Year: 2025

the fortress surrounds you
tall and sturdy.
no entrance.
no exit.
except a little hole where
your arm extends out.
i reach out to you,
but each time i do,
your arm retreats back.
i keep trying.
one day, my fingers graze
yours, but you
don’t pull back. rather,
our fingers interlock.
the ground shakes,
and the fortress comes
falling
down.
your hand in mine
through the rumble. i pull
you into my embrace.
i have become your
new fortress.

I flushed a spider down the toilet.
Its long legs tried to climb up the side,
As if begging for mercy.
I pushed the lever anyways –
Its limbs curled up against its body,
As it drowned in the water.
It vanished down the hole –
Gone forever.

But the memory is left behind,
As if it’s breathing; alive.
It’s all I could think about –
Why did I kill it?
Did I fear a tiny creature –
No bigger than my fingernail?
What if I was the spider and it drowned me –
Just for simply existing?

I held a funeral for the spider in the bathroom.
The toilet seat down, red rose on top,
– I imagined its favorite flower –
Both my dogs stared from the doorway,
Joining my sorrow.
The soft rain sprayed the window,
The sky mourned the wrongful death –
Of my eight-legged friend

I never grew up with you.

Still, I’m a lot less nervous than last year.
The rustic reverb from falling
Stones below—here,
That sound means two
Together for longer than a single rood.
Our residency is bound by gratitude.

A mythicological mailbox—
“Mythic-” as in magic,
“-ologi-” as in discipline—
Guards the shade
Of the almost Evergreen, liquid trees.
Do you want to meet the mycelia with me?

I haven’t watched you sleep.

The sacred words my teeth hold
Are in these journals, where strangers,
With the stark sheen of your brow
On theirs, before you, whispered a Lover’s prayer.
And even if you weren’t here,
It’s still for you.

A plethora of pages with quirks
And creases; Crude drawings and
Sweet nothings, lavender and fresh linen,
The Tropic of Cancer and the Gulf of Mexico.
I remember their prophecy, which is to say,
You’re like me if I were you.

I don’t know your middle name.

Flint spurs spark and I ponder
What it’s like to be the smoke
In your lungs, somewhat envious. Can I skinny-dip
In your venules, ventricles, and arteries?
Follow the current of your blood
In the same vein you followed me to this cliff?

Our heads rest on tree roots
As the last leaf crosses from
Recto to verso. Here, truth is a tesseract—
Refractive and four-dimensional.
The seemingly endless chartreuse faces of
The Housatonic river, they’re all yours.

I am glad you are here.

for Blake

In a circus of harsh sound,
a tent of torture,
remains a lone elephant
shining gray in a colorful madhouse.

But the animal doesn’t cry,
just sits there,
with suppressed ambition,
subjected to ridicule
not only by people—
but also by the aching voices in his mind,

attentive with apprehensive ears
to the squawks of mockingbirds
and the howls of monkeys,
in this cesspool of litter and mud,
swirling with the sins of men who poach,
and the fears of quiet prey.

Defeated, the weary elephant waits
in a cage forged from tears.
He and his dreams have been chained,
rotting with popcorn kernels
and peanut shells.

The elephant needs out—
escape from his circus captors
into a world that has no bounds.
I wonder,
can an elephant fly?

Winner of the 2024 Toni Morrison Day Award

each remembers the day,
sharp on the tongue and heavy in the blood,
a small drop of poison, it is harmless, they say.
every woman must swallow it back like a scream,
along with the memory of who she used to be.

we pinch our bluing lips into vapid pretty grins,
toxins fester in our stomachs as we clench rotting teeth.
the sparkling carnage of our girlhoods in all the debris,
sugar and arsenic dripping down our chins.
when we wince at the pain and dare say that it hurts,
you are so dramatic the boy next to us retorts.

the poison burns deeper, like boiling water,
and there is a forlorn feeling for our mothers’ fates
who douse it with their nightly wine to mask its bitter taste
and paint their nails to hide the rot from their daughters,
hide in a room they decorated alone.
he’s mean to you because he likes you, lighten your tone.

