NEPANTLA:

A JOURNAL DEDICATED TO QUEER POETS OF COLOR

EDITOR IN CHIEF

CHRISTOPHER SOTO

EDITORIAL SUPPORT

WILLIAM JOHNSON

GRAPHIC SUPPORT

EDEN

WELCOME TO NEPANTLA

“Bridges span liminal (threshold) spaces between worlds, spaces I call nepantla, a Nahuatl word meaning tierra entre medio. Transformations occur in this in-between space, an unstable, unpredictable, precarious, always-in-transition space lacking clear boundaries. Nepantla es tierra desconocida, and living in this liminal zone means being in a constant state of displacement--an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling. Most of us dwell in nepantla so much of the time it’s become a sort of ‘home.’

Though this state links us to other ideas, people, and worlds, we feel threatened by these new connections and the change they engender.” – Gloria Anzaldua

WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE

Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color is an intentional community space. Our mission is to nurture, celebrate, and preserve diversity within the queer poetry community. Through this journal, we are attempting to center the lives and experiences of QPOC in contemporary America. Thus, we view the journal (and our reading series) as part of a whole artistic project and not individual fragments of work. We believe that (here) the high lyric must encounter colloquial narrative. Here, we must provide space to celebrate both our similarities and our differences. We are one community with an array of experiences; we write in different formats, in different tones, of different circumstances. Nepantla is not the sort of journal that can project a singular voice (not if we want to reflect the various realities of our community). Nepantla is a journal of multiplicity, of continual reinvention.

ACCOUNTABILITY CULTURE

Nepantla is NOT an apolitical literary journal. We stand strongly against racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, xenophobia, etc. We do NOT believe in the notion of “craft” as an excuse to justify oppressive language. If (for some reason) you, the reader, feel discriminated against by the language used in our poems then please let us know. Keep us accountable. We have done our best to provide a safe space for the QPOC community. We hope you enjoy the fierceness!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page 6

Joy KMT

to whom it may concern:

Page 7

Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes

The Terror of Clean

Page 9

Xandria Phillips

r e a s o n s f o r s m o k i n g

Page 10

Crysbel Tejada

Ominous Light

Page 11

Eduardo Martinez

I NEVER WANTED TO SPEAK

Page 12

Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Prometí Nunca Hacer Drag

Page 13

Roberto F. Santiago

Florals

Page 14

Justin Phillip Reed

You Construct Intricate Rituals

Page 15

JP Howard

Diva Doll

Page 16

t’ai freedom ford

the beautiful people

Page 17

Danez Smith

On Grace

Page 19

Kevin Simmonds

I expected to be sad in New Orleans

Page 20

Dwayne Martine

Aporia

Page 21

Paul Tran

THIS TIME, THERE WAS NO

Page 22

Joey De Jesus

Eastchester Bay [ending with an offering]

Page 23

Pamela Sneed

Survivor 2014

Page 25

Myriam Gurba

Constellated

Page 26

Mariah L. Richardson

Butter Cream

Page 29

Muriel Leung

Cry Wolf

Page 30

Naima Woods

Necropsy

Page 31

Kazim Ali

Bird Hospital

Page 32

Cam Awkward-Rich

Another Middle-Class Black Kid Tries

To Name It

Page 34

Yani Robinson

Lou Sullivan’s Birthday

Page 35

Rajorshi Das

My Father’s Boyfriend

Page 36

Rage Hezekiah

MY FATHER, SWIMMING

Page 37

Roberto Montes

(no subject) –

Page 38

Chen Chen

Spell to Find Family

Page 39

Lara Weibgen

I THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW

Page 40

Derrick Austin

Major Arcana: Judgment

Page 41

Rosebud Ben-Oni

She Calls Once That Is A Lie

Page 42

Metta Sáma

{insert terror}

Page 43

Amber Atiya

if my slumlord allowed pets

Page 44

Conclusion

Joy KMT

to whom it may concern:

i left my fishnet thigh

high on your carpet.

cherry stems littered

on the bed. cobras in

my chest

i'm messy

borrowed the sun

to warm my feet

left a trail of forest

in your kitchen. used

your toothbrush

to do my baby hair,

molted a skin

on your sofa

i've never

been more

unapologetic

in my life

Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes

The Terror of Clean

That space between

a limpieza and sweeping your kitchen

with a dirty broom, clogged with hair and dustmites is

very, very small, or so they would have you believe.

List of items in a cleaning kit:

1. broom

2. soap

3. brillo

4 . machete

5. Kalashnikov Modernized Automatic Rifle (AKM) or IMI Galil

6. shovel

It is Colombia, it is the 1990s, it is now.

The scrape of nation-building

rendering pillage heroic by

a placid discourse of bourgeois mediocrity:

the exceptional or eccentric is dangerous,

did you not hear? Did you not learn it from the inception of

your breathing?

Aporophobia: fear of and contempt towards people who live in poverty.

