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byron armstrong poetry april 2024

Calloused hands cleave sugarcane

outstretched to Caribbean sun.

Fires of resistance forge

weapons from master’s tools.


Exiled from tribes and gods,

through slave castles to plantations,

we revolt to revel in a history

hidden within outlawed drums.


Onyx angels trouble the water

under a voiceless ocean.

Down by the riverside,

Water breaks like hearts leaping from slave ships.


We sing Soul into existence by

freeing our holy ghosts.

In America, voices rise

above lies hiding gospel truths.


Sarah Baartman is a woman in a zoo.

Her captors have forgotten their mother.

Proud buttocks attached to hips

that birthed nations, an oddity on display.


Josephine Baker is Sarah’s reckoning,

Impundulu’s plumage electrifying crowds.

Snaking hips now become an infatuation.

J’ai deux amours, both Black and women.


Black magic invokes ancestors

speaking through us in tongues,

code-switching suffering into

chariots coming forth to carry us —


home is Jim Crow incubating culture in the stuff of nightmares.

This seed bears strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.


Big Mama’s hound dog howl

shakes cobwebs off Elvis’ pelvis.

Long tall Sallys go tutti frutti

for rock’s white king.


Blue-eyed soul’s sleight of hand

makes King Richard feel Little

but say it loud Mister Brown,

‘I’m Black and I’m proud!’


Soul power plants seeds

for Black Power now.

Funkadelic spectacle brings

one nation under a groove.


If Paris is Burning,

The House of Baldwin has set it aflame.

Let Joseph Bologne compose a melody

with the fire next time as muse.


Punk meets Rudeboy

in old Brittania,

a London calling that doesn’t Clash

With gangsters in a ghost town.


Oku Onuora’s reflections in red

migrate colonial class struggle.

Linton Kwesi’s dread beat an’ blood

is chocolate magic hidden in ganja mist.


We are moving culture people

even after our forced exodus,

we get up, stand up for our rights,

to sing redemption songs.


Tonight Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou

will cut a rug.

Uncle Jimmy will catch a vibe as Aunty Toni

stalks the dance floor.


Earth-toned limbs and elastic bodies

vogue into Harlem living rooms.

“We will house you,” says Mother at the ball

like Madonna with child.


We paint the message of our plight

like hieroglyphics on new pyramids.

white lines blow away, but

redlining remains a sign of the times.


As public enemy number one, it would take

a nation of millions to hold us back.

Within this terror dome, we fight the power

and try to shut em’ down.


This lemonade is bittersweet

yet quenching our thirst for a renaissance.

Tina was simply the best

So Beyonce had a suitable prototype.


Come forth Orishas through our ancestors as ebo.

Write Sonnets in Adinkra on our minds so we remember,

we are music rooted deep as the foundations of a nation

where our bones are bricks for monuments to liberty once denied.


Sunrise Symphony

A cacophony of cooing birds chirp daybreak through shuttered windows.

Rhythm rides sunlight scattered between curtain slits in situ.


Sza croons smooth awakening with soulful aplomb, and I

connect consciousness to the chaos of kids clomping on concrete.


Rubber soles squeak step and scratch slide across sidewalks,

with wanton abandon these careless kids collect scuff marks on new kicks.


The elongated beep of garbage backing up bellows a beware.

Gears grind dust while mechanical movement swallows detritus into itself.


The gaping maw mashes solid matter made malleable as

an attentive mama bird regurgitates food into chirping chicks.


Scared mice scramble, skittering behind thin walls,

my loquacious feline scratches plaster, mewling feral discontent.


Gravel-throated exhalation punctuates the ceremonial performance

of fluttering wisp of blanket announcing serene shedding of twilight.


Uncovered extremities crack while crawling from their extraneous cocoon.

Mattress warbles a spring-loaded whine as I shift lumbering mass out of idle.


Flat feet creak the floors of this venerated Victorian,

as I trod tenaciously toward toothbrush territory.


Turning bathroom taps triggers pressure tremoring pipes,

evacuating an element essential to eliminating the end of existence.


I hack up phlegm to emancipate lungs from belabored breath,

a primordial brew like one-celled organisms ovulating through osmosis.


Shaving my epidermis with unskilled precision that slits skin,

bleeding a truth that betrays the solipsism of lighter shades,


A denial of equal existence disassociated from the divine.

