly hair, and adoration of another girl with white skin seems outlandish to even write about. The teacher said, “There is no racism here.” Of course. So, we watched these movies so my daughter would be able to join in the conversation and fit in. My professor explained that at this age, girls are arranged in hierarchies according to the status of the moms — like a hive around the queen bee. I scheduled playdates, threw parties, positioned us as a family in the hive.

Another dad with a daughter in an older class suggested bending the princess trope, introducing her to other versions of fairy tales, so we read The Paper Bag Princess and watched Kiki’s Delivery Service at his recommendation. (I really admired a lot of these fractured, fairy tale picture books and still love them.)

I surrounded myself with allies and we survived.

I don’t do that anymore. I don’t want to share, to be known, accepted. I write fiction rather than essays because what I have to say is not welcome. Even in my stories, I want to establish a faraway voice at a remove. It seems so long ago, the earnestness, the frenzy of wanting to be known, to explain. I would be embarrassed by the me of that time.

I don’t enjoy being in these spaces or the ways in which I have to compromise, grovel, demean myself to be in the room. In 2014, Obama had iftar in the White House. Many Muslims attended, gleeful, while Gaza was being bombed, with full support from Obama and the Senate. I asked one of them online why they would go to such an event, and they mumbled something about making space for Muslims. During the Ramadan one year while I was a student at Princeton, Bill Clinton was bombing Iraq. All the years that I have lived in the US — first as an international student, then as a mom, and an employee — have left me wandering the halls alone during Ramadan and Eid. I associate Ramadan and Eid now with silence, a complete erasure in our schools and places of work, with the added bonus of a bombing campaign somewhere.  

Now it is Eid again. My daughter is in college. Sick, I asked for leave from work. I asked to teach online. While negotiating, I realized it’s Eid. Every year, I either have to take the day off as a personal day, have my children miss school, or come to work, and just go about quietly pretending nothing is going on.

I am an atheist. 

I thought I would send an email out to everyone at work, wish them Eid Mubarak. Just to let them know. Then I asked myself, “Why? What does it matter when countries are being bombed?”


Gemini Wahhaj is the author of the short story collection Katy Family (Jackleg Press, Spring 2025) and the novel The Children of This Madness (7.13
Books, Fall 2023). Her fiction is in or forthcoming in Granta, Third
Coast, River Styx, Chicago Quarterly Review, and other magazines. You can find her at GeminiWahhaj.com.

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Moudi sbeity poetry august 2025

after Benjamin Netanyahu,

United States Congress, July 24, 2024


In America, a murderer receives a standing ovation.

Meanwhile, bodies tally against the ground faster

than we can count.

I can’t quite decide what is more disturbing;

the chilling sound of applause cheering genocide,

or the large-scale catastrophe scorching the world.


It’s difficult to hope. It’s difficult to still believe in

our deserved forgiveness.


But I return to that soft and tender place in me that

reaches beyond anger. I return, again, to the wide open

grief stretched before us like a prayer rug. Not just for

the violence, but for the ineffable conditions that create

hardened cruelty in the hearts of the few, and the

unnerving ignorance shielding empathy from the many.


Towards what end do we hope to arrive? The only land

we get to own is the mapped terrain between first gasp

and final whimper. Nothing else is truly ours. Not even

this perennial breath we’ve been given.


What then? After your clapping victory.

What will you do with the terror in your heart?


Moudi Sbeity is a first-generation Lebanese-American poet and transpersonal therapist, and the author of the forthcoming books Want A World (Fernwood Press, 2026) and Habibi Means Beloved (University of Utah Press, 2026). In a previous life, Moudi co-owned and operated Laziz Kitchen, a Lebanese restaurant in Salt Lake City. Moudi was also a named plaintiff in Kitchen v. Herbert, the landmark case that brought marriage equality to Utah in 2014. As a person who stutters, they are passionate about writing and poetry as practices in fluency and self-expression. They call the Rocky Mountains in Boulder, Colorado home. Find them on Instagram at @moudi.sbeity and on Substack at moudisbeity.substack.com.