And these are the disposables, the unwanted, the extraneous bodies, unprofitable, irrelevant to the march of silver and gold, the laborious privileges of citizenship, these are the ones who will catch the intention of lavish purges

and be forced to swallow ammo too big for the throat.

Kill list for Mano Negra, the elusive yet pervasive hand of death,

another piece of the putrid machinery that governs, that declares from the pit of unchurched holy taking, all the sins in their deadliness:

1. Foundlings, those with no nest, the homeless. Poverty is a sin. Sloth is a sin.

2. Nightwalkers selling their tongues like wares. Sex outside marriage is a sin.

3. False eyelashes and skirts on a cock-strut, Transgender, Transvestite, Transgressing bodies in a militarized culture. Deviation from masculinity is a sin.

4. Faggots and lesbianas. Homosexuality is a sin.

5. Human Rights Activists. Speaking out is a sin. Anti-imperialism is a sin.

6. Skin the color of earth and sunless hours. Refusing assimilation is a sin.

7. Mothers and daughters. Mourning is a sin. Remembering is a sin.

Police with their muddy heels in stirrups on badged horses

talk their talk of cleaner streets, boasting of revelatory

enterprise, bastion cities of order, security sacrosanct,

so the suits can take trains without trouble

and the young women of El Poblado, Comuna 14

can walk their unblemished cheeks and poodles down the sidewalks

without risking

the tainted guilt of beggarly hands

or the unfamiliar succulence of arousal,

we are the vermin here.

We are the edged blades of fallen yearning,

struck as with lightning and thunder

for all the labyrinthine meanderings of our days

away from the death of a thrust docility,

and we pay for our refusal of purity,

we pay for the distress of their daughters’ lips

reaching for ours at sunset in the parks littered

with deviants, our deviations carrying their discomfort,

we pay for not being able to pay, we pay for having been

boys who wore their mothers’ heels when she was away

working her third job in one twirl of the sun, we pay for

letting our nucleus grieve, for clipping our roses for hawking

in moonlit markets, for fighting the deepest

fight we can muster in the face of oblivion and contempt, for

that space between

a limpieza and sweeping your kitchen

with a dirty broom, clogged with hair and dustmites

is very, very small, or so they would have you believe.

Watch out, they will

sweep you into the gutter

and bury you with all the refuse,

tattered clothing, scrap metal, broken radios

of a convoluted wartime sensibility

in the afterglow of an immaculate sterility,

leaving your teeth to shine in the rain

Xandria Phillips

r e a s o n s f o r s m o k i n g

i.

to preoccupy the mouth

in the presence of men

ii.

a burning tip

is a weapon

iii.

to still the anxiety

in my chest

iv.

a pallet

for my lips to stain

v.

a way to be discreet

in kissing my fingers

vi.

an excuse

to leave

vii.

my own bones

burning

watch their smoke

pour from my

mouth

Crysbel Tejada

Ominous Light

Walking down hill

dirt path

a little shack by the road

rusty metal roof.

Mami drags us there

my brothers and I.

“will she do brujeria?”

but mami refuses to call it that

“los van a cura.”

She will heal them.

We watch

as she rubs medicine into

her weathered hands.

They are like aloe vera,

skin hard and thorny.

Mourning lines

between the creases of

her palm and fingers.

Calluses tracing the tales of

lost and fallen souls,

of handguns hidden

underneath her dress,

surviving cross fires.

And when you look

deeper inside,

there are centuries of

healing power.

The oil lantern illuminating

the single room home

fingers spread,

she places them on

my brothers bare chest.

All eyes closed

We bow our heads together,

Orando.

Eduardo Martinez

I NEVER WANTED TO SPEAK

of the house facing Cowboy Park

where my childhood pets are buried.

Eight small skulls scattered, each

a burned-out bulb keeping the fig tree

company, guarding the needles

I’d eventually unearth. My neighbor,

the infected queen, taught me

how to shoot down pigeons.

Think of them as compliments, he’d say.

By the time I was old enough to know

what he meant, it was too late

for him. Still, he slept inside me

for many seasons, cocking

his shotgun at a flinching sky.

Disguised in pill and sneer,

he waited for warmth to enter the body.

Darrel Alejandro Holnes

Prometí Nunca Hacer Drag

Te gusté tan recto como un hombre

enamorado de otro hombre podría ser.

Pero también amabas a las mujeres,

como sus espaldas se ensanchan

al aparecer las caderas, como sus cuellos se

mecen cuales cisnes bebiendo agua cuando

llaman tu nombre, su cabello largo

acariciando tu cara al despertar en el nido

creado en tu pecho, la mañana siguiente.

Y aquí estoy, usando la peluca que hice

a imagen de las rubias que preferías

pero nunca podrías amar. Aquí estoy

aplicando delineador sin planes algunos

de lagrimar. Yo nunca lo amaré

otra vez, anuncio decidido al espejo

mientras golpeo con polvos mi cara

hacia la sumisión; como si se pudiera salir

de los brazos del héroe sin caer de nuevo al peligro.

