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tajudeen muadh akanbi poetry october 2023

the last time my brother travelled, he told me his body became a mirror where he sees fear as an aftertaste of flying.

He says, ” I’m sick of all the breaths I lost in my lungs, I’m sick of water letting me drown in it. then, I recover how he covers himself in his skin, how he wishes his home, is not a burnt skin.

Now, I learn to call nostalgia as a rejuvenescence, a revival, a poem going back into his body, as memories and as water.

my brother pronounces home, as a poem, dilapidated from the metaphors on his tongue, how he recollects himself into his skin, learning to love his past and how he covers his body with longings for days dead.


My Home, Is Not a Cadaver of Roses

that I write about grief doesn’t mean my body is a steel, I, glass. This poem opens from the footage of a CCTV capturing how a poet was kidnapped. I recite them into my nerves as stanzas dying, as verses learning the language of survival.

Sometimes, I ask if God has a voice, because a poet is God’s way of creating beauty.

a newspaper headline carries the obituary of a boy burrowed with a body bulleted, I wonder if it means my home is a hymn, a symphony. I firefly, I rose, I call this home a baby learning how to crawl from death into breath, how the mothers in this home are poems learning to write off worries that hung in them.

I know my home is not a cadaver of roses, because one day, a poet kidnapped will be freed, and God’s voice heard, a bulleted boy will learn to whole the holes in his body and a mother will one day learn the languages of joy and this home is/will be a garden I learn to tender just as I tender the griefs in this poem.


Breaking

they say you need to break into years of dust before you crawl back into yourself, I burgeon my body into wraps of refrains.

They say a poem is how we look at the sky and pluck stars, I carry myself into fireflies morphing themselves into oxygen, water and everything lucid.

I find no peace and all my wars are done.

I fear and hope, I burn, I freeze. – A poet

I break into wits and into days I run into things clinging to the past, a bildungsroman, a poem, a canvas painting my body into itself, an ode to nostalgia, and a poem resuscitating into a butterfly.


Tajudeen Muadh Akanbi is an 18-year-old young poet from Osun State, Nigeria. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in different literary magazines and journals including Kalahari Review, Wax Poetry, African Poetry Magazine, Brittle Paper, Meniscus Journal, Icreatives Review, Nanty Greens, Art Lounge, Beneath the Mask, Graveyard Zine, Eboquills, and elsewhere.  He can be found on Twitter @tajudeenmuadh01, Instagram @lightening.pen.

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vincent casaregola poetry october 2023

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

                — William Faulkner

 

Each fall, they appear, along

with all the excessive ornament

of comic death—the plastic

skeletons, the pumpkin-faced

displays of fear and faux horror—

 

while out in the yards, on lawns,

sprout Styrofoam head stones

with cotton-batting webs and

spiders from the party store—

all the fakery in the face of death.

 

But from the trees, the cheap and easy

prop can hang, a white sheet,

head stuffed with cotton, two

black eyes, and rope at the neck—

they move even in a gentle wind.

 

Children playing before and

parents within suburban homes

know not or speak not of history,

but just add more candy to the dish,

more laughter at the hanging ghosts.

 

All too recently, even now

the real “strange fruit” still hangs

on bloody nights, torch-lit for terror,

that echoed once through Meeropol’s

words, through Holiday’s aching tones.

 

Some would die and be left roadside,

some dumped in the local creek,

some buried without mark but

found later, when revolting soil

shoved the evidence to sight.

 

Bravado came from drink and common

hate to the bubba-faced men with

reddened eyes and necks, who growled

in cracker-barrel backrooms, then

donned sheets and rode horses, later pick-ups

 

to break the peaceful night with fire

and rage—the white-clothed “priests”

from the demon cult of torturing death,

who shouted fury, sweated anger, grasping

their sacramental whips and ropes.

 

Mornings after, families anxious,

then anguished found what remained,

and the cries and threnodies rang

across hills and valleys—one more

sacrifice to be taken from a cross.

 

Elsewhere, wives of the angry

washed sweat and bleached blood

from the sacrilegious night robes,

as bubba-men grunted their meals,

returned to work under reddened sun.

 

 

Fathers, mothers, today, you should know

your child’s autumn laughter curses you

before those gagging ghosts, and no

confection can sweeten the guilt, no

bleach cleanse this long legacy of blood.

 

* Note: The original song “Strange Fruit” was written by activist/teacher Abel Meeropol in the 1930s. The Billie Holiday performances and recordings of the song, beginning in 1939, made it famous.