A skin displayed in human zoos and prisons perceived lesser.


My mirror meditation doesn’t reflect what bluer eyes have shown

through white knuckle-clutched purses and locked car doors upon approach,


The spritz of pink spray tans around plastic plumped lips,

Stealing features like African masks pilfered for Picasso paintings.


While Kardashians run through Black men like O.J. fleeing the police,

carving away ethnicity under the knife to live anew in Black women’s bodies.


Black men run from the police to flee the cries of Black women grieving,

high-pitched siren wails drowning out muffled gasps and lovers’ mourning.


A symphony muted by screaming teapots, the clink of a swirling spoon,

and the pin-drop drizzle of honey in a steaming cup of the blackest tea.


Byron Armstrong has been awarded literary grants from the Toronto Arts Council and the Canada Council for The Arts. He was longlisted in the Top 100 of the 7th Annual Launch Pad Prose Competition. His work is published in Heavy Feather Review and The Malahat Review. A son of Jamaican immigrants, his feature writing exploring sociopolitics and art has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Whitehot Magazine, and Arts Help, amongst others. The recipient of a 2022 Canadian Ethnic Media award for best online article, he resides in Toronto, Canada (Tkaronto) with his family. 

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ada chinara poetry april 2024

Rocking in the dark and silence again, 

two heads nuzzled against my breast, 

eight limbs flail out from beneath, 

an octopus gliding through the sea.


 

I know they’re old enough 

to be put straight to bed

yet here we are 

night after night 

squeezed into this glider,

once sea green

now a mossy grey, 

lulling us to the beat  

of a mesmeric sway.  


There was another glider 

in the Special Care ward 

where I sat and rocked 

my newborns light as feathers, 

me with a heart weighted

and ready for flight.

In that glider I soothed tiny bodies,

stroked downy heads, 

inhaled sweet breaths 

and prayed 

and cried 

and sang 

over my daughter 

and my son.


And there was the nurse who said 

there was something wrong with my boy— 

his tiny body didn’t move right

his cry wasn’t right, 

and he wouldn’t be right. 

But the baby next door 

had just the right cry, 

an intelligent cry 

is what she called it.

And that baby was white,

and my boy with his pale skin 

and navy eyes and wispy hair 

only looked the part—

except for his nose, 

round as the sun, 

harbinger of Blackness 

to come.


I knew she was lying, 

but I had to stake my claim. 

So I asked the doctor, loudly

if anything was wrong with my boy

(I made sure she was nearby).

“No,” he said, “not at all,”

and she didn’t come near me again, 

because I was that bitch.  

She left me to glide  

on my private sea 

with two hushed, sleepy infants 

born strong but early 

nestled in the crook of each arm. 


My foremothers glided 

on a rockier sea 

surrounded by the stench of death 

on their way to hell 

where their worth was measured

in profits not theirs.

Arms and wombs and spirits full   

of children not yet separated, 

did they too sit hushed, in stunned 

silence and darkness,

waiting, praying for renewed life 

or release from this earth?


And there was Solitude, 

insurgent mother from Guadeloupe, 

captured for abetting a slave rebellion. 

They waited until she gave birth 

to take her life. 

Did she rock her baby through the night: 

its first and her last?

Did she glide to a realm 

where they could be free?


Another nurse came at night 

when the ward was still.

She whispered that my babies 

were strong and smart 

and ready to go home. 

She saw her children in mine 

and offered a wordless pact. 

There we were:

two midnight women,

conjoined in solitude,

conspiring in the dark 

over babies to be freed. 


And I suppose that is why 

we retreat to this glider 

night after night.

It has long been this way:

Black mothers and children, 

gliding, hoping, praying, breathing. 

Nestled together in darkness 

and in silence, 

awaiting the peace 

alighting at dawn. 


We Bar at One O’ Clock

I must have circled the earth that year

in Trinidad under the blazing sun:

my sinewy legs trekking

up Mount St. Benedict for a breeze, 

and down to Curepe for doubles with pepper.

I ran across Maracas beach,

then sprinted to the maxi taxi

that carried me to Chaguanas, 

and on to Enterprise, 

where Abigail’s mother whispered,

“lean on the Lord,” 

when I nearly fainted from the heat 

one Sunday morning. 


