Alternate Names for Black Boys by Danez Smith
“5. guilty until proven dead / 6. oil heavy starlight / 7. monster until proven ghost / 8. gone” — Danez Smith
Dear Dangerous How Do You Explain It by Kazim Ali
“Dear unsettled evening, all the cold shadows, // how lucky we were to have lived / in the world—” — Kazim Ali
Today Everything is Connected by Tung-Hui Hu
“The only animal you can trust is the woodpecker / Who points repeatedly to its tree and says / Each time You are here. My love, you are here.” — Tung-Hui Hu
“A Mouthful of Salt… / I Came Through Numb Waters” by Charif Shanahan
“How do I move the line when it is buried // in the earth. Why do you think my face / is the face you think you see.” — Charif Shanahan
what the ocean said to the black boy by Clint Smith
“they call me blue because / they don't understand how the sky work / they call you black because / they don't understand how god work” — Clint Smith
Awake by Najwan Darwish
“Awake so that the colonizers might leave / Awake so that people can sleep” — Najwan Darwish
Dorothy Wordsworth by Jennifer Chang
“I, too, have a big messy head / on a fragile stalk.” — Jennifer Chang
A Woman Runs on the First Day of Spring by Erika L. Sánchez
“Aren't we all boundless / though? The way a dream / secretes the morning after” — Erika L. Sánchez
Naming the Trees by Eric Gamalinda
“home is that place / you are continually born into, / that you leave with no regret, / that grows smaller each time you return.” — Eric Gamalinda