Rockville

after “Chicago” by Carl Sandberg

Pre-teen pot smokers raised into
hard drug dealers.
Skinny, white, trailer-trash girls
with lips rings, 
and dexterous dope addicts
turning tricks into hold ups
on sex-starved naval officers
in a seedy motel six.
Alyssa’s mugshot from last week
is the first time I’ve seen her face
since our high school yearbook.
Before her, it was Bret in the fall
found overdosed on oxy,
passed out and picked up
by police in the Taco Bell
parking lot.
Before him, it was Coolidge
getting nabbed for carrying
and bragging on how big he felt
for brandishing a weapon
on his walk home from nowhere.
Before him, it was Cassidy getting pregnant
after a summer of binging and blow jobs. 

They told me I’d hate you,
That I would despise your kind. 
Your sharp tongues, your rough crowds,
Your ways, your words,
Your hard drugs, hard people.
And still,
after all these years they tell me
that you were born to be black and brutal.
And my reply is: yes, you are
tough to love but I still do.
So I ask them,
come and show me another place
where Friday night football games
are a consecutive failure
but the band is always loud and cheering,
the stands always filled by the families
that formed in-between
fights, deals, and deaths,
within teams, clubs, and classrooms
because parents were never in the picture.
Show me another town that knows
how to look out for each other
the way that we do.

Bareheaded boys rolling blunts
with precision in the pitch dark,
Shoveling aside the shit
their parents left inside of them.
Wrecking dirt bikes on rails to trails.
Planning escape routes on the cliffs,
keeping warm with fireball and burnetts.
Building themselves up and out
by the cash they hole up
in their track pant pockets.
Breaking down for the tenth time
when they’re told they won’t make it.
Rebuilding the hope, the bullies 
tried to brand out of them.

They tell me you are past all repair. 
That you are a lost cause,
a waste of my white, privileged time,
A worthless relic I should leave behind.
But I can’t help but believe
that one day you will get better.

The sound of your stormy, husky, brawling,
laughter lifts me out of your ashes.
Your sloppy joy, your scrubby hospitality. 
Your wild embraces, your full faces,
Your hand-picked families
have taught me how to be strong.
How to be loyal in my loving,
liberal in my kindness. 
Lessons, I never could have
learned without you.

By Julia Bonadies

Biography:

Julia Bonadies teaches English Language Arts at Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts Middle, and tutors in writing at Manchester Community College. In 2016, she was named Manchester Community College’s poet representative in the Connecticut Poetry Circuit. Her poetry has appeared in the national undergraduate magazine, The Albion Review, local paper The Chronicle, and various online journals and local college literary arts magazines. She is a film and plant enthusiast who resides in Vernon, Connecticut.

My Skin

Uncomfortable in my skin.
Uncomfortable from within.
Uncomfortable with who I am.
Uncomfortable, but who gives a damn?
Uncomfortable when you hear me,
Talking about my feelings,
As if black women are unfamiliar
To the idea of healing.
My skin is as tough as nails,
As deep as the sea,
And as rich as cocoa.
My skin is everything, wouldn’t you think so?
My skin pushes men away,
My skin refuses to beg them to stay.
My skin is “too loud.”
My skin is “too proud.”
It doesn’t listen when it’s told,
How dare it be bold?
It doesn’t know how to act,
It’s too “ghetto”, to be exact.
My skin has big lips,
Big breasts, And wide hips.
Its everything you want, just minus my skin.
I guess my skin will just have to deal.
Maybe, just maybe, it will learn to heal.

By Shanice Rose

Biography:

Shanice Rose is a 20 year old Junior at Virginia Commonwealth University, currently studying Mass Communications and Public Relations. She began writing poetry in her 6th grade English class, and has been in love with it ever since. Shanice’s biggest influence, and favorite author, is the late Maya Angelou. In the future, Shanice hopes to make an impact as big as Maya did on the world, through her words or from working with Non-Profit Organizations. She is currently an Officer in a Community Service Fraternity at her school, Alpha Phi Omega, and spends the rest of her free time writing or with friends

Sappho Poem

You and I
In a tangle of limbs,
Strung together like metaphors;
The signified and the signifier.

You, like noble Odysseus, sailing into the deepest alcoves of my body.
Oh, how my fingers trace
The curvature of your lips
And the spaces between your shoulder blades

Drawn as constellations upon the irises of Aphrodite.
Molten candles, dripping wax
In a city that’s too cold.
And still, I count my calories to make room for

Your touch.
We loosen, knot by knot, the strings of our bodies.
My love, only to you are my tides drawn under
The cloudless moonlight.

By Daniela Calderon

Biography:

Daniela Calderon is a 23-year-old writer from Las Vegas, NV. Born in Mexico in 1996, Daniela migrated to the U.S. at 6 years old. In the U.S., she quickly found an escape in the English language. While attending the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, she majored in English where she found discovered her interest in poetry. The poem she is submitting is titled “Sappho Poem.”

Float

I rest my head in your hands, 
close my eyes and feel your shoulder 
beneath my ear.

I remember the first time you held me 
this way. I remember their fight: 
something about a wandering eye, and the
dinner table conflagrated before our eyes. 

The heat of our father’s breath, the shrill 
of our mother’s tone, the soft pace of 
your fingers across my back. 

You took me to the stars, let us watch 
the eruption of our home from the 
distance of a lightyear. 

Thank you for making me an astronaut, 
for showing me how to float, eyes closed, 
when forks and tablecloth felt heavier 
than Earth itself. 

By Niko Malouf

Biography:

As a teenager living in Los Angeles, Niko enjoys writing about the things that surround him, stimulate him, the events of his adolescence as well as the happenings of the world. He hopes to share his experiences and perspective with others and inspire them to do the same.

Careful Departure

She pulls blue velvet up over her shoulders, 
holds my hand in hers, delicately as she did
when she once taught me to ride a bike, 

she pushes me awake. Murmurs 
something about missing my plane 
and urges me to slip into the jeans 
she had folded neatly. 

She navigates the road with a 
certainty I admire, glancing 
at my teenage skin and nodding 
as she registers me a man. 

I pull my bags from the trunk, 
she hands me my new coat and says
something about East Coast weather. 

She smooths my shirt as we exchange a final remark; 
she reminds me of the frailty of her fingers, 
she smiles with a sadness only a mother could possess.

She waves as I walk, 
with the hands that will forever hold 
the balance of my childhood.

By Niko Malouf

Biography:

As a teenager living in Los Angeles, Niko enjoys writing about the things that surround him, stimulate him, the events of his adolescence as well as the happenings of the world. He hopes to share his experiences and perspective with others and inspire them to do the same.