AINOSA LOMON (I EAT THE NEWS)

1
I speak two languages fluently / and dance between a third
each word a syllable haunting / my tongue / a memory behind
a memory / a song / a waltz / starlight on the darkest night
there is no moon in the sky / there is no moon

2
I say each word slowly / breaking it apart / with my teeth
teasing open its meaning / with my tongue / pushing it out
between my pursed lips / slowly / softly

3
Your name is a fourth language / one I am unfamiliar with
I do not want to / massacre it / I say it softly / you tell me
it’s too seductive / the way I say it / I cradle it against
the roof of my mouth

4
I speak Swahili /  like a Maasai / someone once told me
I speak Maasai / backwards / I am in the back seat of a car
my parents laugh / as I stitch together a sentence / using my teeth
I bite down the words / until they connect / in a broken sentence

5
Last night / I told my mother / I think she’s dead
what I meant to say  / was that / lately I’ve been missing her

6
In my dreams / my mouth is an amalgam / of languages
my brain pulls them together / like a quilt / a tattered blanket
bridging gaps / mismatched threads /holding them together

7
Awake I am constantly / borrowing / until my cup is full
until my cup spills over / until my mouth is a mess / of accents
until I am confused / until the words burr against / the roof of my mouth
until only silence / is left

8
I traverse three worlds / when I am awake / at my job last week
my boss pulled me aside / asked me in a whisper
Where are you from / do you have an accent?

9
I had forgotten / that I am a guest / that I am a stranger
that this is a strange land / that not everyone speaks
with the music of three languages / in their mouth

By N.L. Shompole

Biography:

N.L. Shompole was born in Kenya and currently lives, works and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area California. Her previous works have been featured in Maps for Teeth, Kinfolks Quarterly, Invitation Annual and most recently Words Dance Publishing as well as Vagabond City Literary Journal. She has authored four poetry collections including one chapbook Cassiopeia at Midnight and Anatomy of Surrender, a compilation of poems from a yearlong poetry project completed in December 2014. Her latest collection Spectre Specter Blue Ravine was released November 2015 to spectacular reviews.

She can be reached at NLShompole@gmail.com

Or via

Website// Kingdomsinthewild.com
Goodreads // Goodreads.com/nlshompole
Instagram// NLShompole
Twitter // Luciasolaris

A Lesson In Contrast

on a trip to the drugstore, a young girl’s eyes
scan the shelves like a world war 2 sniper.
she is searching for the right equipment to storm
normandy and gut it like a watermelon.
except it is herself she is storming. it is herself she is gutting.
here is a question—what kind of soldier invades themselves?
a girl does.
at bootcamp, that is all she has been taught.
remove those hairs. remove that mole, remove that beaming self-confidence. you won’t need it in a world like this.
but do not worry. you won’t have to do everything yourself.
men will remove your innocence for you.
so she goes to the drugstore to find what she can.
today, she is trying to make her body lighter–
her skin lighter, too.
but i want to ask her, what is wrong with being dark and heavy
with your feet firmly on soil?
tell me, i say to her.
how many people will be able to blend in
with the dark deep night like you can?
tell me, i say.
after you erase yourself, how many people will ever be as heavy with loss as you are?

By Salma Deera

Biography:

Salma Deera is a Kenyan born poet of Bavanese descent. She is based in London and is an English Literature graduate. Her first poetry collection, Letters from Medea, was published in October.

stained glass windows

I am relearning myself
the squishiness of my earlobes
the movement of my cheek as
I rest my head on my palm
I am learning to stare at myself
in the mirror and think
“that’s me” and not want to
starve myself for the next
week or three. I am learning
to look down at my body
and feel the skin under my
chin press against my collarbone
and decide not to feel
disgusted. my body is a
temple; it’s time I learned
how to worship.

By K. Valerie

Biography:

K. Valerie is an undergraduate working on graduating in three years with a double major in biology and economics and a minor in political science. Despite this, she still has some free time and while it lasts she takes naps, plays violin, and argues with politicians on TV. She writes poetry to help her figure out what her truth is.

Unnatural Disasters

My mother, a west coast native,
wakes to what she thinks
is an earthquake in southern Florida,
but the reality is even more unprecedented

Still asleep in the bed next to her,
she finds that my body has learned
to move independently,
a little girl working her way
up the Richter scale.