Hoy, por primera vez, bailo para salvarme,

convirtiéndome a la vez en la única mujer que

nunca tendrás. Hoy, en el bar Esta Noche,

en el Lower East Side, soy distancia. Antes, lo más cerca

que estuve de hacer drag fue al ser coronado

Rey de la Graduación, pero escogí en cambio la tiara

de la Reina; zirconia cúbica de alguna manera más real

que la corona acartonada del Rey.

Hoy, soy Diamante, extravaganza eleganza,

una hembra cantando luz acompañando a Whitney,

declarándome la Queen of the Night, dándote

that stuff that you want, meneando that thing that you need

sashay-shantae-strut-shimmy brillando en el escenario,

haciendo moverse a la gente de manera indecente

al ritmo marcado por el cetro en mi mano. Un rey, que es

una reina tan poderosa que rompe las leyes naturales;

lycra color de mi piel y leggings que me ocultan donde no

brilla el sol. Un corsé de cordones negros

cubre la costilla ausente pero deja salir colgando lo suficiente

para deslumbrar y sumergirme en el aplauso del público

que ama a este hombre vestido de mujer, hombre

vestido de hombre amujerado, hombre vestido

de suficientemente hombre para transformarse.

Hombre transformado, hombre superado,

hombre no más.

Roberto F. Santiago

Florals

i was sent home today

because i had a pink eye

but they never sent me home

when i had a black eye

in the car daddy said

big boys don't cry

but i don't see one in the mirror

i wish mommy picked me up

mommy looks beautiful in her dress

i want to be just like her

but my teachers and daddy

and stupid sarah tell me i can't

i still want to anyways

Justin Phillip Reed

You Construct Intricate Rituals

You headlock.

You lockjaw.

You clothesline.

You thumb war.

You man up.

You man down.

You waterboard.

You bring em home.

You wrestle arm.

You firm grip.

You stiff wrist.

You slap ass.

You chestbump.

You huddle up.

You head-to-head.

You foul.

You hand-to-hand.

You good game.

You shoulder surf.

You endzone.

You friendzone.

You fuckin sluts.

You whaddup, yo.

You bro, bro.

You push it out.

You spot me.

You bloody knuckle. (no homo)

You nutcrack.

You piggyback.

You pit sniff.

You mosh pits.

You haze week.

You blood pact.

You train run.

You fagbash.

You curbstomp.

You kiss of death.

You jump in.

You pour out.

You gaysted.

You wingman.

You mancrush.

You str8 bruh.

You be masc.

You no fems.

(in all caps)

You ain’t queer.

You all top.

You bare arms.

You shotgun.

You won’t kiss.

You close fist.

You zip lip.

You crosshair.

You fir

JP Howard

Diva Doll

Baby doll. Barbie doll. Mama was a Diva. Mama’s

baby was a doll. Mama collected dolls. Pretty pink,

fluffy glamorous porcelain dolls. Mama dressed dolls,

dressed me like I was her doll. Fluffy, pretty powder

pink show and tell baby doll/baby girl/mama’s baby’s

girl. Mama loved how dolls looked. Pretty porcelain

faces. Ruby lips/ Ebony eyeliner/cinnamon blush.

Perfect. Exteriors look pretty/ pink/ shiny/glossy.

Cameras loved mama as much as she loved cameras.

Mama shared legacy. Diva doll. Baby doll. Mama’s

living doll. “Smile real pretty for the camera baby”

“Walk down the runway baby girl” Follow mama,

follow footsteps, follow Diva. Mama didn’t see her

baby. Mama saw pink ruffled ponytails. Mama

dressed me pretty like her dolls. Everything

plastic/coated/covered/perfect show and tell. Mama

loved things she could show and tell. Shiny surfaces.

Exteriors. Kept dolls wrapped in plastic boxes.

Trophies. Show and tell. Mama took pictures/mama

loved studio shots/mama’s baby had to sit for studio

shots. “Smile pretty baby. Smile like mama. You look

like a living doll.” Pictures don’t lie. Mama didn’t see

eyes. Peering out. Sad. Empty eyes peering out behind

porcelain. Mama hung pictures of baby girl/baby

doll/Diva doll all around the house. Mama hung

pictures of herself around the house. Living dolls.

Pretty pictures filled shelves/walls/empty spaces.

Mama’s baby doll. Mama’s mirror. Mama didn’t

touch. Taffeta ruffles, bubble gum pink clothes filled

closets. Mama covered her baby girl with layers of

ruffles, bows, powder pink fluff. Mama didn’t touch.