no one listens to she who spews only stones
so we must encase our words with silky pillows
something to let heads sink into, softly and slow.
unspool your dignified spine, do not be so high-strung
like those feminists, who all they do is complain.
meanwhile your thinning skin turns cadaver gray.

the town looks to the angry woman with disdain,
so our mothers brush the rage out of our hair and say
you must learn to cover up the decay,
then drink the laced champagne
golden as the chariot Medea rode into the sky
and repeat, over and over, boys will be boys, and it’s fine.

we learn to hide our poison in indulgent ways
liquid blush to flush our blood-drained faces,
for companies know how to sell to longing escapists,
make our lips sting with glaze, conceal our ire
with the newest rose perfume.
in our slow unsightly death, the beauty industry blooms.

in hours at the vanity, pain momentarily subsides
yet sneers persist. schoolboys will evaluate our attempted allure.
sunset cheeks and scarlet smile, how hard we tried.
they turn to us with their lips snidely curled,
why do you wear so much makeup? I prefer a natural girl.

in the twilight, keys nestled between your fingers,
you walk alone. the harsh chorus rings in your ears,
the vicious dialogue suddenly drowned out as you hear
your old favorite song. the town’s angry woman
tends to her lawn. she smiles at you warmly and invites you in
for tea. when you take a sip, it is laced with nothing but honey.

she says “let the anger simmer like the july sun shines,
admire late summer flowers, accentuate with golden jewelry,
dress in pink with your mother just to go the movies.
as you organize the wisteria and hang the wind chimes
oh, how you will slowly emerge from your tomb.
tie bows in your hair the same hue as your childhood room.”

now your purple fingers, they tremble around the glass
your skin is pale as a winter noon’s light
you recall the woman’s advice and wonder if you will take it tonight
or if you’ll go for another dose of poison.

you stare it in its eye before you spill it onto the floor.

each remembers the day
they did not drink it anymore.

Winner of the 2024 Toni Morrison Day Award

As a first grader, I stood smiling at myself in the mirror to freshen up after recess on a warm May day. Beside me stood an elegant blonde with oceanic eyes and porcelain skin, and I became suddenly aware of my dark African features. I felt dismayed. Even now, when I think about beauty, I see the pin straight hair she so effortlessly twirled, and wonder, why can’t I see the same beauty when I look at my tight and kinky curls? When I think of beauty, I think of the stereotypical blonde loved by society. My smooth, dark skin and coarse hair, on the other hand, are known as the African catastrophe. I have a memory of walking in the aisles of Toys R Us with my mother to buy a present for my seventh birthday. The shelves were stacked from floor to ceiling with dolls. There were blonde dolls with ponytails and porcelain skin. There were brunette dolls with long hair and light tan skin. But none of the dolls had my cocoa -colored skin and black corkscrew curls. Looking at my body in the mirror that day I remember wishing white genes were passed down to me. At seven years old, I learned that girls like me will never be perceived as being as pretty. Even now, I ask myself, “Why are only Caucasian girls viewed as beauty queens?” I yearn for the day when society will see that my tawny skin and lustrous ebony curls are as beautiful as that blonde’s pale features, and that I possess magnificent beauty internally and externally, and finally see me just as they see the pulchritudinous white Barbie.

Winner of the 2024 Toni Morrison Day Award

I

i remember
when a young kid could
live with such

blissful ignorance.
that was the pinnacle
of life

i remember
when a young kid was
oblivious to the reality

that lurked behind
his own closet door–
the house,

a cage, takes
away freedom.
the streets

felt more welcoming,
a boundless realm
that invited

idiocy

II

time
is a raging fire–
a boy
is a bird in an oak tree

time was always
burning, a boy notices
but instinctively
dismisses it

but a boy continues
to grow and the hands
of the world grabs
more gas

pouring into the flames
making them cruel,
quicker,
unignorable

III

i remember when
a grown man yearned
to live with

blissful ignorance.
for that was
the pinnacle of life

the streets,
so welcoming,
contained such a
chaotic reality

the house
seems more accepting,
more at peace,
a barrier from
the raging flames