 

8816*

[St. Louis, MO — August 2014 and After]


Merely numbers, four numbers

in sequence, signifying any

number of possible meanings


merely numbers, the address

of a common house,

on an ordinary street where


mostly unknown people

live anonymous lives, strangers

even to those footsteps away—


it was nowhere till elsewhere

the man residing fired his gun,

policing the strangers


of another street of houses

with bricks like these, and

lawns as green as these, and so


a black man died in that street,

died for being young, perhaps

proud, certainly for being


black—and he lay on pavement

in his own cooling blood

in the sun of that hot August day


and the energy that had been

his breath became a storming wind

of shock and grief and fist-raised


angry protests, that some heard

as justice, and others as rage,

till more guns were drawn


and the armored blue waves

opposed and surrounded the storm

but could not silence the wind

                                                                                                                       

and back at 8816, one or two

writers or photographers paused

to see what mysteries hid behind


curtained windows and silent brick,

behind the closed and locked doors

or beneath the still-green grass


and the man packed up and moved,

so his erstwhile neighbors passed

and wondered what next, from where—


their rumors flowed daily, weekly

to flower fears even as the season

turned cold and the leaves fell—


by Halloween, the fire pits came out

and the children tricked for treats

and the parents followed brats


with beers, and stoked more fears—

“they’re coming some day, coming

with fire, and we need be ready,


alert and ready,” and more beers

brought foggy sleep to watchers,

and a couple dumped the embers,


they thought extinguished, into bins

where hours later the embers flared

and fired the house, residents barely


escaping with breath and the clothes

on their backs, and the burnt remnant

stood an epitaph through winter months—


armed and vigilant, they seek protection

from anyone appearing darkly different,

from the brown mower or the black


delivery man, the shadow of difference,

and they believe themselves protected

from those who do not look the same

                                                                                                                       

but who, in the shadowed night, will

protect us from protectors, and who,

God knows, protects them from themselves


* 8816 was the house number address of former police officer Darren Wilson who shot and killed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, on August 9, 2014.


Child, Do Not Be Sad

[For the Parents Afraid of History]


Child, do not be sad, do not

feel the weight of the past, of

the history of fault and moral failure.


Do not be sad at the fact

of ancestors, long ago, who seized

dark strangers on darker nights


and transported them, wave

by wave, through oceans of hell

and high water nightmares.


Do not be sad, child, at the

record of crimes that made fortunes

we can now enjoy, because we


stole lands and lives, committing

genocides on peoples seeming so different

they were not people to us.


No, child, do not mourn for suffering

souls, chained in ship holds

and sold at auctions, do not fret


at the thought of those shackled

wrists and ankles, where red-rusting

iron left its mark with redder blood.


Child, do not be sad that even now,

we live well and others do not—the poor

are with us always, says the book,


so poverty is the necessary evil

suffered by those, you and I know,

are less deserving of our god’s grace.


No, child, do not be troubled in dreams

of young, dark girls, raped in the night

or in the broad daylight, by haughty masters.


Child, be not sad, do not listen to

the histories, told sotto voce, by those

who rarely have had a voice, a place.


Child, be glad to have your desires

met tenfold when others long fruitlessly

for the merest scraps of hope.


Child, you are the one blessed, anointed

in the white light of the white mind,

that reveals your chosen path above


and beyond the many who lost or lose,

the many humbled by the weight of chains

and lash, the many who remain in terror


of a night filled with shadow men, once horsed,

but now in pick-ups and vans, guns raised,

saluting their raging race of white pride.


Child, do not be sad, for we will keep you

warmly held in the arms of ignorance,

innocent of knowledge, free of truth.


Vincent Casaregola teaches American literature and film, creative writing and rhetorical studies at Saint Louis University. He has published poetry in a number of journals, as well as creative nonfiction, short fiction, and flash fiction. He has recently completed a book-length manuscript of poetry dealing with issues of medicine, illness, and loss (Vital Signs) for which he is seeking a publisher.

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Decolonial Passage is honored to announce the 2023 nominations for the Best of the Net Anthology.  This list includes writing published between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.  Congratulations to the nominees!

Poetry

“Read the Receipts” by Nancy L. Meyer

“The Food of Our Ancestors” by Oliver Sopulu Odo

“I’ve Kept You Alive” by Mildred Kiconco Barya

“Blight” by Catherine Harnett

“We Were Always Hungry” by Leslie B. Neustadt

“Losing the Zero” by Aubrianna Snow

Short Stories

“Zain” by Sophia Khan

“Number Ninety-Four” by Mehreen Ahmed

Creative Nonfiction

“Searching for Aina in Hawaii” by Kathy Watson

“The Butterfly Harvesters” by Cheryl Atim Alexander

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Abdulmueed balogun adewale poetry september 2023

You stare into the future your eyebrows

Lined with the eyeliner of hope. You are in dire need

 

Of a miracle, like everyone in this burning city. You want

Every scent, every ounce of your past to be scratched off

 

With the claws of extinction from the chambers of your aching skull.

