Blind 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.

Wedding Colors

Somehow my bubble went unpunctured for twenty-four years, allowing me and my coffee-colored skin to arrive in Hartford, Arkansas, blissfully ignorant of what my Blackness might mean in this place.

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.

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.

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Back Cover

I Make Jokes When I’m Devastated

If you walk the stations of the cross, most tour guides / will politely point out the spot where they think Jesus / may have fallen or the spot where / he may have met his mother.

Extrication Day

It is easy to forget your own body with a patient under your hands. In training we learned how to call the air ambulance—how to say the right words on the radio, hand off our patient to the flight crew, and keep our heads beneath the spinning helicopter blades.

The Dream

In the small, trembling room of my longing, A., / Last night—summer wearing the walls, autumn / Spread in orange colors on the floor, upon which / We lay, two quiet pianos, soul music pouring / Over the hidden grass—we touched, my face to the mirror of yours.