Kept

her in the plastic box.

t'ai freedom ford

the beautiful people

sleep in make-up wake up late wait—

for no one run down streets in stilettos

half-naked verge of strip sip tea in the afternoon curdle swoon

into laughter spoon unfamiliars spill

red wine on white sheets

and call it art

heart everyone who hearts them back slack

and get over—

cover mediocrity with pretty

wear it like a mask suck at it

like a titty ask and they shall receive we’ve all given in giddy

weak

they speak golden

we beholden to every shiny syllable spilling raspy

from their nasty mouths eat fruit fed them by lovers leftover

from night before ignore

phone calls

fuck:

in hallways—spandex screeching against paint on

stovetops—pilot light scorching ass so hot

in the ass they hardly notice

quote bliss from Buddha

and other enlightened motherfuckers sucker us

with eyelashes dimples simple us

stupid

stupefy us

with one glance—dance dirty against vodka

bottles ashtrays

triggers

swagger us into two month’s rent glint

golden

from glitter and angel dust trust only

the glamorous

glamour us and bear teeth thief

our blood under strobelight moonlight glows a parade

in their honor

throw candy

to the ugly

below know

we want nothing

more than a taste of their sweet—

Danez Smith

On Grace

For Tim Seibles, Ross Gay, Kevin Simmonds, & Pages Matam

You know how when Usain Bolt runs

& you want to cry it’s so beautiful? That.

How could we not be a song? I hum

this man in my bed all night, my mouth a loose choir

& his body a gospel & I don’t mean like a song

I mean gospel like a religion or like a testimony

etched in gold. How could we be only a song?

I lay men down for what some call me a faggot for

but I call it worship, I see his wood & bark

Amen Amen Amen. I call out God’s good name

in the midst of the first miracle – the black body.

Look at him, at us. Were the mountains not named

after some dark brotha’s shoulders? Didn’t the wind learn

its ways from watching two boys run the spine of a field?

Bless the birch-colored body, always threatening to grow

or burn. Bless the body that strikes fear in pale police

& wets the mouths of church girls & choir boys with want.

Am I allowed to say I praised my pastor most without the robe?

I have found God in the saltiest parts of men: the space between

the leg & what biology calls a man, the bottoms of feet, life’s slow milk.

I watch the Heat play the Warriors & I am overcome by a need

for tears & teeth. I stopped playing football because being tackled

feels too much like making love. I pause in the middle of the street

watching the steady pace of the men on corners selling green

& all things dangerous & white. I watch the hands exchange money

& escape, the balancing act of hips & denim. This awful dance of poverty, but the dancers? Tatted & callous ballerinas, henna dipped stars.

Do you know what it means to be that beautiful & still hunted

& still alive? Who knows this story but the elephants & the trees?

Who says the grace of a black man in motion is not perfect

as a tusk in the sun or a single leaf taking its sweet time to the ground?

Kevin Simmonds

I expected to be sad in New Orleans

The barrel-chested singer had his lips

so close to the microphone

that the side street dimmed black as a blue note

If only I could lose sight enough

to feel my way through

Just wait

This blast of humid air shakes the pecan tree

& there’s so much meat left on the branches

I almost bite down into the air

until under the green clapboard house

the cats fuck their loud fuck

The full belly of night is slit

Ms. Lynn downs can after can of Coke

as she surveys the block from her widow’s walk

She said a rosary before the first mastectomy

She pulled every weed from the flower bed

before the second

My will has gotten stronger

When a Cadillac turns the corner

I know Uncle Paul is haunting me

his tongue red as cayenne

At Frenchman & Chartres the tuba

holds down a two-measure bass line

hooked in the snare

The tourist fixes his cell phone on the littlest

black boy firing his trombone from the curb

I’m leaning on The Praline Connection holding a bag

of vintage porn that cost $50

I'll commemorate high school graduation in 1990 with this

purchase from the bitter homosexual bookseller

Somebody’s selling ice cold water

Dwayne Martine

Aporia

What is left out is often what lingers, remains after

silence, stillness, separation and grows, groans into

speech, movement, absent intention. Doors creaking

open without hand or wind, drawers yawning wide,

murmurs and whispered laughter, logic eating its own

tail, the unseen announcing its omission from what

is known, accepted and coming back, rehearsing

its lacunate struggle with handles, shadow larynxes,

the quotidian and reaching for us each flat, stark day,

every burgeoning night simply by being ____ .

Paul Tran

THIS TIME, THERE WAS NO

police officer. No inaudible English

or witness: the word victim

was not used at all. This time,

there was no grieving.

No finger pressed into the lip

of a VHS, twisting the magnetic

tongue, the wild chrysanthemums

blooming along my neck. This time,

there was no condom. No name.

The only evidence I have is flesh,

the war that took it all

away, that made this body

of water desert. And here,

swimming in disappearing

dark, where language is neither

feral or enough, I open

my mouth—a fault

line, a tributary, an empty

vase—and unbury you: punctured

photograph, plucked

flower, years of wildfire

& earthquake, child

that could not remain

a child unless cruel & forgetting.

