Josephina is born with the notched penny her mother swallowed as a childtucked in the folds of her chin. So beautiful, she charms the midwife and winksat her husband. Always the one to pick the […]
Memory, Land, and Love: An interview with poet and author Amber McCrary
Amber McCrary is writing what she yearned for when she was young in the small town of Flagstaff, Arizona. “I always felt kind of like an outcast and a weirdo growing up. I never really […]
The Theory of Walls
after Dr. Joshua Bennet’s interview with The Poetry God 1.A physics student told him that we are“too big to be considered by a wall”(as an explanation to why we aren’t ableto walk through them if […]
A Black Veteran’s Tragedy
I was honorably discharged from the United Air Force in the summer of 2005 and suddenly found myself unemployed. A few weeks later, I was homeless. Dominant economic theory suggests that the economy becomes unstable […]
Once, I Shot a Man Right Between the Eyes
Following orderson the battlefield,it was kill or be killedmy sergeant said,no different thanwhen he taught meto thrust and parrywith fixed bayonet.The young soldierwore thick glassesand looked a lot likeone of my classmates.Sergeant claimedGooks don’t belongto […]
The Things I’ve Stopped Trying to Stop
for my nonverbal Autistic son The word recovery goes off like a bomb, exploding for weeks, months, years until there’s nothing left but ash. A wasteland. Suppurated skin and canned foods riddled with BPA. Arsenic […]
Attempting to Define My Relationship to Black History Month
If you’re an educator, you might be celebrating Black History Month by assigning Frederick Douglass or Sojourner Truth, maybe Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. If you’re not confined by district restrictions and reading lists, […]
Close to the Heart: Learning the Chinese Characters
怒: anger influxes when slavery eclipses the heart愁: worry thickens as autumn sits high on the heart闷: depression settles when the heart is shut behind a door忘: forgetting happens when there’s death on the heart忍: […]
TRR Editors on Hope, Justice, and Activism in 2020
I keep thinking about Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde—what it means to revise history, why it’s important to understand the difference between poetry and rhetoric. Along with the poetry of Rich (and Sexton and Plath, […]
