It was the weft and wop of the weave, pulled / over my knee, muscles and tendons that / repaired my split thigh, a pattern, the surgeon said, / a kind of living fabric that carries me forward,
The copperhead slithers along without bending / Its spine. The ridges on its underside are like / boot treads. / That was the example I was using / Until he thought I was calling him a snake.
There is a stretch of the most precious time in the mornings, after your husband has gone to work, when the baby wakes up and you feed her and she falls asleep on your chest, her small arms holding your torso, their full length barely reaching the edges of your back.
once, you said everything keeps moving until something stops it / so I wonder if it was time that slowed us / or the quiet between what we meant and what we said
Containment percentages, mass layoffs, budget shortfalls, 9-1-1 hold times: The sinkhole felt like another in a long list of calamities we’d learned to accept.
“Make me a promise,” she said to him when they were lying in bed, although it was not night, and he said, “What promise?” and she said, “You shouldn’t have to ask.”
with the only music of the morning traffic, those who must rise to drive to labor, and a window often curtained and closed, and in winter, the radiator hissing, the kind from another century, the kind you must be careful or it will burn you.
There is a prequel and a sequel, then the cataclysm returns to its chrysalis, an odorless and colorless but very viscous liquid. It's been nanoseconds since my last deathbed confession.
A catch up with Grooms Prize winner Anita Lo, curated by graduate students Adeola Awe, Jessica Reyes-Barahona, and Jordyn Hatten.
A discussion between editor Sydnee Newsom and Alafia Sessions about poetry, inspiration, and what a chapbook judge looks for.
A poem by Gwendolyn Brooks came to me. “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock.” I jolted in my seat at a possible connection. Brooks’s poem was written in response to the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. In the poem, the Defender sends a reporter to Little Rock to find out what on earth was wrong with the folks of Little Rock and how they could be so abusive and terrible to young students because of their skin color.
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A catch up with Grooms Prize winner Anita Lo, curated by graduate students Adeola Awe, Jessica Reyes-Barahona, and Jordyn Hatten.
A discussion between editor Sydnee Newsom and Alafia Sessions about poetry, inspiration, and what a chapbook judge looks for.
A poem by Gwendolyn Brooks came to me. “The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock.” I jolted in my seat at a possible connection. Brooks’s poem was written in response to the integration of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. In the poem, the Defender sends a reporter to Little Rock to find out what on earth was wrong with the folks of Little Rock and how they could be so abusive and terrible to young students because of their skin color.
Few garments carry as much cultural weight as the hoodie. First created in the 1930s by the brand Champion to meet athletes' needs for warmth and durability, the hoodie slowly became a marker of style, anonymity, suspicion, and resistance—often all at the same time. In The Hoodie: Identity, Power, Protest, a new exhibition at the Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA), co-curators Dr. Regina N. Bradley and Dr. Laura Flusche examine the hoodie not just as a piece of clothing, but as a deeply political symbol shaped by race, class, geography, and history within the American South.