For you, I unbury a mother,

a row of teeth, the slit

of an eye to describe a home

land also split apart. For you,

I reach my hands into this arid

weight and excavate the word

No.

Joey De Jesus

Eastchester Bay [ending with an offering]

Now to waterscape; I am escaping.

Now to hooking bunker in the stern,

the cooler full with bluefish flop,

the forearm sequined in broodspewn scale,

and here stands I darting minnows

fishing with my child in our porgy spot

who tails angling boys, thinks

bait & tackle—the sea did good

to starve him alive. The tongue did fix

to good filet knife—Two-fingered spirit

of trawling gut, I will give him back.

I will teach him how a single line

beleaguers dark water,

whose fiend soul is bigger than us all.

Pamela Sneed

Survivor 2014

Contrary to what's popular I never liked Diana Nyad

in my mind overrated white woman

ex-olympic swimmer most recently swam from Cuba to Florida

privileged

thrill seeker

daredevil

doing voluntarily what so many people of color

are forced to do while attempting to gain freedom

drowning in boats, falling overboard, terrible accidents,

falling into the jaws of sharks, those waters a meat fest

for predators, slavers

Sometimes I think about slavery and think if only those waters

could tell the tale

I've always wanted to say to those people who go on the reality-show Survivor for kicks try being an artist and make it your career choice

or how about a single mother or father trying to raise a family

on minimum wage living in an impoverished area

try being someone who comes to America and

doesn’t speak the language whose entire survival rests upon

learning english

arriving in a strange land, on strange soil, estranged from everything

you have ever known

like hitting your head against a glass door, or mirrors

like optical illusions that used to be in the old fun houses

or how about being uninsured and being sick for a number

of years

weathering that storm

or insured but burdened with a costly illness

health plans don’t cover

or like so many of my students who are bullied to the point

they have nowhere to turn and no longer have knowledge

of their own name

No I never liked Diana Nyad

until one day I caught a clip of her on Ellen

I caught the part where she talked about her friendship

with Superman Christopher Reeve who in real life suffered

paralysis from the neck down.

He looked at her in later years after she'd retired from swimming

said he feared she wasn't living her own dreams, that

she was an Olympian

And something about her conversations with him motivated her

to try again, to listen.

Maybe through her I saw the frayed ends of my own un-lived dreams,

my own fear that caused paralysis

And so by the end of that conversation with Ellen

where Diana talked about returning to her Olympic Self

by swimming from Cuba to Florida at age 60 challenging

every notion of what it means to be an athlete, a woman,

and the stereotypes of aging I was crying

by the time she looked into the camera and said

Never give up

Don’t ever give up on your dreams

Myriam Gurba

Constellated

My friend bought

A star and named that

Star after her boyfriend.

I gaze at the summer sky,

Wondering, “Is that you,

Chuy Gómez?”

Mariah L. Richardson

Butter Cream

She walks

like soft cake

butter sweet

and light

my appetite whet

the day

cold

snow

I was seeking

her spring whirrs

hums like the land

black and wet

inside her sanctuary

I stand stare

nervous windows sweat

to spite the cold

blackened trees

bare branches

etching

the grey, grey sky

I dream of

curling curving

into a cadence

take her in until

we occupy

the same place

the same space

caressing her

I touch myself

I feel delicious

rose chiffon light

echoes off my skin

brushing close

she says through

Cheshire grin

“if I like it,

I lick it.”

bouquet of

myrrh sandalwood

wafts and billows

faux ming vase

bursting of cattails

and pussy willow

tease in the corner

atop

the big, big bed

royal purple

gold sheets

satin raw silk

gregorian chants

whisper lusty devotions

my mouth goes dry

my eyes wide

damp palms grasp

headboard slats

for hands to hold

“breathe”

she says as

she parts me

“breathe”

her breath warms

I am made soft

wanting wanting

dancing on my skin

I stretch/contract

clutch pillow

to the place

she tastes me

I hear the color red

feel golden and sun

piercing through

eyes sliding back

fluttering behind

closed lids

“open your eyes

see,”

she sighs

I ride and ride

surrender deep

into eyes reflecting

rain and fire and all

that is song

I ride and ride

her breath

my breath

my breath

I try to catch

in earth cracks

and breaks

lava spews and

monsoons and cave- ins

and rapture

revelations

jesus

coming

coming

outside a pewter sky

flocked by crows

mirror our black bodies

rising

Muriel Leung

Cry Wolf

Born girl in the wither-lands and pop her

hinges one by one to floor. No reason

to wade towards the sad bucket feeling.

To love this twice-ghost of twill and songbird

dead, I need her soldered to me. My grief

often catches in the shivery goose trap.

The life expectancy of this kind of animal

counted on the rings of a circus top. I say

topple her years into a noiseless field.

She learns the word albacore and cartwheels

off a nearby cliff. She lives and dives again

to come back as ghost moth and shrill.

I hold her to a broken tooth. I hold her though

to touch means to cut and barber; to touch means

I am pressing juice out of her scarcest bone.