Once, you saw a Black lanky boy riding his jaunty bicycle down

 

The gut of this people-mourning street— a fragment of your past encroached

From behind like a thief repainting on the canvas of your mind the image

 

Of the day you almost cursed God— when on this same people-bereaved street

A cluster of wayward egret-white boys like scavengers lessened you into an item of ridicule

 

Because God— the most wise, most just— painted you Black. You are in need,

Like someone suffering from hyperglycemia, of insulins concocted with fierce reasons to live,

 

But even love— the universal lord and saviour— can’t suffice in your case,

For your figures on the scoreboard of compassion ranks you first in the file of love’s infidels.

 

All you want is the morbid rhythm of your past to be forgotten

On the wanton lips of history, you pine for going to bed every night

 

Without having your street of thoughts flooded with the bones, ashes

& the cold faces of everything you’ve buried but failed to remain dead.

 

On Rejections

Of course, I want my poems out there

In the so called big journals, first class magazines…

In between the jaws of those big literary pitbulls.


But lately, even the so called small dogs: struggling to bark, fledgling stars:

About to make their first twinkle:  aren’t even proud, willing to offer my refined truths

And well cooked lies altars to propagate their gospel.


I’ve just completed my debut chapbook manuscript, I know I am supposed

To say the title next and maybe describe the intricacies of her entrails a  little,

Say for example It’s a book of poems about so and so…, before trudging on

On the slippery road of story telling. But I won’t!


I will have you know, she’s suffered a handful of rejections

From both crude and refined surgeons and I am sure those brazen jabs

Won’t be the last to her delicate throat.


I am not complaining, neither am I calling you to book for my woes.

So don’t feel sore for me.  Shouldering my woes is my responsibility.


Of course, it’s sad to admit this, but I have to,

I am afraid of sending her to another literary surgeon, another hospital,

Another press in this city and offshore for diagnosis.


I don’t want to be shredded by another :

“Thank you for giving us the opportunity to diagnose your precious daughter,

We are sorry, saddened to inform you she doesn’t stand a chance of survival out there,

In the vast world of literature.”


Troubling! This may sound, but one day, when I am done redressing the gashes

On her delicate throat,  I shall offer that delicate throat of my only daughter again to the scalpels

Of other literary surgeons manning the decision-making  theaters

In various literary hospitals and presses.


It’s a free world, of course, you can place under scrutiny the quality of my fatherhood.

Say what kind of father keeps sending his one and only daughter to the mouth of sharks.

I will tell you, a great one. Who wants only the best for his daughter.


And as always, after dropping her off at the glassy emergency door of the hospital,

I shall be waiting outside, under the shed of a towering tree or in the back seat

Of my Mercedes Benz GLE 450 in a nearby car park, sipping patience from a blue mug,

Expecting the usual and with a glint of hope the not-so-usual response.


Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale is a Black poet and winner of the 2021 Kreative Diadem Annual Poetry Contest. He has been a nominee for the Pushcart Prize and the BOTN and a finalist in the 2021 Wingless Dreamer Book of Black Poetry Contest. He is a poetry editor at The Global Youth Review and a 2021 HUES Foundation Scholar. He prays silently in his heart, that his verses outlive him. His poems have been published in: Brittle Paper, Soundings East Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, ROOM, Watershed Review, Poetry Column-NND, The Westchester Review, The Oakland Arts Review, The Night Heron Barks Review, Subnivean Magazine, Short Vine and elsewhere. He tweets from: AbdmueedA

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robbie gamble poetry september 2023

His White girlfriend at the time passed the word

that the Gambles     of THE Procter & Gambles

who lived not far from her in Belmont

were away     on an extended trip to Hawaii

so Malcolm dressed up as a salesman

to check it out     According to the biography

they got away clean     with a pile of bed linens

and a case of Johnny Walker     It was 1945


My Dad was fourteen then      I asked if he knew

any Gamble relatives in Belmont      He squinted

said     maybe a cousin on the Sidney Gamble side

couldn’t say for sure     When I was a teen

I came home one night to find our back door

pried open     drawers strewn on the floor

My parents were away     vacationing in Maine

They said    call the police     I wielded a bat

to probe dark basement corners


When I went up to bed     the back door

still swinging     I found I wasn’t afraid     just

acutely aware    that the air in the house

had been altered      by the presence

of another     trailing through it


And what if Malcolm instead 

had looted my grandfather’s mansion

in Milton         A different Gamble    

no scotch     but plenty of silver    

and my grandmother’s jewelry

What if he had rifled his study

found the boxes      of eugenicist pamphlets

You Wouldn’t Let a Moron Drive a Train!!

