By Toi Derricotte
To be born woman is to know—...
Explore Poems: Epigraph
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- By Rajiv MohabirLook at your feet, so beautiful. Do
not step on the ground, filth will smear them;
your future will fill with pricks. He with a
fearful heart, understand dead. Death will dance
on your head — lift your eyes and see. I am
its servant,... - By Rickey LaurentiisBecause I should’ve wrote this years ago, I’m crying. So what my slow failure pass the years
Make me be crying. So what in Bethlehem I tried to push so much against it, where the Wall is checkpoint... - By Chris AbaniA stream in a forest and a boy fishing,
heart aflame, head hush, tasting the world—
lick and pant. The Holy Scripture
is animal not book.
I should know, I have smoked
the soul of God, psalm burning
between fingers on an African afternoon.
And how is... From the magazine:
k.o.d.a.k.
By Patti Smithpicture this. I’ll play the killer. 16 millimeter.
ebony and ivory. the purest contrast. iris closed.
open sesame. a screen of creamy white satin.
on that wedding lap a white persian cat. a pale
hand pets. milk purr. pan up slow. it’s me see.
in...From the magazine:
Moana Means Home: A Contrapuntal
By Terisa Siagatonusomeone will
touch the Earth
once, I wanted
my own soil.
tried to drown my ankles
in myself.
again. Daughter of Oceania
wanting me home.
my skin is sacred ground.
always want
to take
a white girl's skin
I cried so hard,
until I became a boat
I never want to be lost
at high...From the magazine:
What Women Are Made Of
By Bianca Lynne SpriggsWe are all ventricle, spine, lung, larynx, and gut.
Clavicle and nape, what lies forked in an open palm;
we are follicle and temple. We are ankle, arch,
sole. Pore and rib, pelvis and root
and tongue. We are wishbone and gland and molar
and...From the magazine:
Ode to Fetty Wap (written after strip club)
By Roya Marsh... then Rap Gawd formed a man
from the dust of the auto-tune
&breathed into his nostrils
the breath of Rémy Martin
the man became Fetty Wap.
Rap Gawd saw fit to
make Fetty a counterpart.
so he caused the man to fall into a deep sleep;
while he...From the magazine:
We House
By Britteney Black Rose KapriHouse, as in abode, as in dwelling, as in crib, as in where your inhibitions go to rest. as in jack, loft, footwork. as in sweating out that press and curl. as in yo momma steppin out tonight. as in...From the magazine:
a little hopeful song
By Bernadette HallI give thee the sun as guarantee
and the Egyptian faience beads
and the little silver oar that was gifted once
to an English harbor master.
I give thee the silk dress
with its triple-ruffled sleeves and
the cloaks with big hoods that fall full
though some...From the magazine:
Sitting on a Desk Together at SMU, 1982
By Sandra McPhersonA girl moaning: I don’t
understand
“Wave.”
You said, Maybe
you should try
selected whitecaps.
I saw, on a flight
to Honolulu, plane-shadow
on whitecaps.
My eye tried them.
Yours could, in its sleep.
Others needn’t think of them
as waves
but as scratches
in the furniture,
light wood under stain.
Obscurity stains almost the whole
half-globe,
hemisphere....From the magazine:
I am dark, I am forest
By Jenn GivhanI carried a bowl of menudo into the forest / I carried my bisabuela’s tripas not daring ask whose intestines I carried / con cilantro y radish y cebolla chopped fine / I carried the sewing machine they’d chained her...From the magazine:
Recycler
By Christopher Spaidei. troppo allegro
Remember seasons? Seem to recall those once were easier.
Reasonably sequenced, regal of tempo and temper,
Reliable change flipped heads-over-tails each quarter,
Recovering the hemisphere with four fine suits, knock-off designer.
Recently, someone shuffled, cut the deck into disorder:
Relapse, tic, hiccup, snap,...From the magazine:
The White Campion
By Donald Revelli
How is it I can never find
Or call to mind
One image of Christ walking slowly in the rain,
In a steady, gentle rain,
The kind that shapes an afterimage
Just for a moment of the man
Like a cloak of shadow following
Or like a...From the magazine:
Ballad of the Clyde’s Water
By Marion McCreadymother’s malison
The burr of the wind is seeping through the door,
pink stumps of rhubarb are breaking through the soil.
Though it is February I have the mind of autumn.
Though it is February ...
The upstairs baby is crying through the wall,
the bay tree...From the magazine:
Brantwood Senilia
By Paul BatchelorMy dear little birds,
before me on my desk this morning
where I sit preparing tomorrow’s lesson
lies a copy of The Witches’ Rout...From the magazine:
Windows
By Sumita Chakrabortyi
how much loss
gains suddenly in emphasis
and brilliant sadness
ii
far from that which lives and turns
iii
languages
of our vain comings and goings wilt and gnaw
iv
beat them, ...From the magazine:
Balm & Lamentation
By Anne WaldmanBlood of an eye: tamarisk gall.
Blood from a shoulder: bear’s breach.
From the loins: chamomile.
Blood from a head: lupine.
A hawk’s heart: heart of wormwood.
— From Coptic & Greek Magical Papyri
Schematic humans ... figures of them, & their helpers ...
pheromones rise
odd jagged breath lines,...From the magazine:
The Underwings of War
By Linda BierdsNotch.
Web.
And then,
down the shaft,
lesser wing coverts
and marginal coverts, and soft,
greater underwing coverts — although never as great
as greater under-primary
coverts, gray-coated
and down-plumped,
trailing
what
might
reveal
a pattern
just over the down
that might support a secrecy.
Launched from double-decker buses, or attic windows,
or the dark roofs at Bletchley Park,
the lesser...From the magazine:
Lepidopteran: A Cento
By Linda BierdsIn ... the whitish muslin of a wide-mouthed net,
in time of the breaking of nations,
and in elementary arithmetic,
the lichen-gray primaries
keep in sufficiently close touch
as to impose one part of a pattern onto another.
The vibrational halo
of the string figures
passing from flower to flower,
border...