Walking home I passed We Bar

where men gathered, imbibing the spirits 

the church had traded for grape juice. 

And I stopped, for a moment watching 

the rude bwoys and natty dreads 

who watched me constantly:

watched my legs in perpetual motion

up and down Eastern Main Road,

offering me smiles or sly compliments 

muttered at half breath,

but never a drink or a dance,

for I was marked in their eyes 

with the sign of the cross:

a good girl not to be touched. 

It wasn’t true, but no one 

has greater faith than men 

in a bar at midday.  


There was one dread

who had long studied me,

the chasm between us buckling 

under the weight of his gaze 

that I never returned. 


But that day I lingered, 

watching him from the doorway 

as he danced by himself,

lost in the medley of Marley. 

It was one o’clock in the afternoon 

and he moved as though time had stopped 

and he had floated away,

far from the concrete of St. Augustine.

See him now in the mountains

dancing among the trees,

free as we are meant to be:

a rebel, soul rebel. 


I could not disturb his reverie

or shatter the myth of my being,

so I walked back to my room 

in the house across the street 

where the music from We Bar wafted

in with spirits mixed with sweat.

And in my room I danced,

alone and with my dread— 

if you’re not happy 

then you must be blue.


There are no saints or sinners,

there is just we— all of us 

capturers, soul adventurers

moving together, dancing alone 

at We Bar at one o’clock.


Ada Chinara (Ada C.M. Thomas) is Assistant Professor of English at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She specializes in literatures of the African Diaspora in English, French and Spanish. A public humanities scholar, she has worked at cultural institutions including Penn Center in the Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, and as a Public Scholar through the New Jersey Council for the Humanities’ Public Scholars’ Project. Her forthcoming manuscript, Aminata: Abbey Lincoln’s Song of Faith, will be published by Rutgers University Press.

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taylor mckinnon poetry april 2024

My brother said he’d seen so many dead bodies

And had so much                  death              around him

How could he weep for the poor faces of the Palestinians?

                        How could he weep?

But I’m not a man and I could never understand

What it’s like to                    need a man              to tell me

To will me into hope for the future

I said no words to my brother really

I just remembered the little boy

Who ran away from trains who

Had                 wonder                       in his eyes at the sky

And I remember all the                   death              that has surrounded me

That has got up inside of me

And I remember the faces of the Palestinians who do not ask for hope

They ask for their story to be told and to be heard

And I listen to the shrieks of their story in my ears and I listen

And I cry real tears as I feel the full weight of my people dying

Of our people dying

And I feel the fire of death in my veins

And I wipe my tears away so that I can wash the feet of my dead

While my brother remains in his room


Taylor Mckinnon is a Black woman and writer based in Boston, Massachusetts. She has a lifelong interest in literature which she has studied in English, Latin, and Ancient Greek. She loves all things horror and loves nature a lot even though she is allergic. Her poetry has been published in a gathering together, the Papeachu Review, the BLF Press Black Joy anthology, Solstice Literary Magazine, and several other journals. You can find her on instagram at dtturns. 

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cls Sandoval poetry april 2024

I remember the old wives’ tale

repeated too many times

to me when I was little


Spit out those watermelon

seeds or you’ll grow a watermelon

So many of my friends imagined

that the melon itself would fill our

bellies making us appear pregnant


I always pictured the watermelon

outside of my belly, connected to

the vines wrapping ‘round and ‘round

in my gut like an out-of-use

garden hose



Walking by Charles Henry Alston

The Black folks are walking 

During the bus boycott

Just like in Alston’s depiction

Rosa Parks inspired them

When we read about Rosa Parks to our daughter

From her book, whether it’s February or not,

And when we read about the many other

Strong Black women who look like Evelyn


Our little one looks at each page thoughtfully

Pointing to the feet of the woman depicted

“She has shoes,” Evelyn notes

We affirm her observation


“And she has shoes”

“And she has shoes”

“And she has shoes”

She points out on every page


“Yes, baby girl.  Shoes for walking.”


CLS Sandoval, PhD (she/her) is a Pushcart nominated writer and communication professor with accolades in film, academia, and creative writing who speaks, signs, acts, publishes, sings, performs, writes, paints, teaches, and rarely relaxes. She’s presented at communication conferences, served as a poetry and flash editor, published 15 academic articles, two academic books, three full-length literary collections, and three chapbooks. She has recently published flash and poetry pieces in literary journals, including Opiate Magazine, The Journal of Magical Wonder, and A Moon of One’s Own. She is raising her daughter, son, and dog with her husband in Walnut, CA. 