or his correspondence      with Margaret Sanger


We do not want word to go out

that we want to exterminate

the Negro population 

and the minister is the man

who can straighten out

that idea if it ever occurs

to any of their more

rebellious members


How would Detroit Red have taken

to such blue-eyed devil talk


I can’t recall     what was gone

from our house that night    

and what is precious anyway   

when those possessions     don’t have the heft    

to build a home within our memory


and what are possessions anyway   

when his father died      crushed by a streetcar

and he was convinced the Klan was involved

somehow     and his mother languished

in a state asylum    and he juggled hustles

just to eat


Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in the Carve, Lunch Ticket, RHINO, Salamander, and The Sun. He is the poetry editor for Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices. He divides his time between Boston and Vermont, and he can be found at robbiegamble.com

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In waters where freedom whispers in ebbs

and the road unyielding,

we seek something in nature’s solitude,

in nature’s tilt, a lisp, delicate.

Bittersweet is the hope that holds

melancholy and turbid dreams patched together

in aging vessels, where our stories lay.

Of dreams and of dreaming, something buried within

where our  lives have unraveled

From what we used to weave, hands together

with threads, pulling apart

the edges from where the sky’s shadow engulfed us.

Before we became the songs we had refused to hear   

Before our blossoms became the diaspora dance, now alien to us

Before our souls finally leave the home we carry,


And hope finds something buried within us.


The Forgotten Dance

 Within the land, we weave

  in the colors our mothers used to weave

The hues they proudly  embedded in

  the paths marked by their song

Each day wounds sought and  found

  solemn journeys guided by footsteps

Testifying for the dance


That still holds posterity, stitched together.


Lind Grant-Oyeye is a poet and literary critic of African descent. She is widely published in literary magazines globally, including New Verse News, Poetry Ireland, Radius magazine, New Orleans Review, and Books Ireland. In her view, poetry is a voice and also a medium for change.

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mira martin-parker poetry august 2023

I’m wondering if you ever reflect on your social position, function, and corresponding duty? I do. I reflect on it all the time, here on the other side of your opinions, peckings, and ideas. I ponder your shadows, try to discern their meaning, try to discern what’s valid, true, and hence sound.

Sometimes down here on this end, it feels like there’s an element of disdain—or is it contempt?—involved in what’s coming from your direction. I sense you don’t particularly care for me. Like me. I suspect you even think I’m kind of trashy, in all the many ways one can be trashy.

But I wonder about you as well. Can you be trashy, too? Or do you feel yourself obligated to be good, obligated to guide, to help others improve their trashy condition?

What are the ethical rules of your occupation? Clearly I’ve broken the social rules governing the place, for I’m definitely kept in place down here below in the cave, I mean the trash can, waiting to be picked up and taken away. Dumped.

How are things up in goodness land? Is your master, your boss, your patron being good to you? Does he love you and pay your rent, put food on your table, buy you pretty things, give you cigarettes and beer, perhaps a pretty dress, a lovely compact to check your reflection in, make sure you look nice and held together? (You’re perfect in his eyes, after all.)

There’s a scene in Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground in which Underground Man lectures a poor young prostitute. He helps her see her actual condition, what will happen to her if she doesn’t correct her course. He’s a rotten egg, a real nasty misanthrope, and he only does this guiding for selfish egotistical reasons. He’s ashamed to be caught with his pants down, after all.

But ultimately he was right, and she saw the truth and lit up. He opened her eyes to the light, it was her!She was the light, she was beautiful and good. Once she saw this, she had to leave, run, get away from that awful debt-trap, that meat grinder, that cauldron waiting to consume her.

Underground Man used his skills for good. And it worked. He saved her ass.

What about you? What’s your duty? Are you saving asses?

Or are you leading asses into meat grinders, cauldrons, and dirty beds in dirty places with dirty selfish men?

Do you ever reflect on your duty? I do. I live in the trashcan where you toss your waste.

Mira


Mira Martin-Parker earned a B.A. at The New School for Social Research, and an M.A. in philosophy and an MFA in creative writing at San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared in various publications, including the Istanbul Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, great weather for MEDIA, and Zyzzyva.

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dibyasree nandy poetry august 2023

The floating white fire in the night sky dims

An outline looms, is golden-hewn

Across the crag, beyond the clouds

Our home seen in the horizon.

