Featured Poetry

…gargoyles and goddesses mom’s perm potion to magically take my hair from afro crown to rapunzel flow was a smoldering disaster that summer. I shed from shoulder-length to two tiny perpendicular pigtails on either side of my toothless seven-year-old smiling brown face. to not feel so alone, I cut the hair off all my dolls, … Read more

(Bleeding) Ours was a time of darkness. Doctors turned to fathers. Nurses to priests. Now the howling wind of youthful sailors has returned. Trumpets sounding the battle cry of Harlem girls. Bring back your soup bowls and your bread. The river of your ancestors is full and the sun is no longer choking. The Dusty … Read more

SACRED SPACE Sistas where do you go to find yourself? How do you get to your center? And reconnect, when faced with adversity? I find relief in the refuge of Sacred Space Shoes off at the door I enter knowing I will find answers In the solace of my private thoughts She waits, patiently, In … Read more

Remembering the Monastery Between the damaged roof and the walnut tree slightly to the right, I watched Venus appear using a celestial method long discovered by astronomers who registered astral details as we, scribes, illuminated manuscripts in the dim light of the scriptorium. Those days were sacred, when a robin sitting on the window sill … Read more

Let Me Be Let me be like the palm tree resilient and flexible bending back and forth as each storm passes with roots embedded in the earth so deeply no winds can knock me over or pull me out of the ground Never breaking, I remain grounded in my beliefs Let me be like a … Read more

Germ Theory of Poetry by Mark E. Smith I’m the father of poetic procedures Here to warn you against all decaying poetic matter Here to protect you from all poetic miasmas Dunno bout you But amidst a pandemic I’m even more absent minded Even more oddly excited Beware of all shopping expeditions! Beware of entering … Read more

clutch wife, remember to breathe, remember George Floyd, fear floods in, room congested. A poet wrote me a poem that tells me, think of your son when you first wake up and I do but terror for the risk to his soul, his body, his Black skin. This mom’s heart is tumbling, even with wife … Read more

Miscarriage at the Spring Bris Yes, like the child that remembers laughing our sandals tramp over the busted blooms. Pink of Leila’s eyeshadow at the picnic, flashing Pink trees, thick syrupy stink for the bees Pink aisle of the 99 Cents Store, sick with eggs Pink rosé in plastic cups Pink every time I wipe … Read more

Somewhere In-Between We Thought We sat in a crossroads: hallway floor With an unassuming carpet that may Or may have not been just vacuumed. Our legs were crossed, he had lost His mind or was in the process of losing It. How impersonal to pluck it off tongue And to continue missing something: The wallet, … Read more

EPIGRAPH orange me before you obliterate me spread scarlet tinged yellow up from navel to sternum dilute pigments in water rain tears spit sea waves or if you’re in the mood aquavit, and be generous orange me sanguine like the fruit that first made me laugh and weep with its tanginess fiery boldness of dark … Read more