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Patricia Kusumaningtyas poetry august 2025

the night comes for us,

when mercenaries

scan palm leaves

for drops of blood

of martyrs. martyrs who

write poems about

the living. martyrs

left dead to the

pulses of the solo river

without a sound.

the night comes for us

as suharto flies turbo jet

bullets through the sky

as if timor could never

rest and if they rest then

kissinger cuts his molars

in washington restlessly

calling to some

lockheed factory in louisiana,

flat rate

express delivery

to indonesia.

the family of deer in the

presidential palace graze

on dirty money reserves

turbo jet bulleting from

the cayman islands.

the night comes for us.

the sparrows

silent witness

silent extrajudicial

bullets upon our dissent.

every worker is a fugitive under martial law.

the sparrows

continue their flight.

the night comes for us.

even in death

kissinger never

lets go of his choking hands.

if night surrenders

to moonlight,

we will hear the martyrs speak.



Patricia Kusumaningtyas is a tech worker and film/music writer based in Brooklyn, NY. Their poetry and prose have been published in Discount Guillotine, Fruitslice, Major 7th Magazine, and Dead End Zine.

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.Chisaraokwu. flash fiction july 2025

In the Great Room of the mansion his father’s father built with the purse the colonialists paid him for his service in the first war, my Papa, dressed in full regalia, his favorite pipe snug between his lips, motions the visitor to join him at the table. Papa, a shrewd-minded military man with a penchant for stout and three-fingers whiskey on the rocks, had successfully commandeered a ragtag troop into battle over the amply equipped rebels and won. Three times, officially. Unofficially, ten times. When he demanded retirement after achieving the rank of General, the President was so distraught he named Papa the first and only Field Marshal in our nation’s history.

Above Papa’s head, the fan whirls a frantic hum into the room. Sweat builds across the visitor’s brow despite the simple white and silver agbada he is wearing without head covering. He removes a pale red handkerchief from his pocket, dabs his eyes — avoiding Papa’s — and folds it in his hands. Papa daftly moves his pipe to the other corner of his mouth. The visitor shifts in his seat and licks his lips. He ignores the glass of water before him, his leg quivering beneath the table. Papa eyes the visitor patiently, swirling the ice cubes in his glass of whiskey to shapelessness. A passing police siren joins the fan’s hum.

The visitor, not much older than Papa, has the lazy demeanor of a lousy crook whose sole talent is to steal stolen things from those who have already committed the crime. The type to boast of his feigned bounty while dribbling palm wine from his lips, staining his shirt. The kind our people dismiss until necessary. A scar from his left ear to his chin assaults his otherwise unremarkable face. His scent of malt, sweat, and menthol cigarettes fills the Great Room, invades my lungs. Papa is testing him.

Papa breaks the silence with a joke meant to insult the visitor. The visitor laughs loudly, at first, then chuckles as if he understands nuance. Papa knows the laughter is false, but he indulges him. This, after all, is the way men are with my father: they love him and fear him at once, show all their cards while desperately trying to convince him that they have no cards at all.

“Adanne,” I recall Papa saying to me while we hunted deer, “Not everything we do is about right or wrong. Rather, it is about hierarchies of power and powerlessness. Know where you stand.”

If my mother had her way today, I would be with her at the market or sipping tea with wives and daughters of military men. But I find solace in Machiavelli and Dante, the speeches of Azikiwe, the discourse of men. Papa never discourages it, indulges his first-born’s proclivities. Gives me seat at his table, always. Permits me to speak at will. To the chagrin of his peers, though they’d never show it. I have learned secrets in the Great Room — its high ceilings and oversized furniture conceal nothing, expose everything.

Today, I sense something amiss. I do not speak. My hands press into my lap. Waiting. After the briefest of exchanges, of which no one outside this room will ever know, the visitor rises from the table, walks past my chair, and brushes my shoulder with a single finger. His touch lingering long enough to brand me in the manner of old men, from the old days. This done in the same manner as in the stories my mother used to tell me when I was small, before I thought them too childish to remember.

“Nne,”Papa says, “Please show our visitor to the door. Eh-heh, you’ll be going to his place next Tuesday to pick up a gift for me.”

“Yes, Papa.”

I, too, rise, joining the men.

The visitor smiles, this time his gapped teeth showing, his tongue at the edge of his dry lips. He follows me to the door, bows his head, then leaves. I won’t soon forget the smell of him.