 

It’s no mere delf, a realm at the hilly toe

Halls of diamond, a silver grotto from days of old

Far down below, rills of jewels

Fall and tumble, fountains still flow.

 

At the cliff’s edge, we gaze and smile

Happy faces once weather-beaten

We traipsed for miles, our heads covered

To hide the shame that we lost our abode.

 

In rain and storms of hail, we bled

Our eyes focussed on the end

Where the thrush and eagles will fly

Oak and pine will welcome us soon

The scent of air, guide and chaperone.

 

We murmur notes of fog and snow

Passing by rocks of jagged stone

Through towns of wealth and lakes distrait

Inching closer, waiting domicile.

 

The quarters always gleamed bright

Seats of silks, burnished floors, a crystal sight

Our looks of hope, well-pleased, content

Even before we tapped on the door.

 

For those asleep, we play a song

For those missing, we sound the bell

We walk past fields and stacks of hay

The vales recounting the number of days.

 

If we falter, our brothers will support

If we are wounded, our mates will heal

A family knit, red-threaded unit

To stand beside in dire need.

 

The floating white fire in the night sky dims

An outline looms, is golden-hewn

Across the crag, beyond the clouds

The mountains call, a lullaby for home.

 

 

Dibyasree Nandy began writing in 2020, after completing M.Sc and M.Tech. She has authored poetry and short-story collections, as well as full-length fiction. Her works have appeared in more than 60 anthologies and literary journals.

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olivia andrade poetry july 2023

fourteen years old

on a westward-bound plane

i become an american.

not really,

i was always

american and mexican and

mexican-american and

just another

foreigner, especially

to those who’d say:


watch the way those people talk,

why is that daughter’s skin dark

when her mother’s is white

let’s charge them 200 yuan

instead of 50

but my mother is good at bartering

na tai gui la

we don’t need the extra 150 yuan

like they must


in the lift they ask where

i come from and i

respond, to their astonishment

in poorly-toned mandarin

with a place i barely know

but to them have more in common with

than my real home, right past

the bustling road

in the gated culdesac of

high-rise apartments reserved for

wealthy chinese diplomats

and expats, like us


english at home, english at

school, except for an hour

mandarin in the metro station

spanish when grandma calls

que inteligente son mis chinitos

american when my british friends

call it football

i stop calling it soccer, too


four years old, i hold my nose in the fish market,

savour the salmon my ayi brings home

in the basket of her little black moped

street stinky tofu stains my nostrils

sweet tanghulu strips them clean

let’s get family market baozi for the freezer

the ones with red inside, not green

if the video pirates are outside the store

can we watch something new tonight?


taxi cabs go

requested, but unhailed

because we look like we

probably don’t speak

mandarin. sometimes we catch one

only for it to be sent away by my

father, it has no seatbelts, laura

the roads are dangerous here, you know

but i was upset

because it was one of those cabs

with a TV in the back


the plane lands firmly

you’re home, you must feel so at home

i roll my suitcase

into a home with

fifty fewer stories

welcome back to the land of

grocery aisles miles long,

not kilometers

you love doritos, don’t you?

welcome back to

drive-thrus and

trash trucks,

youtube and

tap water

no more water bottles

to brush our teeth

this is your home.


everyone asks

what it was like to grow up

in china

but no one has

asked what it was like

to grow up in

a bubble of

america that is not america,

in some ways

not even close


Olivia Andrade is an English major at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo pursuing an emphasis in creative writing and a minor in music. Despite being of Mexican-American heritage and born in Pasadena, California, Olivia grew up in Hong Kong and Shanghai, China. She is a trained vocalist with a lifetime of experience and has worked as a vocal instructor. A lifelong lover of poetry and lyricism, she writes her own songs and performs them in the San Luis Obispo area with her band, 7blu. After graduation, she will embark on a career as a professional songwriter. Find her on instagram at ohliiveeyuh

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salimah valiani poetry june 2023

–For Myesha Jenkins, who transitioned in 2020, after 72 years in Africa and the Diaspora


still bringing us together

two and a half years on

Tuesday poets what’s app group

you created for Myesha’s Memoirs

podcasting our poetry and jazz

to celebrate your life

soon to end


Jozi House of Poetry

where we first met

at the Bioscope where you started it

and chose to move to the Afrikan Freedom Station

when Maboneng became too lit


Out There Sessions you spawned at The Orbit

adding a new instrument    stanzas

to valves reeds and keys

featuring so many poets  musicians

rarely yourself


you and a few springing

Feelah Sistah! Collective

poets still backstage early

21st century Africa

Soft fists…

Heaving the needles

as Plath once wrote


how in Laughter Remembered you

rendered the poetry of a young girl’s

fierce hug

raw truth

unfurling art for humanity in schools branching beyond

the choice few into South Africa’s many languages 

spoken  written  drawn 


mushrooms that first appeared

in my mint patch day after you passed

orange on green yesterday

white on green today

What are you doing out so late, ma?

