To Atom

This is the summer of our discontent.
a microscopic breaking down.
breaking up.
a microcosm.
a reminder of scrutiny,
a reminder of death.
that black lives don’t matter because they aren’t really lives at all.

Black lives are hashtags
and topics for debate on Fox News.

We are peaceful protests where violence is the invited guest
A welcoming mat for riot gear and respectability politics

We are respectable negroes and a line of roses down a Ferguson street.
Black lives are a graveyard of bodies without names.

Because no one knows the language of this pain.
It is fear of the unknown because the known is never really safe.

Home is never really safe and it certainly isn’t the home of the brave.

Bravery will get you shot.
And walking will get you shot
And cosplay will get you shot
And Wal-mart shopping will get you shot
And listening to music will get you shot
And car accidents will get you shot
And traffic violations will get you shot
And playing with toys will get you shot
And buying snacks will get you shot.
And it will always be your fault.

Because you are big for your age
Because you didn’t answer properly
Because you didn’t signal a lane change
Because you didn’t lie in the street bleeding until the ambulance came

Because you are
Because you were…
Because you are no more…

You are reduced to atom.
To nucleus
To matter
To black
To nothing
To dust

By Athena Dixon

Biography:

Athena’s work has appeared in various publications both online and in print. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee (2016, 2017), a Best of the Net nominee (2017), a Callaloo fellow (Oxford 2017), and a V.O.N.A. fellow (2018). Athena is a member of the Moving Forewards Memoir Writers Collective. Additionally, she has presented at AWP (Boston 2013) and HippoCamp (2016, 2017, 2018).

She is the author of No God In This Room, a poetry chapbook , published by Argus House Press. Her work also appears in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books).

THIS IS NOT ENOUGH

This is not a drill, the intercom blares.
It is the principal but not the principal.
It is a Code Red but not a drill.

It is a Wednesday afternoon,
but instead of leading us through the next song,
Mrs. Brown is locking the door. We were going

to pull out the xylophones if we had extra time.
We were going to sing happy birthday for Kyle
because Kyle is turning nine, but

This is a Code Red. And this is not a drill.

The blinds: down. The door: blocked. The lights: off.
And the minutes bleed into waiting, waiting—
until a flurry of all clear, lights on, chairs down, file out,

Mr. T. is here to lead us back to homeroom.

As we settle into plastic seats, Mr. T. stands
pale and silent before us. In a low voice, he tells us
he was at the front of the school with the principal.

There was a man wearing a trench coat and sunglasses.
The man was holding a gun. The man was not happy,
even though it’s Kyle’s happy birthday.

Keep an eye on him, the principal said, then hurried
into the office to announce the Code Red
that was not a drill. Mr. T. didn’t dare blink.

Alone, he stayed.

When I was five, I fell victim to
k-i-s-s-i-n-g songs; I thought I’d die
of humiliation. But people are
k-i-l-l-i-n-g children: my age, older, younger,
the adults they might have been.

But we raise our hands to remember—
the spread of red that Code Reds bring,
the sobs and the sting
and the wails
and the grief
and the shots
and the screams
we seek
an end to this.

Because America,
dear America,
we
will
speak.

By Kaitlyn Wang

Biography:

Kaitlyn Wang is a high school senior from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a poetry reader for Polyphony H.S. and a poetry editor of Soundings, her school’s art and literary magazine. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and she is a California Arts Scholar.

WHEN THEY TRY TO CUT THE MANIC OUT OF ME
THEY REALIZE THAT I AM AN ALWAYS BURNING FIRE

we have seven facial openings/ six coupled/ and then also/ the mouth/
my favorite cave/ my mouth that makes me/ hysterical woman/ open jaw/
manic mouth for the moonlight/ bipolar and bursting/ try to cure me/
with a trephine/ try to dream catch my own broken brain/ drill a burr hole/
and tell me that this is therapeutic/ as you wear my skull on your neck/
as garlic is to vampire/ drill again and again/ and realize that I am still mad/
bare chest screaming/ crying and cawing/ I can’t seem to fit all of this despair/
back into my own mouth/ can’t stop reciting Dante’s Inferno/ can’t hold my breath/
like I used to/ my bipolar is an invisible sun/ can never see when it is about to burn/
scorch this place to black/ blister all of my stupid open pockets/ and no amount/
of drilling/ can shut my jaw/ no amount of skull holes/ will make me holy/
can’t unclench these knuckles/ can’t burn me/ if I am already on/ fire.

