Courageous

Embarrased

i thought it was ok - i could understand the reasons

they said there might be young children or a nervous man seeing

this small piece of flesh that they weren’t quite expecting

so i whispered and tiptoed with nervous discretion

 

but after six months of her life spent sitting on lids

as she...

Hollie McNish

diaspora babies

diaspora babies, we

are born of pregnant pauses/spilled

from unwanted wombs/squalling invisible-ink poems/written in the margins

of a map of a place

called No Homeland

 

old gong gong honoured uncle is the man i won't become/

BBQ pork-scented sorrow and red

bean paste buns he sold on street corners in Chinatown/...

Kai Cheng Thom

Jacknife/2

Each day, I am apprenticed to the boy

I want to be.

 

He rifles the ball

and I catch it

 

or I fumble.

His red head ducks and weaves,

 

thinking, end zone.

I tag him

 

or I don’t.

He swaggers

 

no matter what.

With the deftness

 ...

Elizabeth Philips
1962

Moment One

I remember my birth

like it was tomorrow, the unholy sensation

of abandon, accepted struggle

 

...

Ian Keteku

Comfort

11 am. Time to wake up.

 

Muscles sore, jaw clenched, warm light

 

scattering dreams of violence across

 

the bedroom. I've chosen a self

 

too large for this body. Too willing to

 

change for others. Too beautiful

 

to appear in public. I’d tell you to walk

 

in my...

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

The Cactus

You sit in the forgotten bone-dry hills

surrounded by sand and sagebrush

above Buffalo Pound Lake.

 

A day and a night, and then

three more days and nights.

Do not mark the hours. Just sit

until the prickly pear raises its bloom.

 

A pale thing, translucent moon, sea anemone,

the first thin veil of a...

Randy Lundy

The Windrush

Departing from Kingston, Jamaica, the British ship Empire Windrush

brought one of the first large groups of postwar Caribbean immigrants to

London in 1948

 

Dem did sey she pregnance

Cum a sea full a mi

Weighing har down eena har shoe dem

Dresses, coco, mangoes an baggy an arl

 

Dem...

Valerie Mason-John

Dear Diaspora Child

it's okay if you only learned about your culture from Google

 

it's okay if you only read your language at the public library

 

it's okay if you need books to know your ancestral recipes

 

it's okay if you've never even set foot on the soil of your people

 

it's okay if your...

Cicely Belle Blain
1993

Glass Hands: A Eulogy on the Anniversary of the Pandemic

Hands pressed to glass

 

On the...

El Jones

Holy Ghost

 

We had no paper

then, or we had

 

no pen, or no words. How

to say it. We had

 

no voice. No listeners.

Just deaf night

 

and the flames that chased us

up the stairs, that

 

found us

panting, singed. There was

 

no story then, no

greater...

Deanna Young
1964

Pride

A half-hour.

 

 

Thirty minutes.

 

 

One thousand eight hundred seconds.

 

 

They sat.

 

 

Protest is not supposed to be comfortable.

 

 

Civil disobedience does not

fit into pristine conformist ideals

of opposition.

 

 ...

Dane Swan

Praying Herd: For Safe Journey

Draw a line through our scattered bodies. The pattern of fallen calves in this meadow will mirror

the constellation above. Look up. We whip our tails to a silent song:

 

We sing to the moon, ask for wings to lift our flock to heaven;

We plead to the moon, since she will take pity;

We beg of the moon since she changes, as our circumstance must also...

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes

The puck skates in on parted-snow ice.

It's the season’s last game, an encore

to stomach winter’s sliver, to shrug off

the townsfolk stares.

 

The moonlit night is advanced in years

and highlights frontline winds. Streaming

sky trails squall skeleton trees.

 

Blades carve the pond.

Their cursive glide...

Michael Fraser
1969

Packing for the Future: Instructions

Take the thickest socks.

Wherever you're going

you'll have to walk.

 

There may be water.

There may be stones.

There may be high places

you cannot go without

the hope socks bring you,

the way they hold you

to the earth.

 

At least one pair must be new,

must be blue as a wish...

Lorna Crozier
b. 1948

It was in a boardroom

It was in a boardroom

that I witnessed the latest killing

 

A room filled with knowledgeable

white people

 

trying to understand

 

what we offer

shaking their heads

not grasping

          the method, our language

          asking - Would that be recognized by others?

...

Tyler Pennock
1977

America (I’m Putting My Queer Shoulder to the Wheel)

The night America took off her mask

we slept together poorly. I'd woken up early

that Tuesday, dragged myself to a gymnasium

in Jersey City to cast my vote into the void.

I came all the way out to Hampton Bays

to see her: her picking me up in that old

Mercury van, her bringing us back to her place.

As we watched the footage of...

John Elizabeth Stintzi

Buen Esqueleto

Life is short & I tell this to mis hijas.

Life is short & I show them how to talk

to police without opening the door, how

to leave the social security number blank

on the exam, I tell this to mis hijas.

This world tells them I hate you every day

& I don't keep this from mis hijas

because of the bus driver who kicks...

Natalie Scenters-Zapico
1988 -

susiya