you once wrote

playing mushrooms in mint

you answer

like stanzas and jazz


Salimah Valiani is a poet, activist and researcher. Her poetry collection, 29 leads to love (Inanna 2021), is the 2022 winner of the International Book Award for Contemporary Poetry. She has published four other poetry collections: Breathing for Breadth (TSAR), Letter Out: Letter In (Inanna), land of the sky (Inanna), and Cradles (Daraja). Her story-poem, “Dear South Africa,” was selected for publication in Praxis Magazine’s 2019-2020 Online Chapbook Series. Her audio and chapbook, Love Pandemic, was released in late 2022 by Daraja Press. See more about her work on Facebook at SalimahValianiPoet.

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brandon kilbourne poetry may 2023

On exhibit at the Berlin Museum of Natural History is the dinosaur Giraffatitan brancai, which, like a giraffe, had a long upright neck and forelimbs longer than its hindlimbs. Notably, Giraffatitan is a specimen of colonialism, having been collected from the locality of Tendaguru in the colony of German East Africa (Tanzania today) between 1909 and 1912 and brought back to the German Empire’s capital.


Here in Berlin from Africa,

taken from Tendaguru’s hills!


Lofty among the atrium’s

glass and steelwork high overhead,


eye-socketed summit of bone—

The Giraffe Titan, astride Earth


once again! Do not strain your necks

as you gaze upward in awe, dwarfed


by Mesozoic proportions—

Depleting a continent green,


between this cavernous ribcage

and pelvis sat the source of its


insatiable appetite that

was fed by devouring its way


across Africa’s rife lushness

Strung along these gargantuan


bones were insensate muscles, their

violent contractions swinging


the limbs lumbering wantonly

to leafy troves snatched by its maw.


Next, note how the skull would look out

from this neck tall as a tree’s trunk,


the inhuman heights distancing

higher thoughts from the disasters


waged as each footfall would convulse

the earth, the trail of footprint scars.


Do grasp ladies and gentlemen,

that before you stands the terror


of its time, hunger incarnate

covered in scales, a creature who


by a glutton’s nature, would not

leave a single leaf on a twig


as whole forests suffered its teeth,

entire lakes flowing as rivers


guzzled down a sluice-long throat,

vast wilds fouled to wastes by sludge dung.


My good people, I implore you

to know that this scourge preyed upon


lands homing other animals,

availing itself of food


that would sustain them, untroubled

by whether then they might perish.


Woeful species that could not flee

Were left to the famines sprouting


from its presence, fields of ribs bleached

by the sun, with any challenge


extinguished by the immense weight

crushing bodies beneath four feet.


Be thankful that our Berlin Beast

is but a nightmare’s memory


bound to this defunct skeleton—

Please though take care to remember:


Evolution has a knack for

repetition, reinventing


wings among birds, bats, and beetles,

sleek fins among sharks and dolphins—


She’s likewise over the ages

rehashed her ravaging Titan,


finding a new form to harbor

its continent-gorging greed.


From Europe’s soil, her behemoth’s

avarice arose once again,


albeit in a much smaller

human’s stature. Staking feeding


grounds in Africa through charnel

colonies, this voracity


without end tries in vain to cram

itself full, stuffing its mouth with


diamonds and sapphires, rubbers sap,

gold and copper, clear-cut timber


medicinal herbs, ivory

and hides, animals bound for zoos,


fossils destined for museums,

plantation-grown cocoa and cane,


coffee, sisal, and palm’s red oil,

despoiled rivers and vistas, lands


fertile, grasses for cattle, men

yoked faceless for beast’s hard labor.


If you were to tremble at just

the mention of such crazed desire


not content until Africa

was consumed down to mere pebbles,


I could not blame you. However,

do know I tell you these horrors


alongside the bones showcased here,

so you can recognize as truth


that a rapacity apt for

a dinosaur can masquerade


as something human, giving you

no future reason to gawk, breath


stopped by a gasp betraying

an ignorance of our darkest


nature. Take this chance to acquaint

yourselves with this recurring bane


so to know when it walks the Earth

again, as we can but surely


wager that this monstrosity

will be reborn at a mere whiff


of wealth wafting from soil, luckless

lands left to fend off famished jaws.


