Featured Illustration: Phung Banh
Brown skinned girl
Coconut wet black curls.
Pigment in that burning gaze
Could light any candle that holds your space.
Speak with those honeyed and remedied lips
Sway into the night with your ancestors’ hips.
Never let them take your cinnamon sighs
For a sign of defeated cries.
Across the palms we use to pray
Traced is the history of predator and prey.
Read between your calloused lines
One last time before you escape your vines.
May we grow our pain together
Unroot this earth forever.