Photo by Chriselda Photography

.CHISARAOKWU. (she/her) is an Igbo American transdisciplinary poet artist. Drawing inspiration from her Igbo heritage, quantum physics, indigenous healing practices, and the natural world, her poetry weaves archives, film, and collage to explore memory in the African diaspora. Published in literary and academic journals, .CHISARAOKWU. has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, Vermont Studio Center and more. Learn more about her practice at www.chisaraokwu.com, and you can find her on instagram at naijabella.

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kimberly nao personal essay june 2025

I never had a crush on David Lee Roth, but he had a crush on me.  And, he sang a song about it. You remember the video. David dressed as a tour guide leading tourists through sunny California, dancing around bikini clad girls singing, “I wish they all could be California girls…” On the beach, at a movie studio, so many girls in bikinis and with big Aqua Net stiff hair teased up much higher than David’s golden locks. He just loves these California girls. And well, that’s me. But wait…

There are no brown-skinned girls in this video. Tan, yes. Brown? No. And my hair? My hair is actually too big to be teased up to look big. My hair is long almost down my back, but it’s thick and frizzy and more like Diana-Ross-Central-Park-in-the-rain concert hair than bikini-clad-blonde-on-Venice-Beach hair. So, am I a California girl?

In fact, it wasn’t David Lee Roth’s song anyway. It was the Beach Boys’ song. They’re the original ones who loved California girls. As long as they had blonde-bobs-on-the-beach hair. Yes, bikinis and tanned bods. Not the 80s, but women in the 60s doing the jerk while the band defines the quintessentially endless summer sound and California lifestyle. And there are no brown skinned girls.

There’s cute, perky surfer girl Gidget. Not Sally Field Gidget. But Sandra Dee Gidget. The one that personified the California vibe in the 60s. The one that made everyone who wasn’t a Californian want to move to California and buy a surfboard and live on a Malibu beach for the summer. And it was always summer. Blonde Gidget. Is it her? Is Gidget the culprit? Is she the one that made every media image of a California girl thereafter blonde, tan, and bikini clad?

Seriously there are so many California blondes. Not just any blondes but the ones that defined the “California girl.” The Bionic Woman. I did not have a crush on David Lee Roth, but I did have a crush on the Bionic Woman. She was blonde and beautiful and could rip the yellow pages in half. And she had a bionic ear that could hear across long distances. I mean miles. She would push a blonde lock behind her ear and listen.  Apparently bionic ears can hear for miles, but they cannot hear through hair. I couldn’t push a lock of hair behind my ear. Well, I could but it wouldn’t stay there. My hair was not tame. It was wild and did what it wanted to do. The Bionic Woman was indeed a California girl. She lived in Ojai. You can’t get more California than that. Unless, of course, you lived in Malibu.

The Bionic Woman’s boyfriend was the Six Million Dollar Man. The Ken to Jamie Somers’s Barbie. The Six Million Dollar Man was played by Lee Majors who was married to the very blonde Farrah Fawcett. Another quintessentially California girl (even though she was from Texas).  Fawcett was Jill Monroe — the blonde on Charlie’s Angels with feathered hair bouncing in the wind as she chased down criminals. She ran the way boys run when their peers say, “You run like a girl.” Farrah was the breakout star of that show. And yes, you can find pics of the ultra-feminine Fawcett trying to look like a tomboy skateboarding Dogtown style down the street. But more importantly, there is the poster — Farrah, sitting in front of a striped Mexican blanket wearing a red bikini, one knee up, one leg down, head cocked back in a smile that shows all of her white, perfectly straight teeth. It is very California, and it is said to be the best-selling poster ever. I did not look like Farrah Fawcett. I tried to cut and feather my own bangs and ended up with an afro on my forehead.

Maybe that’s when I stopped trying to be the California girl. Yeah, I was born and raised in L.A. and went to school so close to the beach that the boys would surf every morning before making their way to class. I said “grody” and “gag me with a spoon” and “groovy.” But I wasn’t Gidget, or Farrah Fawcett or Lindsay Wagner. I wasn’t Pamela Anderson in another red bathing suit saving lives on a Malibu Beach. I wasn’t Angelyne or Malibu Barbie. I wasn’t even Bo Derek, hair adorned in cornrows, running in slow motion on a misty seashore.

