Michelle Bitting: Drive
I do love driving Mama in it
now along the coast highway, cranking the windows, folding the top down so the stiff fishy
breeze stings our noses and make our curls fly off the backs of our necks.
Cesare Pavese: Passion for Solitude
Everything stands isolated before my senses,
which accept it calmly: a rustling of silence.
There’s nothing in this darkness I couldn’t know,
the way I know my blood is running through my veins.
Alliyah Lusuegro: Target Needs to Kick Ice Out of Its Stores
It may be time for some of us to rethink where we shop.
James Crews: Mud-Puddling
I don’t want to read another book
or listen to another podcast promising
a better life, the road to happiness.
I just want to love my life as it is
Matthew J. Parker: The ICEY Fingers of Our Prison Industry
Congress has spent decades nullifying even a whiff of comprehensive immigration reform while simultaneously encouraging American businesses to both hire and demonize the cheap labor.
Robbi Nester: Busker in the Subway
Coins begin to rain into his cigar box,
a few folded bills. Small children seek the deep source
of the sound. An old man with waist-length dreadlocks
puts down his heavy pack and sighs.
Rivera Sun: 10 rules of resistance for #ICEOut
Americans can learn from the anti-Nazi leaflet “10 Commandments for Danes” by denying ICE everything it needs to function.
Dewitt Henry: On Grace
Economy and naturalness,
as in ballet, or basketball’s dunk,
or skater’s twirl, leap and glide.
Body’s flow seems effortless.
George Yancy: Black Men Endured Sexual Exploitation Under Slavery. Their Story Is Rarely Told.
There were no legal protections against the rape of enslaved Black women or enslaved Black men.
Lauren Camp: Sanctuary
That was Sunday. The village. I was a baby sugared
with indulgence. Fat and black-haired. Those years
of his unfolding wallet and the ongoing thorn
of origin.
Dorianne Laux: Spirit Level
I see how my whole life has been a dream,
one she built for me from the ground up,
her daughter, my mother the axe, beautiful
tool with which she shaped me, a house
much like the one she lived in, but smaller
Mike Vargo: Language Is a Virus
A punishment for the arrogance of thinking my mission in life was to explain things to people.
Desne A. Crossley: Alzheimer’s and Missing Love (2015-2017, 1996 & 1950)
Watched the movie Hidden Figures (when the first black women worked in the Nasa space program) and almost cried. My father was a rocket scientist, something I didn’t realize until his brain was already gone to Alzheimer’s.
Kurt Brown: A Moment
You stood before me, brushing your long hair,
stroke after stroke in the astonished air
while you talked of nothing, and I sipped my drink.