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zama madinana poetry march 2024

we sunbathe our hopes

at traffic lights


we are all zama-zama here

we dig & drill

our chances


we are all here

with our genocidal scars

tutsi & hutu


we seek for warmth

between the great rocks

of the drakensberg mountain


we all here to wash

our wounds

from the healing waters

of uthukela


we are all here

bathed in grey dust

of johannesburg’s deserted

mines


we are all here

with our tattered

dignity


scrubbing

the dance floors

of hillbrow brothels

with our big bums


we are all here

with no passport

no id

& no asylum



we are all makwerekwere here


selling fruits & vegetables

on kerk street


just to survive

just to survive


just to survive


funerals

here in ladysmith

rifles cough out

angry

waves of fire

coffins befriend

the weekends

o, taxi wars that never end

& taverns

are homes of violence

here in ladysmith

whoonga addicts

ravage & mutilate

grannies’ private parts


maboneng

soak me in the searing

sounds of bob marley

& baba mali


teach me portuguese

from the wet classrooms

of a brazilian lady’s lips


allow me

to swim in the blue lagoons

of her eyes

before we eat njera

or ujeqe

down fox street


maboneng

city of a million lights

at night allow me

to drown

my sorrows

in your hideout bars


& in the morning

burry my bhabhalazi

in a strong smell

of your rusty coffee shops


Zama Madinana is a South African poet based in Johannesburg. His work has appeared in The Shallow Tales Review, East Jasmine Review, Olney, Poetry Potion, Voices of Africa and other literary publications. Zama’s work focuses mainly on love, politics and social issues. In 2021, he won the third prize of the Sol Plaatje EU Poetry Award. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.His full-length poetry collection, ‘94, was published in June 2023.  In addition to regular performances and readings in Johannesburg and across South Africa, he has performed his poetry in various countries including Botswana, Mozambique, and Lesotho.

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thanh nguyen poetry march 2024

today, the well in my grandmother’s garden is empty.

I empty it.


In Vietnamese, nước  means water,

means country.


Nước sông trickles into my grandma’s orchards,

fills the well like a song.


engraved in sống is the word alive.


I wonder if the water I drained today

caressed the skin of the country it drowned,


whether it carried the boats that kept

us

                                                                           living.

                                                                either way, nước sống,

                                                                              tôi sống.

the ways that the water still keeps me alive.

heathen water,

Holy water,

human water.

That is to say,

my mother never lost her son,


and I touched my brother,

hair, lips, and flesh                              his wet body

      even when I did not know him.


from the muddy nước, a lotus blooms.

under our feet, a gourd made of human skin.


Thanh Nguyen (she/they) is a poet and musician from Atlanta, Georgia currently living in Amman, Jordan. Her writing focuses on colonial displacement, exile, and belonging. Outside of poetry, Thanh also pursues decolonial imaginaries as a project coordinator at a liberation theology center based in Palestine. Their work has been featured in Re:Visions Magazine and Silk Road Review. She can be found on instagram at @ttnpoet.

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yosra bouslama poetry march 2024

On the Uber ride home, I remember 

to scrape Arab from the tip of my tongue

just in time when the driver asks about the origins

of my name. Tunisian, I say. North Africa.

He nods, the whole continent floating black 

and indistinguishable in his fenced imagination. 

I have always depended on the ignorance 

of strangers. More so tonight when the headlines 

I saw last week are still blinking red and blue

in a corner of my brain: Victims reportedly were wearing 

the Palestinian keffiyeh and speaking in Arabic

 when they were attacked. I never read the full article.

If there’s more to the story, it only reassures 

the hunters, not the prey. Before coming to this country, 

I read about the cab driver killed for having 

a Muslim name, and I still came armed 

with a set of disappearing acts—skin light 

enough to pass. Unplaceable accent. My name

withheld whenever I sniff a bait. Tomorrow,

this fear, too, will be filed under Discreet lest

someone rattles the trap that keeps me here or asks 

about the distant shape of my American dream. 

The heart forgets, and in forgetting, it stays in place.


