“Hema immediately wanted to please him. Theo was black-haired, handsome in a vulpine way, stocky and muscular, yet agile, and a little older than Kai. He was French, and played professionally in London for ten years before coming to the United States. He’d played for France’s soccer team in 1998 when they won the World Cup. He wanted the girls he coached—girls like Hema—to be tough and fierce, to be consummate sportswomen.”
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My Country 'Tis: Listening to Ishmael Read by Ru Freeman
this King & Kennedy country
that fast draws
that kills slow
Foreign Objects by Lexi Pandell
A horse can grow a stone in its stomach the size of a grapefruit.
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A Normal Interview with Maya Pindyck by Caleigh Camara
"I think we grapple with those stories we cannot reconcile by writing them again and again, maybe each time with different 'others' in mind, and for a future people we hope to touch."
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My Country 'Tis: Learning Their Letters by Ru Freeman
the justifiable fears
of waking from an American fantasy of arrival
in places that require defense, let him go.
A Woman Without Origin by Elaine Hsieh Chou
The woman went abroad and began to lose her grip on things.
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Lodestone and Weathervane by Jae Towle
“One never changes the past, Roshelle says. Fundamental misunderstanding. Each incarnation of reality must be internally consistent—that is, if one goes backward in time, it’s not a disruption of the plan; it’s what always happened.”
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A Glossary of White Traditions by Michael Bennett
Erasure: Not the 80’s brit-pop band, although we do enjoy “A Little Respect,” (not quite a cover of Aretha’s version, but a nice alternative).
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My Country ‘Tis: Say My Name by Ru Freeman
they
said it was uncivil but not a crime, it is never a crime when
you die; should I begin from the beginning should I add the women,
Renisha, Rekia, Chantel, Tyisha, Yvette, Gabriella, Miriam, Jessica
Just So by Nance Van Winckel
Just so, for a decade or two, the family before the TV had watched one life as they waited for another. Meanwhile sputterings flew every way from both.
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On Nerves by Karen Babine
AT SOME POINT, all nerves get old. The body cannot regenerate in ways it is accustomed to doing.
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Two Poems by Carol Matos
why do I devour myself/yet continue to grow new leaves?
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My Country 'Tis: Love, Philadelphia by Ru Freeman
Rocky is a myth in the air between
us untrue things this American
dream
Goldilocks by Susan Holcomb
Sometimes my daughter and I become wolves, just the way we were when she was born.
Read MoreHouse Calls by James Sullivan
That look in her eyes. That look she’d gotten in church after Dad. Eyes like before a stormy wave crashes on a sailboat, when you know you’ve tried it all and you’re done done done.
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Two Poems by Ángel García
A man sings for pesos,/on the corner, his hand/ swarmed by a song of bees
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Precious Cargo by Felicia Zamora
A honey bee knows the outcome of haste and yet, she is here, in the light. She lives fully, either always in fear of, or without fear of, death attached to her actions.
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Mermaids by Emily Lowe
They cut the tongues out quickly, cleanly, like a wire through wet clay.
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Limes by Alexander Lumans
He sticks his hand in his pocket for a brush but pulls out melted gray taffy instead. He thinks, can only think, of that painted tree in the rain.
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Two Poems by Rita Mae Reese
I will give him this bird trapped in a doorway,
a mad heart in feathers and pulsing eyes.