reclaim your voice.
My mother told me to ‘Find someone who we love as hard as you’ I listened and this is where it has taken me An unwanted refugee of your heart A cycle of piercing memories Like my existence is for you to wear And my soul you stole so silently. I cannot speak what…
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Featured Illustration: Fernando Cobelo I know we’re tattered Because every day We distinguish a new face With the same frayed hands And grin Deemed out of place Foraging with their eyes For a soul That will reinstate hope Discerning for hands That might donate more And there are a bountiful of people…
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Featured Image: Drew Beamer Pray. Grasp these beads, they are your home For the temple lies within Pray. Sit beneath His feet Your body belongs to Him Terminate her image Her life in your mind Pray. Let the flame protect you Its gift in strength Ancestral intentions Words birthed upon infancy Burdens paralleled in honors…
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Featured Illustration: Upasana Agarwal Toeing the threshold between purgatory and reality. My spirit runs insurgent in the forest of looming souls. Torn from these nascent roots, Mary’s suckling lamb is distraught. Convention dictates the adoption of identity markers. Only this label is hopeless to the deciphering lens. Like sloping hieroglyphics, it confounds the viewer and…
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Featured Image: Signs of Change: Social Movement Cultures, 1960s to Now I ride the metro and it rides me. I clutch the sign and it clutches me. I wonder if it feels the words that emotions cannot describe? I feel them too. Perhaps that is why we clutch each other. I cannot decide which…
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1 at the gynecologist’s office she says there is a poison circulating through my blood says its chasing the embryonic versions of my existence like a minotaur in a labyrinth i walk home below dirty rainbows whirling in the dead-end of my womanhood sleep for endless hours dream in blue-shaded parables …
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Featured Illustration: Shelia Liu Your heart Centering your chest Could center more The window to your soul The words that you let go Perhaps the way you view the world Could all be the reflection Of the heart Ever so raw And without Your mind’s protection You could go far You could…
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What I wear can’t be replaced. Inside or out, it always stays the same. Day after day, I look at myself and reflect on my outfit of (no) choice. Black skin and nappy curls is what it is. My outfit has its pros and cons. Nonetheless, I take care and maintain it with the utmost…
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Featured Illustration: Titus Kaphar We take human life For granted We treat a mother’s child Like they’re an isolated entity We see Through hollow eyes And empty hearts As if one teardrop Doesn’t stain their clothes Or one death Doesn’t ripple into more A life Wrapped by skin And blanketed By her…
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