Cradle the shy end of her—that suckle and sour

mouth going, Mother, I noose you. Forgive her for all

her knife and flesh games. She is so small.

These are the things she loves: touch and the color

opal, little lamb of every sugary rhyme, and that

look of red faces tearing out her seams.

Naima Woods

Necropsy

A fallen chick, bonesoft and free

of its incubational shell.

I imagine my body as this bird,

opened like a fig, unsexed and

ripening on the ground.

Its claws are frozen in grip,

each finger bent at the knuckle,

puckered toward roughskinned ankles.

I am comforted by its spiny

wings, downy underbelly split open;

this body turns outward without

showing its underpinnings. The bones

have reinvented themselves, no longer

scaffolding, they fuse to organs,

living in tents concealed by swollen tissue.

I lean close to the body, use a stick

to search for sets: ovaries, tubes,

but find none. I take the bird in

my hand, press against its little bush

of meat, its foul belly pushed open.

It is familiar. I catalogue its body,

take notes on it’s napping guts,

the tenderness found in expiry,

the body no longer weighted with work

or conditioned by movements.

Its form never flew, couldn’t collect

its wind-earned luster. It’s just a body

escaping its skin, hunting for

purpose. This is why. I look

towards its figure to guide my own.

A dead bird knows how to avoid

self-pity: let injury be swaddled,

let death be a marker of possibility. Become

something more than a body,

a wing, a slender beak.

Kazim Ali

Bird Hospital

Hurtling down uncaught by updraft he receives the page

Saying cast off the woven coat of twigs and all the ice-

Sheathed vestments and scrub in

The doctor is the beast he was warned about who will try

To make him whole and dizzy from his fall he can’t protest

When his song turns monstrous

Nested in the anger he never wanted to be woven into this

Bird made of bull and swan thundering on so no wonder

The sutures fail in the traffic of wings

Now in the unraveling operation lonesome

Haunted by malpractice and terrifying winds

Abjuring the night’s belated suit he solo wonton sings

Cam Awkward-Rich

Another Middle-Class Black Kid Tries To Name It

I used to dream about a woman trapped inside

a burning house. That isn't how she went,

my grandmother. Instead, the hood is full of grief

that moved inside her like a drunk man's fist.

All I know about my father’s mother are these holes

in her, the holes she left. My father, pulled over

to the side of the road, crying because a song spills

through the radio. I think her grief moved

into my father when he was born & into his daughters

when we were born & I’m sure someone’s tried

to tell you the blues is only music, but the radio

the radio.

*

Once, I watched my teacher tell another brown girl

her language was too beautiful to belong to her

Once, my teacher bought me a cheeseburger & asked

how come the other black kids weren't more like me.

Once, the girl pinned me to the wall until I called myself,

or her, a nigga & all week I wore her fingers as a bruise.

That year, I wore cargo shorts through the winter,

books in each pocket, haunted hallways full of words

that weren’t my own.

*

Is there a word for a child talking to himself

or no one?

I’ve said ghost

but I do have skin & a father, after all. Hands

after all, dirt colored & not buried in the dirt.

Sure, I’ve been opened the way girls are opened.

Sure, I’ve been a dark thing gone missing in the dark.

Sure, I’ve looked at my sister & seen a woman

caught in flame. But we have pills for that.

We have money for the pills for that.

*

Please—

what’s the word for being born of sorrow

that isn’t yours? For having a family?

For belonging nowhere? Not even

your body. Especially not there.

Yani Robinson

Lou Sullivan's Birthday

Sometimes when you’re broke

and another someone moves

in to help with rent

you wind up awake

at four AM, vaguely coked up

listening to two

boys have sex in the room

below you. Something tells you

to jerk off – why not

so you, on your phone

watch a cock appear in and

out of some stud’s mouth.

You thrust helplessly

into your hand, willing it

to be your lover’s

tongue and fist, but it’s not

going anywhere.

Rajorshi Das

My Father’s Boyfriend

They enter the bed room

and close the door, locked

away from the world for hours.

Father sulks as his man goes

home. He barely talks to us,

most nights. Father shouts

at Ma. She knows, doesn’t she?

Father loves him more than

us- and I can see why.

His boyfriend has big

muscles and perky nipples.

Should I tell Ma what

I have seen? Should I?

Rage Hezekiah

MY FATHER, SWIMMING

Waist deep in ocean, he was not my father.

His wetblack skin gleaming unfamiliar,

laughter spilling loudly from open mouth.

The hands that I had come to fear

acquiesced, deliquesced in seawater. I watched him

anticipate the splash of each wave

upon him, as though amazed.

He’d never been a child.

Those were shrouded years,

as the sole black altar boy at Dorr Memorial,

the one dark child on the diamond

of Walter Flynn Field. Watermelon eaten in secret,

forbidden by his father. Reticence was demanded.

This austerity is the father I know.

How could it have been him, swimming?

