Two Poems by Jo Angela Edwins

Inside the Purses

of women who stand in line to vote
are lipsticks and compacts,
gum packs and tissues,
wallets, loose change and key rings,
and pens and pencils and papers,
yes, don’t forget, lists and bills and
sometimes even poems.
 
And bottles. So many bottles. Bottles
of lotions and aspirins and pepsins, bottles
of rage and sorrow and unnurtured hope,
bottles of “don’t you look pretty
today?” Bottles of “it wouldn’t hurt you
to smile.” Bottles of “you know I meant nothing
by that joke, by that insult, by that hand
on your body, by that tongue
in your throat.” Bottles of smirking or leering
or perfunctory gatekeepers
in white coats, in black robes, in three-
piece suits. Bottles of “you aren’t
a mother, so you don’t understand.”
Bottles of “children will ruin your
career.” Bottles of “you must have children
whether you want them or not, whether
they will kill you or not.” Bottles
of “you have to stay with him.”
Bottles of “why do you stay
with him?” Bottles of “but how can you
live without a man?” Bottles of “God
would want you to do
what this or that man says
God wants you to do.” Bottles of
“don’t wear those pants.” Bottles
of “don’t wear that skirt.” Bottles
of “good girls don’t wear make-up.”
Bottles of “why don’t you wear
a little make-up?” Bottles
of “sorry, you aren’t qualified.”
Bottles of “listen, let me
explain it…” Bottles of “don’t play
the victim,” bottles of “don’t
be so sensitive,” bottles
of “don’t be an ice queen,”
bottles of “you’re such a bitch.”
 
Bottles of “don’t walk alone
after dark.” Bottles of “carry
your keys like a weapon.” 
Bottles of “count yourself lucky
to reach old age without
fist-shaped bruises on your skin or
razor cuts to your spirit, without
a hole like a wound in the earth, your mother,
dug neatly, just for you.”
 
Yes, the purses we carry are heavy.
Nevertheless, we carry them.
Nevertheless, we keep standing in line.
Nevertheless, we keep standing.

It's a Man's World

No one teaches us what stories go unspoken inside us
every time we hear phrases like equal pay,
victim’s rights, my body my choice,
each rock a hard-fought year tossed atop the last, each ladder
rung threatening to buckle underneath
the weight of so many shouted or silent No’s,
hands touching what they shouldn’t, slick tongues
echoing old men’s lies, as if there
lies within falsehood a truth true only for those born with parts
essential for the living of it. The rest of us
sit in gossamer cages, pretending these invisible bars aren’t
strong as our gullets, holding down what we’re forced to

swallow. Mule and minister, angel and whore, we are everything but
human, so say the judges, so say preacher and priest and politician,
expert at argument meant to
 
penetrate the mad hearts of old-style patriots suspicious of
education and anything complex enough to
render them enlightened or feeling the least bit guilty,
since what we were taught to trust can’t possibly
inflict harm, can it? Don’t worry, they tell us, you must
stay busy. You haven’t the time
to vote, or speak, or lead. It is the
eyes of the children that gaze on the future. There lies your
devotion. The future. There. Our devotion. Lies—

Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in various venues, recently or forthcoming in Schuylkill Valley Journal, LEON Literary Review, Capsule Stories, and Rabid Oak. Her chapbook Play was published in 2016. She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, and the SC Academy of Authors and is a Pushcart Prize, Forward Prize, and Bettering American Poetry nominee. Edwins teaches English at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina, where she serves as Poet Laureate of the Pee Dee region of the state.

Guest Editor Latorial Faison is the author of Mother to Son, the trilogy collection, 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History, The Missed Education of the Negro, and other titles. This Furious Flower Poetry Center fellow, Pushcart nominee, and Tom Howard Poetry Prize winner has been published in Artemis Journal, West Trestle Review, Obsidian: Literature and Art in the African Diaspora, PRAIRIE SCHOONER, and elsewhere. Forthcoming work, Mama Was a Negro Spiritual, was a semi-finalist for The CAVE CANEM POETRY PRIZE. Faison is married, has three sons, and teaches at Virginia State University.