Denied Entry to Singapore

We’re sorry to inform you that your visa application 

was rejected. Consider this a bureaucratic take

-down-a-notch. Don’t kid yourself about the cost

of stamps. Six years in America and two 

graduate degrees don’t make you less third

world, less needy, less likely to crawl like a rat  

through clandestine tunnels. Just because we need to pick

your brother’s brain doesn’t mean we should heed the call 

of his blood, that your jungle-green veins 

can branch out long enough to climb over 

border walls. Feel free to plant a petition inside

the dimples on your niece’s baby cheeks, but all 

pictures will be plucked out like foreign weeds 

or like the petals of a forget-me-not darling, please.


Texas Winters

Everything is bigger in Texas, even the borders

          of my loneliness. This night, too, my candlestick

fingers are as luminous as the full moon glazing 

          the handrail’s cold metal. Only this time, I don’t

wonder about the shape of sadness splayed 

          on the freshly mowed lawn. I once rated 

my suicidal thoughts one on a scale from never to 

          all the fucking time, and the nurse 

practitioner showered my palms with brochures. 

          We laughed when I told you about it later. 

How I only meant it in a conceptual way. Only it wasn’t 

          funny at all, my cries for help always dipped 

in honey and wrapped in sour jokes. Back then, I mistook 

          every free drink for an invitation to string 

the hours of the night with a pink thread. Every bar 

          counter a gateway to intimacy. Where do 

the displaced go to find permanence? Would you have

          believed me if I told you I didn’t choose 

to want this place? That some silences are stretched

          too paper-thin to make the air squirm. It took

me years to topple the shrine I built for blue eyes. The homes

          I tethered to tourist hearts. Now I know 

the shades of brown that get the blood going. The exact

          hour of the night when it stops.


Yosra Bouslama is a PhD candidate in literature at the University of North Texas. Born and raised in Tunisia, she received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue graduate studies in The United States in 2017. Her research interests include African Diaspora Studies and Postcolonial Studies. 

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gorleku sampson tetteh poetry march 2024
Image by Gorleku Sampson Tetteh

Love is the blossom of the purple flower tree

in harmattan

So that birds and insects will feed

in the dry season

And for the humans, the lucky ones

to smell and feel the joy

Happiness is the grand rising of the sun

A lover only needs an army of one

A partner to walk the path with

together as one

When lovers come face to face with the cruelty of the world

may they continue to ooze goodness

Life is in the present

In books and in the stars

Pick the time to look in the books

Make time to look up at the stars in the sky

The words we speak, possess magic

What we feel is the truth

When we admire nature for what she is

beautiful, elegant and true

She becomes generous, giving to all freely

There is wisdom lying in nature,

It comes to those who seek

deep in their hearts

Did man exist before nature?

Were we before the stars?

Did the sun meet us here on earth?

There is wisdom, free to those who seek


Gorleku Sampson Tetteh is a Ghanaian and a landscape photographer from the Kingdom of Kasunya who is deeply in love with nature’s beauty. Through his lens, he captures the soul-stirring moments that connect us to the earth and fill our hearts with joy and wonder. He acknowledges how every sunrise kisses the land with warmth and color, and every sunset paints the sky with dreams. In the arms of untouched landscapes, he finds peace and purpose—a feeling he strives to share with all through his photographs. The images are a reminder of the magic that surrounds us and a call to protect the precious gift that is our planet.

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emma ofosua donkor poetry february 2024

Standing…


Beneath the shadows, within the walls of Elmina’s halls,

Lies a gory tale of histories long forgotten.

it calls-

It calls us to weave new stories

To reclaim with grace, the perils buried in these spaces.


The Atlantic waves whisper a chorus of strength, 

Its horizon reveals a shared sunrise.

With each gleam, colonial echoes fade away.

Leaving locals room to recover a rightful sway.


For the local, recalling the intricacy of a colonial past

is a powerfully underutilized tool.

A promise to the future, that when each soul sails,

It will be a merry sail, cheering on their mates to harvest seals.

No longer will they mourn over a ship’s sail.


The water remembers,

when the boats first moved from the coast.

Our history seems anchored to this past.

Where do we exist outside of colonial blues?

Right here, at the water’s shore, we remember;

We are more than what broke us, remolded us.


