like his hair the night curling around us // receding from the question // he has outdriven
C
Hussain Ahmed
Curfew
1. My body was colonized / in a language of silence. / Strands of my hair entrapped the ghosts
in the wind, / they were not held prisoner / but the abrasions kept them warm—or stuck.
E
John Byrne
Eros Was a Boy I Loved in High School
You’re Chaos-born in a post-practice ice-bath; / you need heat. I fold paper into cranes and find you / hidden in each crease. I cut a hole in my skull.
F
Isiah Fish
Fat Rabbit Thrift & Vintage
Two brooches for the price of lint.
Dolls boxed beneath hung tees.
Blonde & black-haired amputees.
S
Joseph Gunho Jang
Spring Concert
The notes in the air are awakening, deep / in thought, and a little cold, probably / stretching just before the declaration / emerging from the bell of the clarinet that the boy
L
Maya Marshall
Lavender Menace Considers Adoption in the Trump Era
I’m so American I close my ports / of nourishment with a bit of bread / a bourbon, a burrito bowl, a nipple / a penis. I take in and in like oceans
L
Maya Marshall
Lavender Menace Adopts a Black Boy
In summer black boy burns. Say,
black boy takes shelter. Imagine
summer camp. Black boy afloat
in Lake Michigan. Black boy
D
Maya Marshall
Daddy on the Sofa
The soft satellite of my father’s ear falls / toward his shoulder. / His chin floats up from his clavicle.
I
Kim Young
I Dream of Tiger
At night, Tiger pads into the room while I’m asleep / Tiger in the corner of my dreams / Tiger I can’t get past I have to keep practicing
NONFICTION
R
Sarah Rose Cadorette
Rape Card
Nirbhaya is with a male friend, leaving the movie theater in Delhi where they watched Life of Pi together. They take an autorickshaw to a bus stop, where a man gestures from the door of a private white-line bus for them to get on.
N
Kelly Hill
Now It Is All About to Happen
At the end of her kindergarten year, we received a letter from my daughter’s school. She had missed enough days from illness that there were concerns about promoting her to first grade.
T
Austin Maas
Trigger Finger
If you’re ready, it might help to tell you what I remember.
FICTION
T
Wandeka Gayle
The Wish
When Mama Icylda came to Beryl Hampton in the form of a river mumma, he thought with a pang that his time had come.
T
Arielle Jones
The Hunter
On this evening, she wonders again if he will return.
M
Sakae Manning
Michiko’s Waltz
I knew about people touching me without asking long before the dry lipped, gap-toothed lizard man swooped around the corner of Coalman and Edgewater in a blue El Camino, all chrome and shine.
F
Lois Melina
Fire Dance
Celia stood at the patio door, staring at the pink haze beyond the ridge. Her white cotton nightgown billowed with the cool air from the floor register and she sipped from a tumbler of iced tea, the glass slippery with condensation.
F
Joel Streicker
For the Bounty Provided Us
My mom is shouting something. Her voice is big and hoarse and really annoying. I hunch my shoulders till they almost touch my ears.
