Featured – Page 32 – swamp pink

Pluto

I’m sorry. It was a minor matter. All the ways that I was here and the ways I wasn’t. A sticky black key in your polyphonic arrangement. The silence above the soprano. Ambivalent stopwatch. The silt that accretes under the fingernails, at once aging and new. What was I to you? My rural blood has...

[orange]

Comparing apples to oranges— that’s why our codeword became [orange]. ∴ Apples are straight but we never used [apple]. (The logic is tenuous, I know.) The waiter holds a pair of tired fire-tongs & his scuttle hanging lower than usual. (The soot smells different from soot-bul—yet I crave bulgogi still.) He roams, looking for dead...

[Polaroid of]

the biggest crowd you have ever seen, row of eyes of trees, squiggle face, no oxygen, gravity gravitas marshall law grounds for the taking. Peanut shells, carbonation, one lane, another, what a well-placed hug can do. An allergy is an allergy regardless of X, the math of it, the expanse. When I am...

Why Do We Set The Table?

At what temperature does blood begin to boil? Thicken into a roux, slip between bits of basil, minced garlic, orecchiette; Permeate chunks of spicy kielbasa, bind a dash of salt, pepper, bubbles roiling forth, then dissipating, heat lowered to a hush; Congeal from the shock of cool clay dishes as a small mound is delicately...

At Home in a Mined Body

(Bop after Afaa Michael Weaver) I want to feel at home in my body To feel alive—immune to the constraints To love, embrace my reflection, repel dimmed light, yelling from the shadows, free-tuned to the melody of my skin and the song of my aura I want the queer calm in the center of my...

Herida / Herencia

Hay memorias I will nunca remember because they are tuyas. Como como you got the shrapnel scars que me enseñaste en tus rodillas. You pointed to them, puckered en tu piel. Balas, you said, and I nodded, sin comprender. I hope to never feel a bullet peel flesh from kneecap. My sin was nacer en...

Two Aliens

November 23, 2021

There’s this thing that I do every week which is to work at the front desk of the yoga studio by my house and check people in for class. I don’t get paid to do it, but I only have to be there for three hours and in exchange, I get to take as many...

At Your Convenience

November 23, 2021

Old Lien wanted a son so badly she decided to make one. She found a do-it-yourself kit on eBay. Her sisters thought she was crazy for spending a chunk of her savings on a scam, a dream that died because it was wasted. Lien, however, was no fool. The seller had 98 percent positive feedback,...

Hit the Wall

November 23, 2021

March When you arrive at the court, Colin is already there. He’s stretching and chatting up Ricky and Drew, who are laughing. Of course they are, because Colin is so funny. That’s what everyone in the league always says. Colin? He’s so funny! Most people would add that he’s a great player. And some of...

Sunday Cruise

November 23, 2021

A man in a Chicano Batman shirt drove his 1972 Chevy Camaro down Beach Blvd. Sunday was the best day for cruising. It was the beginning of spring. There was still a slight chill in the air, but it was better than frigid winter. As the man in a Chicano Batman shirt approached the ocean...

In My Afterlife, I Am Brightest

November 23, 2021

after “Untitled (Chauffeur Funeral),” by Daisy Patton Golden cellophane bows on wreaths, floral vines transgress the casket’s ivory satin lining. The floor, a jade-colored rug, covered in bouquets. Purple palms form a triangle framing the dead. After life, there is this: proximity of black lace, a sheer lavender curtain’s ruffle. My spirit rising as rambling...

when a black girl-child sees death for the first time

November 23, 2021

what do you do when a black girl-child (& for now s/he is a black girl-child) sees death for the first time in the middle of your math class? when she becomes a pomegranate, tender & violent & bursting, a baby bird, a calf already full of blood & this worst knowing. your fifth-grade class...