I was the brown-skinned, frizzy-haired girl. Born of a Japanese American mother and Black father. My Japanese grandmother was Nissei, first generation born in San Francisco, California in 1913. My paternal grandparents came to California from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. My parents met in the Bay Area, and I was born and raised by my single mom in L.A. We did not live near the beach. We did not live in a sprawling, ranch-style home like all those blonde Brady girls. We lived in a two-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood both affectionately and derisively called the Jungle. With its grassy lawns and abundant foliage, it was the perfect playground for bike riding, hula hooping, sock ball, and tree climbing. But the crack-laden 80s and 90s made it resemble more the urban hellscape of Boyz in the Hood than the dreamy paradise of The Endless Summer.

But this, too, is a California story. Better than the glossy, glamorized image projected on television, this California is real. It’s brown-skinned and frizzy-haired, and mixed-race, and multicultural, and queer, and it’s me. I’m it. California is after all named after me. Not as if  David Lee Roth had a crush on me but instead, where the name comes from. According to the book, California Place Names, “[t]he term originally referred to a mythical land of Amazons, ruled by the beautiful black queen Calafia, as described in the Spanish novel, Las Sergas de Esplandian.” It’s me!

The city of my birth, Los Angeles, was inhabited by the indigenous Tongva people and was founded by a band of 44 pobladores who settled the area in the 1700s. These pobladores were of Spanish, Indigenous, and African origin. Brown-skinned. Pio Pico, the first governor of California under Mexican rule, designated Los Angeles the state’s capital. Yes, the Pico that the boulevard is named for, and he was mestizo, mixed with African, Indigenous, and Spanish ancestry. Brown-skinned.

The bouncy, blonde surfer girl version of California leaves out the Chinese immigrants who worked in the Gold Rush, the Japanese farmers who were later interned in concentration camps, the Mexicans and Native Americans who were here before the state was annexed to the U.S. The African Americans who brought jazz and soul and hip hop to waft along the Santa Ana winds with the Beach Boys and Van Halen and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It left out the non-blondes who made the state what it was and is today. And by the way, surfing was invented by brown-skinned Polynesians, and Malibu is a Chumash word meaning “it’s loud over there” in reference to the waves of the unruly sea. Wild like my untamed hair.

I want to take a black crayon to plain white paper and draw a thickly bordered square. Above it, I want to draw a triangle and give the square a roof to make a house I never lived in. I want to take a brick red crayon and draw a rectangle for a chimney. And a gray crayon to draw a curlicue of smoke coming from the chimney I never had. I want to take a yellow crayon and draw a circle for the sun and a sky-blue crayon to outline perfectly fluffy clouds. It will be the home I never had but for some reason the one I always drew at school when my teachers asked me to draw a house. I imagine it on a perfectly manicured California street. Under it, I want to  pick up a black marker like a French teacher and write “Ceci n’est pas une maison.” This is not a house. Like that painting of a very realistic, very idealized pipe under which Magritte wrote “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” Because it wasn’t a pipe, it was a painting of a pipe. And this drawing wasn’t my house. And that California was not California at all.


Kimberly Nao was born and raised in Los Angeles, California where she works as a professor of education at Mount Saint Mary’s University. She is the founder of Nao & Associates, a DEI and antiracism consulting agency. Her current projects include integrating contemplative practices in education, helping organizations engage in antiracist practices, and researching the historical landscape of Black Los Angeles. As a certified yoga and mindfulness facilitator, Kimberly believes that self-awareness and compassion for others leads to social transformation.

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bobby marie flash fiction june 2025

Hey, big sister. Just my weekly report. So, I met someone.

It was Sunday afternoon, a time when Johannesburg, but for a brief moment, is its beautiful best.

“How quiet the sun sets,” he said.

We shared the bench, just sitting, watching the children play in the park. Children and mothers like us, so far away from home.  It was how our conversation began as the sun dipped into a fiery horizon — the sky sprayed with colours of gold dust over the mine dumps.

The golden glow softened our words. We exchanged stories — he left home; I left home.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because home had become impossible.”

“Yes?” he replied.

“Maybe one day we won’t need to cross borders to find happiness.”

 He laughed. I liked the way he laughed, a sense of sadness in his eyes.

I asked him to take my picture.

“It’s to send to my sister,” I explained.

He laughed again. “Are you not afraid that I will take more than your picture?”

And to quickly assuage the hesitancy of my response, he asked, “And will you take mine?” He passed me his phone; I took his picture. We scrolled down each other’s screens and laughed at how we imagined each other, such happiness in our eyes. I felt an intimacy when our fingers accidentally touched. A feeling of warmth.