Advertisement

Two Poems by Kay Jacobs

What Does Matter
         
          An unconsciousness of Roots rising from the subconscious of a prideful society 
of privileged people . . .

choke on this thought: how can white lives matter when this country was literally built upon the backs of black lives and white lies why do we still not matter our lives not materialized into a humane sense of humanity human in brown flesh, but not by blue laws no love lost to lives thwarted the pain distorted we were never indentured servants never given That chance we were enslaved trades of tribal royalty for material wealth never rising above the rim of the barrel still at the bottom of the totem pole as penance for the foreseen sins of their new fathers eurocentricity and the white man's christianity that entranced us erased us assimilated us inferiorized native tongue culture and customs reidentified as clarice george matilda toby called Guinea men and fetched bellywarmers sold wenches yet feared nigguhs’ innards locked a forbidden past whipped out of him, Kunta out of pocket just to sustain her life's freedom, Fanta not realizing that being buried in the ocean with the ancestors that jumped from middle passage cargo ships was better than the empty promises of bondaged life they were forced into outside of village boundaries you cannot swim back to the known river's shores for sanctity and salvation for safety nor sanctuary for right or fight battle the pale faced demons whose white boughs fill the African atmosphere like clouds bringing forth a storm unworthy of mother nature's wrath stripped and raped land pilfered and plundered innocence of savages taken put asunder by those whose lives have always mattered no matter what land they landed on

False Prophets
 
          (A Reflection after the Insurrection of January 6, 2021)
 
I don't know that what I was taught is true anymore -
That a white man died on the cross for My sins:
My copper encrusted
Melanated,
Brown sugar coated
wrongs
Were supposedly all erased
When he blessed the righteous on his (left),
laid his head
Upon his shoulder blade,
Feet and hands nailed to risen wood
Covered in the red of his humanity,
Gave up the ghost
And uttered
'It is finished'
 
But it was not.
 
My belief wavers
Like an old-school radio frequency line
No ups, all downs
Because he has been coming back for as long as I can remember
As long as my gram had been alive
For as long as her great-grandmother had been waiting for that train to pass—
 
We all have been waiting for his return
To start this world again
Like he did once before
Because it was necessary then
Because it is even more necessary now
In this world engrained in the sins
That he died for
 
I
Used to sing the songs
Talk back to the preachers
Transfixed by the stories told
Of the man from Galilee
That healed the sick
Raised the dead
Turned a blind eye to see
And made the lame to walk again
 
I
Used to believe in
Repeated the folklore of
Tried to live by the words of the
Prophets
Psalm writers
Biographers
Historians of
The scriptures
the King James version—a white man
 
So,
I woke up
And stopped
spreading
their gospel. 

Kay Jacobs (born LeNeshia K. Ross) is fairly new to the poetry scene. A native Louisianan and educator, she is the author of Within Shades of Mahogani, her first collection of poetry that traces the angst of her adolescence and the conundrums of her college years. Jacobs is currently crafting poems for her next work, Beneath the Stripes of Amerikah—a reflective perspective of America: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

Guest Editor Latorial Faison is the author of Mother to Son, the trilogy collection, 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History, and other titles. A graduate of UVA and VA TECH, she recently, completed doctoral studies at Virginia State University and published The Missed Education of the Negro: An Examination of the Black Segregated Education Experience in Southampton County. This Furious Flower Poetry Center fellow, Pushcart nominee, and Tom Howard Poetry Prize winner has been published in Artemis Journal, West Trestle Review, Obsidian: Literature and Art in the African Diaspora, PRAIRIE SCHOONER, and elsewhere. Forthcoming work, Mama Was a Negro Spiritual, was a semi-finalist for The CAVE CANEM POETRY PRIZE. Faison is married, has three sons, and teaches at Virginia State University.

What the living do by Nicole Tallman

          after Marie Howe’s title of the same name


I.	The night you died, the microwave died right along with you. But I didn’t. I had to keep doing all the things the living do after the dead are gone. I had to go to the store with Dad to get a new microwave the next morning so he could continue to heat up his oatmeal the way he was used to.

II.	Every morning thereafter, we had to build a to-do list a mile long. I had to find things to keep us busy. We had to go to the funeral home to arrange your cremation. We had to pick out urns to put your ashes in. I had to portion you out. I had to write your obituary. I had to decide on no funeral.

III.	I had to go to the jeweler with Dad to get the rings you left me resized. Dad had to put all of your palliative medication in a box to return to Hospice. I had to pack up your wigs and give them to the ladies dying of cancer there. I had to have a teddy bear made out of a pair of your favorite pajamas.