By Katie Pukash

Biography:

Katie Pukash is a writer and poet based in Boise, Idaho. Her work has appeared in Ink&Nebula, Breadcrumbs Mag, Yay! LA, among others. She was a member on the 2013, 2014, and 2018 Boise Poetry Slam Team and competed at the National level representing Idaho. She currently has two self published chapbooks.

Last Night in Beijing

after Christina Im

City uprooted straight from the
man’s hand & all the palms needed
to mother it. City shot up to the
moon & still leaning over the dirt.

City orphaned like an injury. Stung
& smeared. City with a sea spitting
blood. Sea’s stomach that kneaded
away all the bodies during the

war–when the bayonets shivered
into the soil & still could not
hide from the invader’s arm.
City where children scrambling

over the balconies strung together in
the sky & how the sun became so
afraid. City swallowed by hunger.
City with cataracts in both eyes

under a tyrant. How to cleave a
thousand flocks of sparrows to
let locusts fill the shadows around
the fields. City with citizens too

honest for those on the throne,
taught how to martyr under the sky.
City where death outraces the
morning, the cruelest economy.

City with a name that doesn’t kick
off the way Richmond does.
A language that betrayed the
cupping of your tongue. Or

are you the traitor? City with
foreign footsteps nobody can
scrape back their blood from.
These godless tracks. Children

who were taught to pray over
the same road they died on. As
if every story ends as soon as
it starts. That romantic. City ripped

clean from your birthrights. No
more secrets to hold. City with
three chambers. How it used to
sit so normal when it was farewell.

City crossed. City shrinking. City lost.

By Patrick Tong

Biography:

Patrick Tong is currently in his junior year at Adlai E. Stevenson High School, located in the ghostly and anonymous suburbs of Chicago. He serves as a second reader for Polyphony H.S., a copy editor for their blog Voices, and his work has been published by Eunoia Review. Unfortunately, he has a tendency to accidentally stave off his piles of homework by spending hours on a single piece. Besides editing and writing, he enjoys playing tennis, attempting to play songs on the piano by ear and failing, or listening to music in the limited free time he has.

a love poem, after

a prayer will not fill the void.
loneliness is                salty salty drops of yourself
taste like butter                              slippery, melting into
nothingness;               a thousand prayers is
not enough pills for forgetting                     memory is
a bro-              ken         mirror       your body is
a warm tea in a                       leaking cup.
this is what grief tastes like:
the river runs                 into the ocean, silence eats
into the fabric of                     your soul, you are
a small bird         creeping       into itself for warmth
electricity dies in your veins           the cold seeps through your bones
could she return                                 you would mold
your heart into               a sweet song, lay it
an offering at her altar                her body, which
you call a feast,                              a temple, the world would be
smaller             no reaching for things you never get, all memories
become heaven                      your palm a petal
opening itself to                      the sun.
a crab digs a       hole in your soul, deeper deeper
deeper still                       you are finding home—
home is                a lone street on a moonless night
without stars                   you spread your        voice
a bouquet of flowers                  in the wind, may it
bear it far                                     fireflies touch the night with colors
you cannot say                 what a touch of light is
every color is red             in your eyes, droop-
ing down her thighs,       a cry is layered.

