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News & Notes
Listen to Poems from Our August Issue
ByNancy Holochwost• August 27, 2024Loosening the Strings
Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum on Craft, Curiosity, and Letting Go
ByNancy Holochwost• August 27, 2024Blind History
Tiffany Griffin on America’s Narrow View of Africa
China is racist. Russia is racist. The US is racist. . . . Africans need to bet on each other. The Black Diaspora and the Global South need to bet on and support each other.
still lives
The omen comes in the ruin of a robin’s egg on the sidewalk: fractured blue splattered with the pink makings of a flightless thing. A plum membrane of skin stretched over eyes like bruises. I make the mistake of looking back at this small disaster, and then the calamity of it fingers the threads of my morning.
And These Too Are Defensive Wounds
I’d thought the transcripts would help me write a letter to the parole board, but when I opened them, I saw a section of my own testimony at Maynard’s trial, and that was that. My head filled with hissing static; my heart raced.
Transvestite Freak
Many confident, gorgeous men stare at me from the walls. They all seem to be wearing makeup. This is what a man can be too, I imagine them whispering. I’m nervous, but I want what they have.