IV.	We had to make phone calls to tell people you were dead. I had to keep my voice steady while many people cried at the news. Dad had to call the insurance company and social security to let them know you were gone. I had to sort through your cabinets and your closets.

V.	Dad had to wash the clothes you died in. I had to clean the hair out of your last hairbrush. I had to throw away your toothbrush. We had to decide what to do with all of your things. I had to decide which I could bear to look at, to predict which I would miss most. I had to take a pill to keep calm.

VI.	We had to keep it together. We had to eat in front of people so they wouldn’t worry. I had to say I would be fine when I felt like I wouldn’t be. We had to be presentable for the world—comb our hair, take showers, look like we were still alive.

VII.	I had to bear my first heartbreak without you. I had to see your face in mine when I looked in the mirror. I had to sleep on the couch because I couldn’t sleep in my bed that was so close to the room that housed the bed you died in. I had to console the cat who kept crying at your death room door.

VIII.	After a few days, I had to step on a plane and return to work almost like nothing happened. I had to “people.” I had to talk. I had to stop crying. I had to breathe. I had to do the things the living are required to do too soon after death. I had to get a new life. I had to keep living after you were gone.

Nicole Tallman is the Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County and Poetry and Interviews Editor for The Blue Mountain Review. She is the author of Something Kindred (The Southern Collective Experience Press), and her next two books, FERSACE and POEMS FOR THE PEOPLE, are forthcoming from Redacted Books and Really Serious Literature, respectively. She is also the editor of STAY GOLDEN, a Golden Girls-inspired special zine published by The Daily Drunk, and co-editor with Maureen Seaton of We Who Rise from Saltwater, Let’s Sing!, a collaborative Heroic Sonnet Crown for the Mayor and residents of Miami-Dade County. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @natallman and at nicoletallman.com.

Guest Editor Latorial Faison is the author of Mother to Son, the trilogy collection, 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History, and other titles. A graduate of UVA and VA TECH, she recently, completed doctoral studies at Virginia State University and published The Missed Education of the Negro: An Examination of the Black Segregated Education Experience in Southampton County. This Furious Flower Poetry Center fellow, Pushcart nominee, and Tom Howard Poetry Prize winner has been published in Artemis Journal, West Trestle Review, Obsidian: Literature and Art in the African Diaspora, PRAIRIE SCHOONER, and elsewhere. Forthcoming work, Mama Was a Negro Spiritual, was a semi-finalist for The CAVE CANEM POETRY PRIZE. Faison is married, has three sons, and teaches at Virginia State University.

Two Poems by Lannie Stabile

Arguing the Etymology of "OK" with Someone 
Who's Always Been Fine
 
I tell her it started when I was six years old: the fear of spark, 
the fear of smoke,  the fear of burning  down with the house. 
I am:  the walls  containing a  kitchen fire, soup on the stove, 
Mom   forgetting   to   turn  off  the  burner.   The  ham  bone 
crisping.  The   navy  beans   shriveling. A girl, crawling on an 
empty belly, pressing her hand against every door, searching 
for safety. Waiting to be engulfed.
 
She says   I’ve   experienced  trauma. That my amygdala still 
thinks I am six and trapped and inhaling darkness. 
 
I tell her   Ronald  McDonald came  to  my elementary school 
and  taught me  how to  fight fires.  And by  fight, I  mean run 
away.  When  I  told my mother  Ronald singed  a bible just to 
show  how  flammable everything  truly can  be,  she  did not 
believe me.  My mother  never  believed me where men were 
concerned. 
 
She says I must be misremembering the part about the bible. 
 
I tell her I have never been safe. Before the house fire. Before 
my  amygdala  developed. Before  Carl  and James and Chris 
and  Brian  and  Benny and  Michael and  David  and Paul and 
Ron  and  Abdul  and  Merle and Andrew and Timmy and Billy 
and all the other men who scorched everything I’ve ever held 
faith in.  How can I be  when even this conversation is tinder?
 
She says we’ve made good progress and she will see me next 
week. 
 
I tell her her clothes smell like smoke.