My father was volcanic, his eruptions capricious.

He’d have me retrieve his leather belt,

before bending me over his knee.

But in the water, I saw him surrender fierceness,

his large palms drawing circles around himself

a solitary space for something, someone, soft & safe.

Roberto Montes

(no subject) –

Children make people

smile in a way that suggests

It is possible

The more familiar the surface the less

fertile the soil

Or this wasn’t meant

for growing but rubbing uselessly against

like a beast

after a hard day of being less than

its troubles

I am sometimes concerned

when I am gone my family will scatter

my body

just to continue the line by feeding it

to the rivers underneath us

water is a kind of reproduction

because we are carried by it

changed

when I am maturing your hair or taking

your fiancé from you at the beach

I will look so hot stupefying colonizers

Useless is its own empire

As it grows it settles

Chen Chen

Spell to Find Family

for Kundiman

I thirst for the starlight

that opens elephant skin.

I thirst for the raven

conjugated into riven

by summer storm.

My job is to trick adults

into knowing they have

hearts. My heart whose

irregular plural form is

Hermes. My Hermes

whose mouths are wings

& thieves, begging

the moon for a flood

of wolves, the reddest

honey. My job is to trick

myself into believing

there are new ways

to find impossible honey.

For I do not know all the faces

of my family, on this earth.

Perhaps it will take a lifetime

(or five) to discover every

sister, brother. Heartbeat

elephantine, serpentine,

opposite of saturnine.

I drive in the downpour,

the road conjugated

into uproar, by hearts

I do not know.

By the guttural & gargantuan

highway lion. The 18-wheeler

whose shawl of mist is a mane

of newborn grandmothers.

Lara Weibgen

I THOUGHT YOU SHOULD KNOW

The apple was supposed to have five seeds inside but when we sliced it open there was a sixth like a finger & I got scared. Scared like I was when I found you talking to yourself in the kitchen at five a.m. the morning after your analyst wrecked the last living part of you. You looked so pitiful sitting there with your hands in your lap & crumbs all over your face but to me in that moment you were a murderer & I wanted us both to die. Speaking of which, I keep my father in a Tupperware in the living room & sometimes when I feel numb I inject his ashes into my arm. I thought you should know.

The thing is that all my girlfriends keep getting raped, which makes it hard to appreciate things like, you know, music, even though I know that all your girlfriends get raped too & music is the only thing that ever makes any of us feel better. I’m sorry I’m not blonde anymore but I used to be & that should count for something. I’m sorry all my wheels fell off. I can still hold a tune & I’m a good kisser when I’m not too anxious. I don’t know how Twitter works but I hear murder is trending, which would scare me too if I weren’t so bent on disappearing forever. It depresses me how much the kids on the boardwalk love Amerika, & how all the really cool murals are based on logos. I feel above these things somehow, even or especially when I know they’re inside me too. I wish our sex felt less like the military & more like flowers, except whenever that happens I always wish the reverse were true. I don’t know how anyone could ever love such a basic bitch, but I hope one day you’ll try.

In a poem Ke$ha & I coexist differently than in the world. In my dream we were all living in a palace of hair, someone made a bong out of a mango, & everything was free. If I were a mom I’d be a cool mom, & if I were a dad I’d shoot myself. I think war is a problem you & I have not really reckoned with, which isn’t to minimize how harassed we feel by the dailiness of each day, but rather to call attention to differences; degrees of separation. This morning I said a prayer & it helped me. Someone is drunk-dialing you, & from further away than you think. I often wonder what my dead dad would say about the fact that I quit school & fuck girls now. Where did the time go, & why. When did everybody’s hair get so long.

I hate this venue. I hate it when you shake your ass in such a way as to mark the distance between yourself & the people whose ways of ass-shaking you imitate. Self-parody is unattractive, but maybe if you went all the way through & actually became Other we could love each other in the end. I’m not Black but sometimes when I think crackers I don’t mean food. I think mercy could be an air. I think a forest could follow us around. I even think we could become legion. A shining stone; a silver arrow. A YouTube video about bioluminescence or solar flares. Hey. When I said pingback I meant world.

Sometimes when politics find their way into love it can be exhausting. My identity tried to fuck your identity but it felt awkward & we both got soft. Speaking of which, when I say I love you I say it mostly to remind myself of a kind of softness we keep trying to cultivate or enter. I wish we both could stop taking it so seriously. My penis is sky-sized. It takes me where I want to go. Away.

Derrick Austin

Major Arcana: Judgement

During hurricane parties, beer

foaming on the curb,

we prepare for the inevitable

return of glass bottom boats,

trawl nets, and oil cans—

all we’ve cast into the water.

Jade oak leaves quiver

and clouds wing

from the bay. It’s not unfamiliar

to see bodies rolling in the water

after flash floods. Clothed

in tuxes and paisley dresses,

it’s as if they’d brazenly decided

to swim. If you stared

long enough they would stand

tall and flat like the horizon’s

oil rigs. Instead they rest

in slick loam

beside bricks and shattered cedar,

dreaming of moss

on cypress knees.