That morning I will wake up
in the hospital waiting room
wearing Hello Kitty pajamas,
unsure of how or why I am there.
My mother will thank God
and curse him in the same breath.

Epilepsy is a foreign word in a middle schooler’s mouth.
When my friends compliment my medical bracelet I smile,
but I think of them running their thumbs over the words:
Emma Rebholz. Epilepsy.
Four syllables and four again
they are equal parts my identity.

I know what it’s like to lose control of my own body.
I collapse on the floor in the living room
the same day a hurricane hits.
My synaptic misfirings don’t seem
so different from the power outages.
When the lights come back on
the TV blares the same static
I saw while I was falling,
not even able to call for help.

Back at school,
I hit a boy with a heavy book
for pretending to have a seizure,
which involves him rolling his eyes back into his head
and a half-hearted shimmy.

At home, my father knocks on the bathroom door
to make sure I don’t drown in the bathtub.
I make ripples in the water with my hands.
Sometimes they turn into tidal waves.

I keep the bracelet on even in the water,
but a few years later I will shed it like an old skin.
I will forget the feel of the syllables under my thumb.
I will know what it feels like to be in control of my own body,

but I will remember the static
like an aftershock every time
someone makes a seizure joke.

And I will sit, silent like the way
I fell in the living room,
while a boy explains what a relief
it was when his dog with epilepsy finally died.

By Emma Rebholz

Biography:

Emma Rebholz is a sophomore Writing, Literature, and Publishing major at Emerson College with a lot of feelings. Her poetry has been previously published by or is forthcoming from Voicemail Poems, The Emerson Review, The Misanthropy, and Souvenir. She probably wants to be your friend.

Paean to My Brown Skin

Brown, like the ground, like the earth at birth, full of mystery and fragrance, lines and marks, a history of my life and vagrant self, showing arcs of flight and fall, this skin of mine holds light and sound, heft and air, and bones and flesh and I thank it for holding me, for carrying me through life with grace and kindness, letting me know of right and wrong, and sight and song, this skin I’m in takes me in my dreams to the skies,  warms as I fly up high, and look around, and see the ground, like my skin, so brown, so lined, so full of dark places and lit ones, and before I alight on earth, I face sunward, and onward I go, with the brown of the ground in the skin I’m in.

And once I hated it, the brown, the dark of it, the stark of it, the looks I took, the cutting remarks of aunts and uncles butting into my dream-space, “So dark, who will marry you?” and I laughed, and scoffed at them, but their words burned within, and my skin wished to be fair, not burnt brown umber, I remember this and all else, and I remember thinking, “I wish I were fair, and I wish I were pretty, and I wish I didn’t care, and damn this self-pity, and so I stopped, and it stopped, and I was free.  And the skin I’m in took the slaps and the hits, the rulers on brown knuckles from teachers who couldn’t reach me, and scathed from fights with sibling, and the scolding (much deserved) from parents much loved, and I was free, so free.

And I formed the words within, the worlds within, and my skin took on its radiance, its joyous love of itself, for this is the skin of one who loves, who lives in peace, who wants to be good, do good, find good, and I do, I will and I would.  No shoulds, just wills, for the one in this skin, and I know what it means to be seen one way, or perceived in another, and so, my skin helps me choose the friends whose love I cherish, and whom I’ll hold in my heart until I perish.

This skin I’m in rejoices in the air on it, the kiss of rain, the bliss of love, the thrill of guitar and sitar, and songs from afar, brushing past so lightly, I feel them on me, all those songs, that music, the love of my beloved, the love of my child, and the furry brushing past of my sweet canine friend.

And the scent of flowers from a whiff of after-shower spray, and the scent of cardamom and clove, and ginger and geranium, all so fine, so divine, all sit on the brown of the skin I’m in.

And this skin I bless, I touch with love, this skin which went from satin to rougher cloth, this skin with dark marks that appear, this skin which sags in some places, this skin which protects and gives such delight, I will miss this skin when I die, for I will not fly with it, to the places in the sun.  I will shed this skin, and I’ll mourn.

