Poetry

We eat at Olive Garden after learning if our father / had stronger kidneys a portion of his intestines

Leslie’s asking the important question: why not…?

In this poem, Lebo explores the concept of occupying space.

Hanna teaches you how to love yourself. 

Lebo’s poem makes us question the reasons we grieve.

What does womanhood mean to you?

Maryam draws inspiration from her diasporic Trinidadian-Indian and Indonesian tribal heritage.

What of the fisherman skulks / in your heart? / What husks of hull sit rusting / ironed dull by sea over / sand over sea?

We try on bodies—like them, long / for them—then try others. Somewhere / between hunger and earnest thirst, / we shapeshift.

Love leaves me whole, / a pockmarked moon. / Pared wounds knitted together / by chewing ants, each / champing tiny jaws over my flesh.

In a bathtub / rimmed in lime / basil salts, I take / a spoon

I used to sew / along the edge of my body / – to interrupt / the Mare unraveling / my stitched skin.

There are two elements: / The voice and the wilderness of / Ocean — both thoroughly defined / though one, more wholly —

there is a sun behind you as hollow as the sound from / within your claims to the land it sets on kranti weeps not within

I am tremendous fun at dinner parties / I say this as a joke but it’s true, I talk / and hardly pause for breath, a ticking metronome / of story punchline setup story and only rest a moment

When they decided to kill the priest it was winter / and they wanted it slow. They led him out barefoot / to a steaming pot, and had us each take turns / dipping an enormous ladle, black from other hands.

i sometimes think that everything that has ever happened to me / is raining somewhere else. i sometimes think that the water has found / a path through high trees, worked its way inside another room, so the damp / next door is spreading, curving an unknown ceiling into a misshapen moon.

-Savage! / You read my poems and tore the pages. / -… / Mute / Ir-rational / a Chinese poem played on the speakers. / Black dirty pots on the hob.

did you hear about the time mom danced all night in prague? / she was in love with a saxophone player and, by proxy, / all saxophone players. jazz made her feel alive and warm even as / the snow fell on cobbled roads and she and paulina left faint trails

Going in with her, she made sure / there was a notebook and pen / in her bag, so she could write / down stuff they might forget.

I thought you were something / But you are nothing. / Not nothing, but not the thing / I want you to be.