When I think of the Elmina Castle,

I sense a shift in the tides

I see where stories intertwine

I hear of freedom’s anthem, a melody so rare,

as the waves wash away the weary symbol of pain.

Leaving in its wake a fresh fragrance of fear metamorphosed.

Tell me what hope tastes like,

what would you give as a canvas for galvanizing hopeful dreams for gain?


“Be free” they say, we want to be free, this they say with fervent might

And with each layer of rust that falls off, history’s chains begin to unbind

Elmina will no longer be home for tales of slaves chained

But a sanctuary where hope will reign.

Reclaiming agency, a shared decree

It’s our space they say with pride – it’s home.

No longer bound by the past’s embrace.


Mpanyin se, akyer3kyer3 ma akwankyer3, nti


Teach our young, that ours is a history of pride


Our names, a compass to where our people reside

Our foods the sound of a fontomfrom to voyagers from hours of sailing

Let this tale be retold never to fade.

Let it sounds keep our feet nimble,

Let the next shared sunrise, catch us in regal steps, unafraid,

Reclaiming these spaces loong, long after the raid!


Emma Ofosua Donkor is author of the poetry collection titled I wish You Courage in the Night Season. A freestyle poet, she finds expression through writing and performing spoken word poetry. She is the board chair of the Poetry Association of Ghana, founder of the AAWPFestival, and editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Hadithi. In her role as creative entrepreneur, Emma is founder of Tuniq Africa Ltd — a project management company focusing on creative art events and concerts. She is also an active auntie to many nieces and nephews — a role she loves and takes seriously. You can find her on instagram at EmmaOfosua or aawpfestival and on twitter at aawpfestival.

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christinah chauke poetry february 2024

My spirit burst into a dance.

I did not forget my spear, sharpened on the rocky violence of Winterveld,

Held low,

A machete used in shambas is clung to my waist

It is on this ships pass horizon

A jicksaw

Life seemingly on a doze

That my spirit burst into perceiving

The twinkles of the black sky

sat with Yemaya

Not a rape victim

Not a fearful,

called upon all the women in me

The courageous Goatherds

The divine healers

The fearless matriarchs who waged silent wars, survived lightning strikes, fought and killed snakes of the jungles

The barefooted who danced with the gods

The free women with unstrapped dangling breasts

We danced for all the paths crossed

We danced to the full moonlight until we were ready to set forth again…


Christinah Chauke has loved stories since childhood and first engaged literature from her grandmother’s novels. She was born in Winterveld, in the far north of Pretoria, South Africa. She studied international communications and psychological counselling. Her passion for social justice and mental health awareness inspires her writing. She is a humanitarian who actively advocates for equality, sustainability and biodiversity conservation. She writes poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction. You can find her on instagram and facebook.

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khayelihle benghu poetry february 2024

A burnt offering, or should it be fasting of gold and plenty?

In these hours, last days of hardship

What should we do to keep children out of harm’s way?

Maybe redeem ourselves and prove ourselves crusaders and not instigators of ruin.

Last night I heard the earth cry, tears of rain that flooded skyscrapers and eroded the toughest bridges.

Mouth so wide it swallowed homes whole, schools and roads.

Look now, Holy Father, we are turned foreigners in our own land.

Which blood would be enough sacrifice in this den we call earth?

Disarm a ticking bomb and gun held on our head.

Climate change is a hot coal in each and everyone’s back.

How was life in ancient times when earth was formed and culled from nothing?

Adam lived in Eden, it was life before science and machine

What if we had held back progress and maintained the olden ways?

Simplicity in every form,

from caveman to stone pot.

Would destiny be the same if no civilization ever transpired?

I wonder which road led us here to this fate.

That we became bearer of this hefty cross.

Yesterday I survived the earthquake, today it is a flood and I hear it will be much worse tomorrow.

What of civilization? Should I give up all and return to write on stones?

Today as I reflect on this life, I see that civilization was no work of saints.

My life, what will become of you in reverse times if civilization is done away with?

What sacrifice should we give for this den of dragons where we now have to live?


Khayelihle Benghu is a nurse and a freelancer. She resides in Soweto, South Africa. Her hobbies include drawing and gardening — mostly culinary herbs. She has been writing since 2008, and this is the first time her work has been published. You can find her on Facebook.