By Ernest O. Ogunyemi

Biography:

Ernest O. Ogunyemi is an eighteen-year-old boy singing in words from the corner of his room in Nigeria—to the world. His works have appeared in Kalahari, Praxis Online, Literally Stories, Acumen UK, and elsewhere. He is learning to walk on water, not when it freezes.

a bird’s song is sin

for boys like me
who do not know
how to kill
the fire burning
in their bodies.

how many times will I come
here to the stream to wash all the filth away?

Father whips me every day, but
the devil has become part of me—my other half.

Mother brings home bottles of holy water
for me to drink, it is to cleanse my mouth of

all the impure loves I have tasted—
a girl’s lip hides between my gums

a boy’s name puffs my cheeks on the sides
the name of a boy you love cannot be hid

love is glaring. a bird’s song is broken
into bits. I pick it up for mending

and the song is crushed between my palms.
beneath my heart lies the thoughts of you

in my eyes a dream of you, little bird leaving
to leave—not live—is your only option

the other option is burning—breaking
it is the fire that keeps the ship at bay.

Father takes me to the font, calls God
his son, and spirit, and dips me in

the water. I have come here a million times
perhaps this time my eyes will not

fix itself so hard on a boy who looks like
Eden’s apple, tastes like heaven’s song

a boy soft like the feel of manna, melting
into flakes on my tongue. how he never

dies, how this love seems
eternal, yet trapped in now.

I touch my wetness
in the dark
and fire dies in my heart
in my heart—AMEN.

By Ernest O. Ogunyemi

Biography:

Ernest O. Ogunyemi is an eighteen-year-old boy singing in words from the corner of his room in Nigeria—to the world. His works have appeared in Kalahari, Praxis Online, Literally Stories, Acumen UK, and elsewhere. He is learning to walk on water, not when it freezes.

At Yee Shun Milk Company in Macau, Where They Only Serve Two Things:
Hot and Cold Steamed Milk Pudding

So what
that we spent an hour
searching for this place
tucked along Avenida de Almeida Ribiero,
steam steeping the open room,
instead of bumming the hours
away on Hac Sa Beach.

So what
that nearly every seat
was occupied with patrons
composing music from the soft
plink of spoons chiming porcelain
and dishing about the glut
of tourists who had just waltzed in.

So what
that my hands swallowed
the fragile cup like a bouncer at a tea party
or how the red beans floating
on top resembled atomic pintos
slathered thick in cherry
red lip gloss, unsettling
to my American eyes.

So what
that it had the consistency
of warmed-over yogurt
lounging in a plastic tub
for some cheap hotel’s continental breakfast
or that you didn’t care
much for its lean sweetness.

I was
finally living
off of crumpled plane
tickets and battered
suitcases and the collected
ink of customs stamps
in the back pages
of my passport.

I had
gone up to the kid
I once was (narrow and confined)
and unbolted the door wide
to the seductive side streets
and delicious hidden corners and
dicey food stalls
of the world.

And besides–
Bourdain
recommended this place.
By God,
I’d slurp up
every
bit

By Stephen Briseño

Biography:

Stephen Briseño’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Memoir Mixtapes, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, 8 Poems, formercactus, Bone & Ink Press, and Rabid Oak. He lives in San Antonio with his wife and daughter, teaches middle school English, and drinks far too much coffee. Follow him on Twitter: @stephen_briseno

Seedling

I cradle my daughter in
that nook between bedtime
and sleep. Her breathing
settles, a calming sea,
when a memory of a photograph
sails to mind: a boy washed
up on some Grecian beach
face planted in the sand
like an exposed seed.

I ask the night:
What fruit comes from such
a seed? What will
it bear?

His father’s voice answers
me between shadows
of stuffed bears
(so similar to my own)

–nothing yet everything
–nothing yet everything
–nothing yet everything

By Stephen Briseño

Biography:

Stephen Briseño’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Memoir Mixtapes, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, 8 Poems, formercactus, Bone & Ink Press, and Rabid Oak. He lives in San Antonio with his wife and daughter, teaches middle school English, and drinks far too much coffee. Follow him on Twitter: @stephen_briseno