In the excitement of our meeting, we did not exchange numbers when we parted. Then the light faded and so did he, into the Johannesburg shadows, a cold Jozi night.

That night, wrapped in blankets in my tiny room, I kept looking at my phone. Will we meet again? Johannesburg is such a lonely place, alone.

Bye, love.

Your little sister.

 

Bobby Marie is a South African living  in Johannesburg, . He has been a worker and community activist. He is currently writing a memoir, re-membering  his life in the liberation struggle in South Africa and the struggle of his ancestors as ” coolies” from South India. 

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sabyasachi roy poetry june 2025

Start small:

pour a glass of wine like you mean it.

Toast to the black dog pawing through snow,

leaving tracks that look like hieroglyphs

for “almost.”


Outside, the trees lean conspiratorially.

Inside, the cat reads your mind

and knocks a glass off the counter.

You laugh—

but it sounds wrong, like broken glass,

or an old cassette tape unraveling.


The news came in last week:

Colleen’s gone.

Julie’s gone.

You’re still here,

dancing to a Beatles record

because grief won’t let you sit still.

The groove is a time machine;

the lyrics are a curse.


At some point,

you’ll stand on the porch,

watching a hydrangea fight

for its life in the wind,

and think:

This is survival.

This is all it ever was.


Sabyasachi Roy is an academic writer, poet, artist, and photographer. He contributes craft essays to Authors Publish as a guest writer. His poetry has been published in The Broken Spine, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review, Dicey Brown, The Potomac, and other print and online magazines. He has written several essays on wildlife and culture, and he is a published photographer with a cover image in Sanctuary Asia. Find him on EyeEm at sabyasachi13 and on instagram at pensoftworks.

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dana I. Hunter poetry june 2025

From high-end restaurants

to invitation-only shops. Department

store spies have shadowed me.


An outcast in exquisite malls

featuring items they assume are

beyond this minority’s grasp.


Pure judgment in their eyes

I sense when I arrive. It’s always

‘that look,’ and thought process.


“Who let you in?”

“How can you afford to walk through

these doors?”

“Wrong color, wrong place.”


I have received this slight

despite my talent or intellect.

Snide compliments behind smiles.


It’s a look I have witnessed

and learned to ignore from racists,

and elitists who still believe in ‘Jim Crow’

laws.


I am well aware of my skin tone

and the unwarranted bias produced.

I belong where my life takes me

your opinion is not invited to attend.


Dana I. Hunter (she/her) holds the title of Top Poet in the NAMI NJ: Dara Axelrod Expressive Arts Poetry Contest and has been featured in Heather Stivison’s Ekphrasis! Poets Respond to Art in the Gallery. She was featured at Pleiades Gallery in NYC and has been published in table/FEAST Literary Magazine, The National & International Goddess Anthology 2024, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets, and Open Minds Quarterly. She has a B.A. in Mass Communications and resides in New Jersey.

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trycent milimo poetry may 2025

The sky is cracked

The stars are not hiding

And the Earth suffers it all.


The moon shrivels to a sickle

I’ve been nibbling it every night

Now the constellations are my clock.


All the trees dry their clothes

Only the fig tree shares its shade

My garden has grown into a desert.


Heaven has sailed far from me

My Earth is sinking like a boat

Wind lifts dust to the mountaintop.


Everything that belongs to me scatters

Soya beans, sorghum, bananas blow away

My world has been swept away by wind.


Heart’s Desert

You sink in sands of sorrow

Drenching all chambers with drought.


The well is far from my workplace

I’m drowning with a dry throat.


I dream of downpours pounding the dam

But rise to the reality of roughness. 


Thirst has burnt the building

The blaze blocks all exits.


Your desert slithers like fire

You burn in a sea of sand.


Trycent Milimo is a Zambian based rising author of poetry, fiction and children’s books. His writing is featured in two Sotrane Publishers anthologies — Centennial Reflection: Celebrating the Life and Legacy of Kenneth Kaunda, and the TriState anthology, Reflection on Political, Economic and Cultural Independence in Post-Colonial Rhodesia and Nyasaland. He is the 2024 regional winner of the inaugural Bridgette James online poetry competition. The poem was then featured in the PENNED IN RAGE online journal. He is the 2024 third runner up for Zambian Best Poet Valentine poetry competition and was shortlisted for Zambian Arts Publishing House Valentine poetry competition.