Rosebud Ben-Oni

She Calls Once That Is A Lie

When she calls in the morning

I’ve changed my number address identifying features

I’ve sacrificed my name when she calls in the morning

With news she’s selling my teeth on eBay

The teeth she broke off

One by one

While I was sleeping that is a lie when she

Calls in the morning I was awake

Each time she whittled away my ability to bite

Once on VH1 in a thrash metal rockumentary that is a lie

It was at the Kentucky Derby when she calls in the morning

She’s taken all my hats and next my hair

And my scalp is an angry red gash

Once eating toffee by the sea that is a lie

When she calls in the morning it was a reststop

In Jersey and the assortment was unreal

And of all things I chose Dentine

Once I knew all the lemon drops by names

And identifying features they had names

When she calls in the morning she wants the children

When she calls in the morning and then the house

And the hospital where they won’t operate on me

There are no spare parts not even a space between

Whistling

Like a fist of the bank in wet

Season lying through her teeth

Metta Sáma

{insert terror}

born after midnight & before morning before we name it witching hour born on the night stars turned inside out leaving light spattered sky raven born above ocean born tumbling between heavens & earths born when jupiter first shaded half the moon born of wine & meat & war born between slaughter & laughter between torment & tease Argus came feet first eyes on his soles eyes closed on his toenails eye stamped in the small of his back eye lodged at the base of his neck his mouth a red silent yowl of eyes

Amber Atiya

if my slumlord allowed pets

i’d adopt every

after hour paw

mauled in battle

trimmed with scabs

toppling trash

for fries & wing tips

fur splattered

with egg foo young

these streets

weren’t paved

for tenderness

a tabby’s pregnant belly

low-hanging

as a rain cloud

a swollen nimbus

grazing the ground

MANY THANKS TO ALL OF OUR CONTRIBUTORS, INCLUDING:

EVENT READERS & ORGANIZERS

The Lambda Literary Foundation, The Creative Writing Program at NYU, The Audre Lorde Project, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, Kundiman, CantoMundo, Cave Canem, The San Francisco Public Library, Radar Productions, The Poetry Foundation, Our Word at Columbia University, and Apogee Journal. William Johnson, Tony Valenzuela, Lynn Melnick, Deborah Landau, April Heck, Kamilah Aisha Moon, Metta Sáma, Amber Atiya, Julia Guez, Elisa Gonzalez, Alok Vaid-Menon, Joseph Legaspi, Franny Choi, Jackie Wang, Paul Tran, Celeste Guzman Mendoza, Deborah Paredez, Eduardo C. Corral, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Roberto Montes, Nicole Sealey, Daria-Ann Martineau, r. erica doyle, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Reginald Harris, Pamela Sneed, Michelle Tea, Brontez Purnell, Cam Awkward-Rich, Kevin Simmonds, Aracely Mondragon, Celeste Chan, Virgie Tovar, Stephen Young, Ashley Sheehan, Ching-In Chen, Francisco Aragón, Ruben Quesada, Duriel E Harris, Kenny Ong, Cecca Ochoa, Alan Pelaez, J Mase III, and Eden.

FINANCIAL SPONSORS

JP Howard, Robert Trudel, David Trinh, Lani Ka’ahumanu, Dan Peebles, Ocean Vuong, Ron Bledsoe, David Groff, Exie Huntington, Thomas Smyth, Jameson Fitzpatrick, Michael Klein, Roxane Gay, Paco Marquez, Miguel M. Morales, William Alden, Sonia Mehrmand, Ifigeneia Derekli, Ted Kerr, Paul Ross, Ben Stango, Ruth Soto, Michelle Chen, Jess Linde, Sonalee Rashatwar, James McMaster, Tyler Lurie-Spicer, Amanda Lickers, Valerie Wetlaufer, Roberto Flotte, Crystal Gonzalez Ale, Shalia Stockstill, Dan Lau, Johannes Wilson, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Dan Lau, Johannes Wilson, Michael Dahl, Lynn Melnick, Emily Yoon, Julieta Salgado, Daniel E

Solis, Creatix Tiara, Briyana Davis, Lauren Espinoza, Tzu-Yung Huang, Texta Queen, Rigoberto González, Kyle Rapinan, Ruben Quesada, Nic Masangkay, Sibling Rivalry Press, and many more!

PARTICIPANTS IN NEPANTLA’S 1ST WORKING DINNER

r. erica doyle, Eduardo C. Corral, Pamela Sneed, Timothy Liu, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, JP Howard, Charif Shanahan, Rosebud Ben-Oni, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Rickey Laurentiis, Alok Vaid-Menon, Janani Bala, Eden, Jerome Murphy, Rigoberto González, and Tommy Pico.

… This journal would not have been possible without all of you!