September – Chinaza James-Ibe
at the sound of rain,
ants file out his eye sockets
like pupils, spilling.
What Happened – Fatihah Quadri
On the news, they said there are dark places beyond the sea; deserts of silence, islands of suffocation, rooms bursting with the thirsty laughter of a dead humor. That harmattan the river took two girls
A Book of Remembrance – Blessing Omeija Ojo
All the mercies that I received;
I remember. The tribal mark of a boy who chased his cashmere goats
to the cold hands of night to give me shelter looked like God.
My Shift Begins at 7PM – Jasmine Tabor
the quiet intoxication / of abnegated passions / creates a sublime totality on velvet red rows / high above where laypeople sit / enjoying in spiritual revue / holding something honest / high, higher still / full of light / and god’s life.
In the Lower-Church Bathroom – Jasmine Tabor
you in the mirror and you together and do you fear it, the recognition in your pupils? the holiness in you? do you die, an insurmountable joy wells at calling and having had some grand answer?
Addiction – Edoziem Miracle
the water of a bruised side victory
is mine but what is mine also runs after me
in naked hopeless streets
maybe salt is meant to be recycled
chased after as you lose yourself in the torrents
Addiction II – Edoziem Miracle
wrap your fingers around the emptiness long enough and you learn how to thread ropes from nothing
for every falling is still a chapter in the scoring of living and you might learn something out of it
Agnostic – Ọbáfẹ́mi Thanni
I longed for prodigal privileges. To have
my foolish heart – home of first doubts – silenced.
Resisting my longing, I unread your word. Learned
to be good without you.
Arke 82 – Kaleab Abayneh
blue before our earthly eyes.
As if you weren’t the path
of the sun and the moon and the stars.
A god worth worshiping,
and the thing beyond a metaphor,
A poem worth dying for.
And. And. And – Rutendo Chichaya
how many more must it take,
who is allowed to breathe?
some are deemed more worthy,
yet silence in the face of injustice
is betrayal.
Death. Wounding. Displacement
Innocence – Isra Hassan
After genesis, Muslims hear the adhan twice.
The birth. Then, conducted by death, the rebirth.
The adhan comes as a vision. A confession.
It washes over you. It swears to you, this
enlightenment, that your soul has, exists.
Devotion – Isra Hassan
Certitude stowed in geodes, stowed
in embryos, stowed in a Tribute’s
uterine space. Perhaps this where
the voices of ancestors convene.
