Friday Feature: Shy-Zahir Moses
- Jae Nichelle
- 11 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Shy-Zahir Moses (they/them) is a Black person, poet, and educator from Dallas, Texas, whose poems appear in Callaloo, Dialogist, and A Gathering Together Journal. They are a Best New Poets 2025 nominee and fellow of The Watering Hole and The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice. A recent graduate from The New Writers Project at the University of Texas at Austin, Shy’s work is an honest attempt to disentangle their very messy, complicated childhood and their definitions of home and family. Shy is a lover of all things soft and loud, a fan of horror movies, Solange, and Tuesday afternoons in the spring. They are everything, always, and something, occasionally. Follow them on Substack @uhnoid to read their "fake" essays and @thee_shy_aries on Instagram for whenever they feel like showing their face. Their website is pending.
joking,
my sister told
our mother we’d fight
one day. said a body
was sure to go
through the glass table
of Annie Lee figurines
and the broken pieces
would glitter the swamp
green rug and collect
dust under the couch
we only sat on after
one of us had hurt the other.
said it was bound to happen. said
there was no way sisters could ever
live so long without making the other
cry. joking, i said i’d beat her.
said she was better at taking
a punch and i was better
at throwing them. said we couldn’t
break the table or the figurines
because i wanted one for my first
apartment. Blue Monday. said
my rage was stronger and
more important. we laughed
while our mother sat silent
on the couch, staring
at us, then back
at her hands.
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Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.