By Vijaya Sundaram

Biography:

A native of India, Vijaya Sundaram has lived in the Boston, Massachusetts, area for the past 25 years. She is a singer-song-writer, guitarist, poet and writer who spent seventeen years as an 8th Grade English teacher at a local public school.  Only recently feeling the urge to publish, she’s been sending out her work to various literary magazines. Vijaya has been published in literary magazines Calliope and The Phoenix Rising Review. You can read more of Vijaya’s work on her blog, StrangeLander2015.

ref•u•gee

brown girl,
sitting on the sidelines with your hands crossed in your lap
you don’t play. you don’t know how.
you say you’d rather spend time with your aunt,
in the sparse moments between her ten hour shifts,
she makes you sandwiches of cucumber
and a cheese that looks crumbly and kind of rotten–
you say she’s all you have.
brown man,
I see you at the post office more often than the grocery store.
don’t you eat?
you don’t take your shirt off at the beach.
I could probably count your ribs.
you say: “Ras Al Bassit is prettier.”
I don’t catch the words, a pretty trill of your tongue
but I catch the sparkle in your eyes.
I didn’t know they could light up like that.
white girl,
dark hair big eyes,
you look the same but you’re not.
your nails are always chipped from your nibbling
and the bags under your eyes–
nobody’s calling them designer.
white man,
how’d you get your limp?
why are you always looking over your shoulder?
and could you please stop talking about the five year old son you lost–
it makes me sad.
and honestly, it keeps you from delivering the mail.

refugee,
why do you walk the streets after midnight?
are you looking for something familiar?
are you looking for home
on these foreign shores
something that looks like a desert
something that makes you thirsty,
and warm,

something, anything that can make you
feel the sun on your skin?
well–
you won’t.
might as well give up.
you’re no longer welcome here.
you look like the terrorists,
write the same,
talk the same,
scribbly and gibberish.
doesn’t matter that you’re running from them too.
doesn’t matter that we’re afraid of the same thing.
you’re no longer welcome here.
don’t you get it?
you’re NO LONGER WELCOME HERE.
so go back home,
or what’s left of it.
leave,
go back,
and die.

By Ayah Elbeyali

Biography:

Ayah Elbeyali is a young weaver of words living on the East Coast of the United States. She is a student studying political science, philosophy, and creative writing, with a fondness for Russian novels. She writes about womanhood, otherness, and experiences. She is a feminist, woman of color, woman of steel. She enjoys good coffee, good books, and better company. She’s a poetry reader at Vagabond City Literary Magazine. She’s been published in The Fem Lit Magazine, Vagabond City Literary Magazine, and Crab Fat Literary Magazine. You can read her work at steelstories.tumblr.com, find her on twitter: @ayahbeyali.

Three Cities Grow Silent, The World Sheds A Tear

In Beirut, the sound of an explosion
deafened a young boy to his mother’s laugh
and his father’s voice. The blasts left
a community stripped off any sense of security.

Not a day had passed until,
in Baghdad, a funeral branched itself out
into over twenty more funerals, and mourners
became the ones to be mourned.

Hours later, in Paris, gunshots spread
the news of the terror that is
the world today and wounded bodies
spilt in the city like yolk from an egg.

Less than twenty four hours
left the earth shaking with fear.
Three cities grew silent,
while the world shed a tear.

Cities that bred love have hate
splattered across their streets,
as innocent souls fell victim
to the brutal games of greed.

What did those poor souls do
for you to snatch away their heartbeat?
What did their families do
to deserve such misery?

It is a pity, what the world
has grown into, it’s a shame
how little we can do to help,
except hold one last thread of hope.

So, here’s our hopes for Beirut.
Here’s our good wishes to Baghdad.
Here’s our prayers for Paris.
Here’s our longing for peace.

By Disha Ahluwalia

Biography:

Disha Ahluwalia is a sixteen year old Indian writer settled in the Middle East. Her heart has a wild case of wanderlust and she wants to travel all seven continents to take pictures of the sunset. When she’s not busy procrastinating over cat videos or overrated TV shows, she can be found in the nook of her room spilling out ink. She has been writer for as long as she can remember and has previously been published in literary journals like Germ Magazine. More of her work can be found here: http://concealednotes.tumblr.com/