Brandon Kilbourne is a Pushcart-nominated poet and research biologist from Louisiana who is currently based at the Museum of Natural History Berlin. Since 2018, his work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Poet Lore, Ecotone, Obsidian, Tahoma Literary Review, Artemis, West Trade Review, Split Rock Review, The Fourth River, Santa Fe Literary Review, Panel Magazine, Slant, Sky Island Journal, Catamaran Literary Reader, and elsewhere. His work has also been translated into Estonian in Sirp.

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K.O. Bailey poetry may 2023

Dey said to sit and wait behind dees bars

and as it was, I heeded dey commands

because I knew dey light and I was dark.

Dey promised me a trial was at hand,

but damn if I ain’t tryna lee dis place.

No food and all dis heat sho’ ain’t no joke

but lissen here, da smile on my face

was big when all dem boys came in and broke

me out! And I could hardly stand but dey

paraded me aroun’ fo’ all to see.

Befo’ dey took me to da bridge, I say,

Dat white girl dere, she happy as can be!

They didn’t let me turn around to check.

The trial was the noose around my neck.


K.O. Bailey is a recent graduate of Washburn University, earning his English degree, with an emphasis in Creative Writing, and a minor in Film & Video. As a member of Sigma Tau Delta, he is a well-rounded author of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and screenplays and is currently working on a historical-drama screenplay about the real-life lynching of four people in Shubuta, Mississippi in 1918. In addition, he is working hard on a poetry collection inspired by a recent grant-funded trip to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Follow K.O. (@kobaileybooks) on Instagram.”

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aubrianna snow poetry march 2023

Zero is equilibrium, balance

The moment before overdraft

And every night, I watch you lose the zero

Stumbling, falling, cussing these four walls into blank discursive space

Swaying back and forth, like a flag for the nation of our trauma

Back and forth, beyond the negatives or positives

Fumbling, dropping, spilling

You lose the zero in so many ways

But never more than when you stand in front of me with your child eyes

And 50 becomes 5


Snake Charming

For thousands of chainmail-clad nights

I watched you cleanse yourself of demons on the kitchen floor

Pulling snakes from your throat

And hope from your head

Years of resentment under foot

I step softly

And laugh as you watch me

Swallow the serpent of our collective pain


Worldly

Where the train goes, my heart goes

Getting off at every station

Stay for a minute, stay for a year

Each place the same in culmination


In every new city, I worry

There’s nowhere further to go

Yet eventually, the trip continues

Always a new place down the road


Most places, there’s nothing to keep me

Nowhere to rest my head

A quiet escape in the morning

An empty impression left on the bed


But what is it to stay here

To breathe with the seasons change

To know this place throughout

To sing and praise its name


Aubrianna Snow is a Mi’kmaw writer and feminist living and working in Treaty Six Territory, Canada. A graduate of MacEwan University’s journalism program, she writes primarily creative non-fiction and poetry. As a survivor and violence prevention worker, she centres themes of healing from interpersonal and systemic violence. You can find her work in Chatelaine and Muskrat Magazine. Find her on twitter at @aubrisnow or on her webpage aubriannasnow.com.

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mildred kiconco barya poetry march 2023

Dad. You thrive in my dreams. You fly on a magic carpet

of colors. I wish to join you, but you don’t involve me.


I see you falling from the sky. You look like a ship,

large, mechanical, and terrifying. When you land at my feet,

you transform into an organism, a salamander.

Even so, you look more threatening than the ship.


As if you’re hearing my thoughts, you decide to become

a lungfish with a large head. I stroke your head, your eyes

so beautiful. You’ve evolved in your choice of breathing

organs and sound, equipped with extra lungs. How perfect!

No more fluid build-up, oxygen therapy, or the pills you hated.


We laugh about how we both love eating fish. We walk to my

house which is big and made of glass like a greenhouse of plants.

You do not use the door but squeeze in-between the wall and floor,

then crawl into the living room. There’s no telling your limits.


I step outside to call an aquatic company that owns a swimming pool

and specializes in creatures like you. I want to buy you a tank. I fidget

with my phone and desperately press numbers which get erased

the moment they reach three. How to dial a full ten? Eventually,

I return to the room and find that you’ve died in a blue bucket

after chopping yourself to pieces. My sister appears and wants

to cook you. I am distressed. I tell her you’re not a fish! A slice

of salmon materializes and my sister says, Some fish are red,

others whitish-brown—which is the color you are now. Like tilapia,

she adds. I don’t see her point, although I feel less troubled.


The Man Who Changed His Name Twice

Is now old. He lives in the country

plowing land from sunrise to twilight.