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sibani sen poetry february 2024

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul”

and after a long journey, after experiencing the worst others are capable of

after being flung back only

I, exile, find myself waiting at some foreign transit station

waiting to be, long, belong, grow, rooted

I, continent: my hands, eyes, feet, shoulders, knees, mouth

waiting to be held, seen, grounded, spread

I, body, wear, what I pull over my head at night to sleep under

waiting for a roof, blanket, dream to call my own

my child’s hands trace the dirt that remains

some speak of dirt to name soil that has been displaced

my palms the paths I knew

its lines also contain my futures,

my eyes the family I will not see again

a pile of bodies in between the land and me.


‘scape

the rift is a dream-hoard

ghost presences shimmer in the air

desire gutters over

the lip of the border


they want –who are the they

property, payback, collateral

I long for a waking that remembers

a name, a life


my shadow grows

long with tomorrows

whose oath to stanch the tears

the dead shed only yesterday


death the only truth of the living

the silent stations of the stars

cross over me, shelter is the promise

of the sun in my eye again


my head is not a stone

my words are not bars

“we do not inherit the landscape from our ancestors

but borrow it from our children”


a ticking within and in the distance

sun drifts, grass splits muteness doubles the mind

another shot on the road remnants’ trail

without eyes and tongue, without hands


the earth a cart of limbs

only a shoe remains.

in the quiet of the night the wind

rips holes for me to walk through


Water Writ

Across the sea vowels appear and disappear.

The susurrus of waves lives in your throat of truth.

Your cloud messenger makes a ceaseless passage.

I must listen with iron in my mouth.

I must read the blood gathering at the shore.

Why did you swaddle me in this liquid shroud?

Here is where my inheritance drowns.

I will fill up my heart with what’s lost.


Sibani Sen teaches creative writing and South Asian history. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of publications including Saranac Review, Off the Coast, J Journal, Rogue Agent, and SWWIM. She has done collaborative projects with the History Design Studio at the Harvard Hutchins Center, the Concord Museum, the Beacon Street Arts Studios in Somerville, the former Green Street Studio in Cambridge, and the pop-up New Rasa Initiative group at the Public Theater in NYC. Her current projects based on migration and feminism include forthcoming poetry and a monograph on the Indian pre-modern poet Bharatchandra. You can find her at SibaniSen.com.

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christopher rubio-goldsmith poetry january 2024

I just want to invent some new words

because the words I have now do not work.

They just crash around into walls and

sleeping dogs. When I say them in a dark room

it remains that way and outside the wind blows

them down the alley. I want new words that

bring the sky to the shore. Words that bring

one edge to the other edge and create

a surface everyone can walk over and find

that one big daring whatever. That una cosa que es lleno

and stays lleno. These new words will fix any

cracks and allow mysteries that help compose

songs and paintings that hang and remind us all


of all of us and our future as us. A new dance

at a shore or in a canyon under the lush.


I want these new words to string out

in the sky; rainbows of letters, comets

of meaning, stars that shape the way we

attend rituals. A new type of security

blanket. A new way to swim in a rushing

river or navigate a trail through a selva.

These words that will guide us all

when we discover our fate

piling up against our will.


Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith was born in Merida, Yucatan, grew up in Tucson, Arizona and taught English at Tucson High School for 27 years. Much of his work explores growing up near the border, being raised biracial/bilingual and teaching in a large urban school where 70% of the students are American/Mexican. A Pushcart nominee, his writings will appear in Drunk Monkeys, Inverted Syntax and have been publishedin Sky Island Journal, Muse, Discretionary Love and other places too. His wife, Kelly, sometimes edits his work, and their two cats seem happy.

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Matthew E. Henry poetry january 2024

she could be my sister. this face

I recognize from every elementary

memory. a face I see in the mirror

beneath the hair, the scars, the slowly

etching wrinkles. the mischievous brow

and open forehead. the nose and cheeks

and smile. the eyes. all ours. but when

I read the title of this gelatin silver print

of a 1950s photograph, the “West Africa”

triggers memories even more somatic.


I ponder the possibilities within this face

from Ghana. not a doppelganger, family

separated by generations and oceans and

chains and ship holds and molasses and

rum and ackee and saltfish and tilapia and

plantain and fufu and bammy and rice &

peas and jollof rice and that same mouth

unable to say so much to so many gone.