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noel munguia-moreno poetry may 2025

For Neida


What is black, white, and red all over if not checkered

flannel and blood: the Chola enclosure.

Forgive me, Father, for I have survived despite cops’

best efforts to send me into that good night.

Two times now, I’ve gone running with pigs at my back, hoping,

wishing, my little siblings see me get back.

I was in the fields fighting those red clowns, but in

my heart of hearts, I’m not truly down.

I ripped off their paisley bandanas, all

for the girl who called me ‘mana.

Por mi culpa por mi culpa por mi gran culpa, the

navy beads on my neck, son mi disculpa,

I pray for a rider, the ones with polished metal, to

take my siblings far away to something betta’,

I rebel, I rebel to stay in the house tonight,

there’s a war on the streets, and I have been asked to fight.

My mother won’t look at me, and my father’s gone cold,

and the only gift I’ve gotten was not to grow old,

I turned fourteen, grabbed a switchblade, dark lip liner,

and concealer to hide my new shiner.

Cordero de dios, que quitas el pecado del mundo,

nos dejastes en esa casa y eso no fue justo

The only love I know is from the end of a belt,

and my brother and my sister don’t know the hand they been dealt.

So hear out my bargain as it stays between you and me,

the three dots on my cheek mean the holy trinity

Keep me from losing breath while I run on the gravel,

and send us an angel with nimbus and dazzle,

for you my lord I’ll lay down the navy

if you keep my parents away from us babies.


Noel Munguia-Moreno is a first-year poetry MFA candidate at Rutgers-Newark where he teaches Intro to Creative Writing. He spends too much of his time thinking about which coffee to drink or laughing at horror movies. He writes of heritage, the physical land and environment, and our individual myths. Find him on Instagram at noel_fromhell.

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hossein nazari poetry april 2025

I teach​ poetry to my students at university.


            I tell them all about

                        Eliot’s objective correlative

                        Keats’s negative capability

                        Coleridge’s organic unity


            I make sure they understand

                        rhyme, rhythm, prosody

                        alliteration, allusion, apostrophe

                        metonymy, metaphor, synecdoche

                        imagery, symbolism, hyperbole

                        enjambment, anaphora, blah blah blah


            I teach them 

                        all that I’ve been taught

                        by my poetry professors

            and they seem happy!

I teach​ poetry to my students
but      

what I don’t teach them is that


none of this stuff makes great poets
or real poetry!


that to become a poet

you need to have had your home
            stolen from you

            your dreams confiscated,

            your hopes held hostage


you need to have heard

            the cacophony of the Merkava

            the bellowing of the bulldozer

to have appreciated the irony
            when your ancestral olive trees
            became charcoal
you need to have heard

            the onomatopoeia

                        in the roar of the rocket
                        in the bomb’s boom
                        to have spotted the alliteration in

                        “we will waste you in the womb!”


To write poetry
you need to have seen
            your brother blown to pieces

you need to have spotted
            your sister’s curly hair
            under a mountain of rubble
            to have removed her teddy bear
            from her loosening embrace

            to have wiped blood clots
            off her face


you need to have seen
            tearless mothers
            identifying their sons

            one after another
            in mass graves

            fathers

            rocking their pale princesses to sleep

                        fast, sound, deep!

you need to have known

            what it feels like

            to write your name
            on your small limbs

            so they may identify you

            when you become unidentifiable
you need to have learned

            how to swallow
            the sight of your best friend’s
            charred body
            to get used to the word “gone”

                           one
                                       by
                                                one.


To be a poet
you need to have seen this
            known this
                        felt this
with every cell in your body
and that is ​why
                         Palestine

has so many great poets.



Forgive me, my students!

I have lied
                and lied
                             and I am ashamed of myself.


Hossein Nazari is an Assistant Professor of English literature, a translator, and poet. He writes poetry in English and Persian and has translated poems between the two languages. His academic articles on English literature, including on such poets as W. B. Yeats, Czesław Miłosz, Robert Frost, John Milton, T. S. Eliot, and Sylvia Plath have appeared in many prestigious international journals. Hossein’s poetry explores the themes of displacement, exile, loss, home(lessness), memory, identity, and nostalgia.