He grows carrots, cucumbers and

cauliflower, but he never eats them.


He tends an orchard—mixed fruit trees

and grapes. He makes wine he drinks.


Smells of rancid olives, bitter,

and the color of bruised blackberries.


Every time he squeezes grapes

he cries, remembering the lives


he took, and those he’d promised

to serve and protect but left behind.


He buries the pain in the soil

while tending the veggies.


Can’t stand chopping,

Can’t stop breaking.


Are You Now Afraid for Your Color?

Awake, my people, awake

To love, to burning love

Feel once more the heat of your desire,

Sensuous needs you so callously crucify.


The world does not need your decorum,

your modicum, your sacrifice

The world needs your rage,

your radiant joy, your outrageous gladness.


Rake the logs, rouse the embers

Breathe the fire and consume the darkness

Ignite the bones that have forgotten the power

of touch. Dispel the blanket of sepia gloom.


Bring back pleasure, delicious flavor

And the music that’s your heartbeat.

Aching joy, astounding joy,

The sound of your laughter.


Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer from Uganda now living in North Carolina. Her publications include three poetry books, as well as prose, hybrids, and poems published in Shenandoah, Joyland, The Cincinnati Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. Her fourth full-length poetry collection, The Animals of My Earth School, is forthcoming from Terrapin Books, 2023. She’s working on a collection of creative nonfiction essays, Being Here in This Body. Barya is a board member of African Writers Trust and coordinates the Poetrio Reading events at Malaprop’s Independent Bookstore/Café. She teaches creative writing and literature at UNC-Asheville. She blogs at MildredBarya.com . She is on twitter at MidiBarya and on instagram at MidiBarya.

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alex anfruns poetry march 2023

I beg permission to trample emotions

I am writing to only one of the twenty-eight

outraged lovers of Peru

(who have now become forty-one)

 

Perhaps I stand alone in wanting

to be certain that there are bodies

that the bullets didn’t harm or leave cold?

 

That there are deceased similar to those, to those that

sometimes result unharmed, when the martyr

is completely transformed by martyrdom?

So much so, that his retina took in the casing

that killed the assassin?

 

What fault do I have in wanting to know today the person

who no longer exists?

 

In wanting to know how many barefoot kids

were in the school,

 

How many elderly remained

sitting in the walkway,

 

How many sisters sell in that spot 

that which matters to no one anyway

 

How many names of girls were tallied

in the evenings

or if it was just one that kept him from sleeping.

 

I will speak in a low voice near the place where they buried you

That many have remained quiet and she

didn’t wait.

But these are the emblems worn by all the defeated.

It is because the passion of this predisposition

Has been forgotten by humankind.

Listen: they said that death attracted you more

than your own spine.

That remains true beyond doubt.

 

Song for Aida

Against a background of green paint chipping

a rude white cross stands out

shields surge in a line

In the embroidered backpack, full of pebbles

the boy is missing.


The rebellious woman has become an atom

Violet bruises call our attention

One more jarring movement and order established.

She is one with her flag

contemplating her Wiphala.


We now are all brothers

A bandage falls apart

as if exhibiting his thigh finely sculpted

by labor both urgent and primitive.

You realize how we need each other.


Today they carried away Aida.

Meanwhile, in the hills,

the female relatives rock in their arms the hard stones

Barely twelve noon… and already scheming!


Not allowing even a slit!

They close ranks!

She disappears…

Into pure heart!

They want to hug you comrade.


They Sat on Stones

They are not women, they are vigilantes

Who sat on the stone

Out of love for the land, and thus

their discussion carried their dreams


They are not women, they are warriors

Who put pardons in storage

Out of loathing for the sky, and besides

they didn’t give in to beatings or insults


They are the mothers of martyrs

Who remain complete and their fabric is sincere

They become fired-up miners

in tunnels where explosion is imminent


They are moms, sometimes, of traitors

Who don’t know the monologue of power

They discuss the commands of the powerful in conversation

And their desire is adulterous and parricidal


I understand them and even approve of their reasoning

They have made of suffering a work of art

They are the birthers of this battle for Humankind


Alex Anfruns is a professor, an educator, and a Spanish militant anti-war activist. Co-author of the documentary, “Palestine the Besieged Truth” (Agencia Catalana de Cooperación, 2008), he has lived in Spain, France, and Belgium — the country where he worked as a journalist (Association des Journalistes Profesionnels, AJP). His articles have been translated and published across a wide array of international media outlets. He has worked as a political analyst at Telesur, RT, and Abya Yala TV. The topics he investigates include international relations between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres and development in Latin America. He can be found on his website AlexAnfruns and on twitter.