Self Portrait with Cremains
 
Google   tells   me   cremation     takes  4  to 15 
business   days.  So,  when  the   funeral  home 
asks   me   if   I  want   to  be   present   for   the 
process, 
 
I  imagine  a spare cot  in the crematorium. The 
pillow hard. The blanket thin. 
 
I    imagine     breakfast,    lunch,    and    dinner. 
Blackened  toast   three  times  a  day for  three 
weeks. Because   pot  roast  just  doesn’t seem 
appropriate when  your mother  is  carbonizing.
 
I  imagine  a  thick  word   search  for  company. 
Circling        terms       like      aftercare,        urn, 
columbarium, furnace.
 
I  imagine   waking    up  in  the   middle  of  the 
night,  bladder  full,   the glow  of  the chamber 
lighting my steps to the bathroom.
 
I imagine  calling off work.   Sorry. I won’t be in 
again today. They’re pulverizing the chunks of 
bone that didn’t burn.

Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, is the winner of OutWrite’s 2020 Chapbook Competition in Poetry and a back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry Chapbook Contest. Lannie was also named a 2020 Best of the Net finalist. Her debut poetry collection, Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, was published in 2021 by Cephalopress. Her fiction debut, Something Dead in Everything, is now out with ELJ Editions. Find Lannie Stabile on Twitter @LannieStabile or @NotALitMag, where she throws random writing contests and open mics.

Guest Editor Latorial Faison is the author of Mother to Son, the trilogy collection, 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History, and other titles. A graduate of UVA and VA TECH, she recently, completed doctoral studies at Virginia State University and published The Missed Education of the Negro: An Examination of the Black Segregated Education Experience in Southampton County. This Furious Flower Poetry Center fellow, Pushcart nominee, and Tom Howard Poetry Prize winner has been published in Artemis Journal, West Trestle Review, Obsidian: Literature and Art in the African Diaspora, PRAIRIE SCHOONER, and elsewhere. Forthcoming work, Mama Was a Negro Spiritual, was a semi-finalist for The CAVE CANEM POETRY PRIZE. Faison is married, has three sons, and teaches at Virginia State University.

Childhood Friends by James Diaz

We are the measure and the measured
Time, I'm saying
We waste and want more
In that aching that is ours to plow through
No one says whole
No one says time
Heals and if they do,
If they do:
Necessary lies
 
My father built houses all his life
For others to call a home
While we froze in winter
Wandered fields behind the section 8
Complex
Taught each other the long game of body burning
Brighter than future's not ours
 
Boys who died from too much
Or not enough
Girls who birthed their fathers
And braided ladders in their mind
To the moon
 
These ungodly creatures
From whom time took
Everything in sight
 
But in the barn one night Clara pointed
To the sky and said "just like that,
It's how I want to be,"
Never mind that everyone broke us
Never mind the light that fell
Across us scattered birds
Like everything else
Just out of reach
 
Because I remember holy was
Holy were
Don't ever think we came here wasted
Time,
We came here hungry
We ate the night
We were beautiful
We wanted more
We were at the altar
But never on our knees
 
Circling the barn
We talked our futures bigger than possible
We talked our lives with our mouths on fire
We kept each other warm
Kept each other circling
Higher and higher
The freeway humming
Hope:
We ate the damn thing whole.

James Diaz (They/Them) is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018), All Things Beautiful Are Bent (Alien Buddha, 2021), and the forthcoming Motel Prayers (Alien Buddha, 2022). Founding editor of Anti-Heroin Chic, their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Thrush Poetry Journal, Corporeal, The Madrigal, Wrongdoing Magazine, The Lumiere Review, Resurrection mag, and Apricity. They reside in upstate New York. 

Guest Editor Latorial Faison has authored 15 books, including Mother to Son and the trilogy collection, 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History. A graduate of UVA and VA TECH, she recently, completed doctoral studies at Virginia State University and published The Missed Education of the Negro: An Examination of the Black Segregated Education Experience in Southampton County. This Furious Flower Poetry Center fellow, Pushcart nominee, and Tom Howard Poetry Prize winner has been published in Artemis Journal, West Trestle Review, Obsidian: Literature and Art in the African Diaspora, PRAIRIE SCHOONER, and elsewhere. Forthcoming work, Mama Was a Negro Spiritual, was a semi-finalist for The CAVE CANEM POETRY PRIZE. Faison is married, has three sons, and teaches at Virginia State University.