Climbing Walls
Upper new York bay. uncle describes. he drives cab. knows all 50 states. he/says they are really 50 different countries. but one hate for dirt people/he’s supposed to pick me up. at drop spot.
Domino Effect
Tami Sawyer/Made loud, sufficient noise/In her hometown of Memphis/In marshalling together youth & elders/In removing the toxicity of ages.
Identity at the Round Table
When we come to the round table of literary discourse and are asked questions about our identity as writers of African extraction, what do we say in response to the query that questions our identity as African writers? Who is an African writer?
Certify This Land
Tell me protest fields will halt to morph into abattoirs every time/we demand for a sunny life, for a right to inhale and exhale, every night we want/to resurrect strangled justice from its grave.
Netela
Crossing the stage, diploma in hand, sole flapping loose from the plastic heels/my mother shipped to me for thirty dollars more than what they cost/lipstickless mouth unmasked for the livestream/my parents were watching nine thousand miles away
Don’t Come Looking for Me, Father
He accused Portuguese of being the “language of the colonizer” and defended the urgent prioritizing of the African “national languages” spoken in Angola. This was another of the theories that he considered essential for the future of the nation.
Coming to America
we don’t speak English/the taxi driver takes us/to the wrong town/the teacher/gives me a new name/which I hate
Best Small Fictions Nominations 2021
Announcing the Decolonial Passage Best Small Fictions nominees for 2021.
Where I Am From
Where I am from, we count nights and not days/by day, we become one with the forest to evade bullets/and by night we search for the biggest holes to conceal our bodies.
Pushcart Prize Nominations 2021
Announcing the Decolonial Passage Pushcart Prize nominees for 2021.
In Case of Fire
In case of capture/this poem is reversible/Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o wrote a novel/on sheets of prison toilet paper/The blank side of this page/is suitable for ink, or similar markers/Improvise as needed/and good luck to you.
At Heaven’s Anteroom
There/At the anteroom of heaven/The land of the Free/The wealthy kingdom beyond those mountains afar/May the eyes that see you want you/May they smile in adoration/By how handsome a soul you are.
Seeing Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez
103 degrees became a ticket for transfer/to Westlaco Border Patrol Station/a concrete block bench for a bed/thin mylar sheet for a blanket
Where did you come?
U come from/That flesh? Of which?/The one that mirrors your hue/Or, the one whose darkness seeps through?/Those wires that make up your being/are gradient sand particles aligned to the composure of one.
the Decolonial Passage 