Issue 165 News Today

1.0 And every rose raised the fist of her manifesto: sick folk need a rose.1.1 Make it a story problem: how many Black girls will fit in an average front yard?2.0 Standing alone in her backyard, a woman renames the constellations. Orion she calls Sojourner’s Truth. The Milky Way: Black Girl Sitting in a Saucer. The Big Dipper she tips, licks its dark rim, and hangs it back

      I didn’t think he would show up, so I spared myself the disappointment by not telling him we were visiting. We would only be in town for four days, and I made plans with everyone I could, except him. After years and years of disappointment, you learn to bottle the resentment, the pain, the “why he don’t want me, man?” mantra and turn it into a trophy of sorts to remind

I pull the chicken meat from the bones, cube the meat, boil the bones to broth. I try not to think about our sixteen laying hens. How we called them by old-fashioned, feminine names. How we praised them every time we pulled a shit-sticky eggfrom under one of their feathery bums. It wasn’t until I saw the internal organs of a dissected bird—all those eggs clustered and

This test is open-book.This test is timed.Group work is not allowed.      You are pregnant, which is a great surprise. You never expected to become pregnant, because       [select one of the following]            a.      You’re a virgin            b.      You’re not a virgin, but your father thinks you are

In early spring, 1908, Ellis Island was so congested with ships from Europe & Asia,The steamer transporting my grandfather, alone & only fourteen, was diverted, reroutedTo a port in Galveston. A fairly common practice, born like most things out of laziness, Robotic immigration agents changed, for pronunciation ease, his name—from Komar To Cohen. If his portrait existed, it’d

We belittle the grass when we think it growseverywhere. It doesn’t. It grows here and here and here. And we belittle it too when we think we are nowhere. In some field near some meadow illegible, indistinct. We are where this grassis. Even one blade is a place. Even raked into windrows. Even after a sun so strong we have to squint to see anything it is furious with rifles

After Janice Harrington’s “Windshear”

I pull the chicken meat from the bones, cube the meat, boil the bones to broth. I try not to think about our sixteen laying hens. How we called them by old-fashioned, feminine names. How we praised them every time we pulled a shit-sticky eggfrom under one of their feathery bums. It wasn’t until I saw the internal organs of a dissected bird—all those eggs clustered and

At sundown we light the bonfirethat great pile of brash & leavesas much of the old year as will burnit’s been a dry spring so it goes up quickly at first     the flames alive& wild as trapped birdslater I must help it along     prodding & replacing the ends of fall outs

In early spring, 1908, Ellis Island was so congested with ships from Europe & Asia,The steamer transporting my grandfather, alone & only fourteen, was diverted, reroutedTo a port in Galveston. A fairly common practice, born like most things out of laziness, Robotic immigration agents changed, for pronunciation ease, his name—from Komar To Cohen. If his portrait existed, it’d