After James Barnor’s Self-Portrait with a Store Assistant at the West African Drug Company, 1952


Black Men and Women in a Tavern

oil on wood, 1650

workshop of David Teniers the Younger


they are not worthy to be painted

because they are unusual, or

because they are free

to sit pensively over bread. free

to drink, to smoke a pipe

without assumptions about

what they contain. free—

in clothes colorful

as their given names,

shades of blue, red,

and white—to talk

shit, raise voices and

exaggerated hands

over a story

without being perceived

as a threat to police

or white women. no.

this is not a suburban starbucks,

a cookout in a public park,

deck chairs beside the pool.

this is Antwerp. 1650.

they are worthy

simply because

they are.


casually and casualty share a Latin root

      “You don’t build your whole life around brutality by mistake.

      You have to want that. You have to plan that.”

              ~ Fairview, Jackie Sibblies-Drury


we all know the story. Stella Liebeck, age 79,

spilled a hot cup of McDonald’s coffee. it soaked

her cotton sweatpants and burned away 3 degrees

of muscle and fatty tissue. after 8 days of skin grafts—

reconstruction of inner thigh, labia, perineum—

she begged for $20k to cover the lost 16% of skin.

McDonald’s—of course—refused. having settled

over 700 similar claims, they had to take a stand.

make an example.


no one wants to be seen as the bad guy, the villain.

even the super-rich in those slasher films, with their

killing-people-fetishes and fucking-people-up-fetishes.

when they cut off fingers with chainsaws, or lock

co-eds in basements with hammers and bleach to fight

for their lives, they have justifications for keeping

their victims dirty and screaming and crying and scared—

brown and bleeding. it seems we enjoy them—the movies

keep being made. are acceptable as something that happens.


court proceedings reveled the corporate strategy:

franchises ordered to serve drive-thru coffee

at 200 degrees. their lawyers argued the benefit

for commuting customers. after bites of Egg McMuffin

and hash brown, their black slurry would be hot,

but not tongue-scalding, by the time they arrive

at work. the system worked as designed.


Chomsky said it’s impossible to knee-crush a neck

while calling yourself a true son of a bitch. villains

always have their rationalizations.  they argue

there are no “victims”—not really. we seem to agree.

the Dred Scott decision. the Indian Removal Act.

the Greaser Act. the Chinese Exclusion Act. the black codes.

the Insular Cases. redlining. the New Deal exclusions.

Korrematsu. the southern strategy. the war on drugs.

the Clinton crime bill. gerrymandering. redistricting. trump

v. Hawaii. SFFA v Harvard. we seem content knowing

it just keeps happening—in different ways—as designed.


Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of six poetry collections, editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, and associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes and Rise Up Review. The 2023 winner of the Solstice Literary Magazine Stephen Dunn Prize, MEH is published in Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, and The Worcester Review among others. MEH is an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground. On twitter/X find him at @MEHPoeting.

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Eaton jackson poetry january 2024

circles

birthing across the demure blue of island sea,

lucky throw of empty beer bottle by  a sad, ragged boy on the pier. Ships

unmoored, dragging their anchor up for tv. cities.  tv. countries      boy, looking on.

silhouetted picture of life imitating art,


happiness construct its own smile, its own castles

on naked, red unashamed dirt,

places stumbled upon, Transmuted into

comfort, reclining between thistles, rocks, A pillowed backpack

dreaming bigger dreams of  a better home,


washed away by dreaming, familiarity is felt for      cracked off piece of

recessed switch, in an electric room suspended from main grid,

Home,  labored moan, of mythical places where ships on hunting

safaris, capture what was free, caged trophies,


Home, a howl for more hallucinogens,

a cardboard bed in Manhattan, a scream, as the homeless is carted

away, and city’s gold street is scrubbed, washed of the infringement,


Home. Underpass stumbled upon

                  under


big bridge, New graffiti about mythological repatriation to a moment gone,

Home. A lazy hammock,

languid between coconut trees,

Home. Thousands of miles across thousands of seas….


Eaton Jackson is Jamaican and a naturalized American citizen. He has been writing for most of his adult life. In his writing, he aspires to be worthy of publication and to be read. His poems have been published in several print and online publications, including Tuck Magazine, The New Verse News, Scarlet Review, Querencia, and Passage Journal.