Nnenna Loveth (they/she) is an Igbo lesbian poet, dancer, and facilitator who tells stories of liberated Black matrilineal futures. They are utilizing the relationship between dance and poetry to explore themes of Black sapphic intimacies, mother-daughter connections, Odinala, and healing from christian-colonial missions. Her work has been published with Game Over Books, Button Poetry, Voicemail Poems, Beestung Magazine, etc. When Nnenna is not creating, they are somewhere being romanced by the trees. Please follow their journey on Instagram @pleausre.as.compass Villanelle for all my Bitches After Cardi B’s Salute. I love all my sad bitches, mad bitches and bad bitches. I love my bitches with cargo shorts and hightop fades. I love my red-lipstick lesbian leaving-bite-mark-bitches my brolic play-with-me-if-you-want-to-type bitches my honeyed drawl-dripped accent bitches my bitches skin dark, sweetened by the sun's serenade. I love my Naija-babe-diaspora-roll-deep-bitches my only-drink-coconut-water-bitches, laid under palm shade. I love my boughetto bitches. I bought brunch with stamps—still am gonna feed all my bitches. Chop life ooo! Accept sweetness no less than lemonade. Shout out to my strong right hand bitches press’n for juice still, when lifes’ lemons some sour bitches. Learn from me and my bitches. Look at us promenade sundressed and gold-dripped, I know we some bad bitches. Let the world watch me and my bitches glide on concrete. Toes-ten, painted painted the shade a man's blood. Can’t afford red bottoms and we still some fly bitches. Souls so rich every sidewalk sings salute, the real bitches! ### 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. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Banchiwosen Woldeyesus (she/her) is a Black woman, short fiction and nonfiction writer. She has sworn to read books slowly. So she pretends she has all the time in the world, so she can read this story at this moment, so she can savor each story she’s reading, so she can pay attention to small things she might have missed if she read the story fast—like the way a writer describes the feather of a dead warbler in a short phrase. Her work appears in The/tƐmz/Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, which has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and midnight & indigo. Her debut story collection, The Town Under the Mountains: Stories, will be published by the University Press of Kentucky in the New Poetry & Prose Series on May 18, 2027. She publishes craft essays, short stories, flash stories, book recommendations, and curated reads on This Precious Dark Skin, her Substack newsletter. She’s a Submissions Reader for Narratively. 1960 E.C. At the old tree that stood tall in its foreboding presence, the wives found her body. In the dark afternoon, they stood on the scratchy grass on naked feet, facing the body. One of their husbands jumped on a wooden chair to bring the hanged girl down, but the wives said quietly, “Not touch her.” Their husbands crossed themselves; their wives had never given them orders before. The silence that surrounded the old tree was louder than the swaying of the old tree’s branches. The wives didn’t know what the strange silence meant. They were about to speak when the wind blew hard, and they shivered and lowered their heads. The wind that blew was old, older than the old tree, older than the mountains that surrounded the town, and they couldn’t speak. When they walked by the old tree and the wind blew harshly they’d wanted to do something that disturbed the old wind, like saying no to their husbands, to not look so small because of the old wind, but they were never strong enough to fight the blow that came from the old wind, the wind that blew like it wanted them to walk past the tree without saying a word. The wives looked up, looked at their husbands. The wind still blew hard, but their husbands stood taller, and they didn’t shiver like the old wind was them and they were the old wind. The husband on the wooden chair ignored the wives and reached for the dead girl in the tree. The wives were used to this, being ignored by their husbands, but they heard a frantic voice in their heads when she came to them a few days ago while they gathered in one of their huts for a coffee ceremony, a frantic voice that begged them to talk to her father, to beg him to change his mind about giving her for an arranged marriage. We all married this way, they told her. When she left the hut, head down, they’d stared at her. She was a girl they had known since she was a baby, but at that moment she was a girl they didn’t know. To ask for something that had never been done in town before, they didn’t know girls could do that. One of the wives put both her hands on the husband’s back, who stood on the wooden chair, and pulled him down. Then the wives repeated, “Not touch her.” They touched their lips reverently, like this was the first time they realized they belonged to the lips that could say NO to their husbands. The wives didn’t speak when they brought the girl’s body down from the tree. They wanted to move her away from the tree but decided to wash her body there, under the old tree, in the place where the town men sat to decide on the fate of girls, in the place where they would see what their silence cost them when they walked around town every day. When the wives washed their hands with water from a bucket of water one of them brought to the tree, the husbands said, “Not done before, we wash our deads inside huts.” The wives continued washing their hands. The husbands did not leave right away. These were men who were used to their wives obeying them and now they stood shaken, the steady ground under their feet betraying them, and they stared at their wives, the same way they would stare at the purple flowers that would grow in the place where the old tree used to stand, the flowers who dared to grow and make themselves at home in the place they considered their place. The wives removed the netela the girl wore on her head, then they paused. They didn’t turn around to look at their husbands, but they waited for them to leave. The husbands did not leave right away. The air around the wives suffocated them, and the girl’s body smelled bad, and they wanted to quickly wash her. But not while their husbands stood behind them. When they waited for their husbands to leave, they didn’t know how many minutes passed. The husbands did not move, waiting for their wives to obey them, to be who they had always been, silent town wives, the same way the boys in town would come a year later to the place where the old tree used to stand, who wouldn’t accept that the old tree they used to climb was gone. The husbands turned and walked away. The air changed. For a few minutes the wives just breathed in the new air. Then they removed the long skirt the girl wore, gently. When they washed her body from head to toe with water and leaves of white eucalyptus trees, and when they covered her body with a cotton cloth, they were quiet, and even their cries had no sound. * The next morning, before the sun appeared above the mountains, the wives buried the girl under the tree. They dug the cross they made out of two long sticks above her grave. When the sun appeared above the mountains, their husbands walked toward the old tree, and the wives knew they were coming to take the girl’s body to the mountains. The husbands stopped in front of the cross, then they crossed themselves. “This not done before, we bury our deads in the church.” The wives looked their husbands in their eyes and said quietly, “She buried here, she stays here.” The silence that surrounded the old tree was louder than the swaying of the old tree’s branches, louder than the old wind. The wives didn’t know what the silence meant. The husbands ignored their wives and said, in thundering voices, “We bury the dead in the church.” “We know.” The wives said. The husbands shook their heads, and they were about to speak when the girl’s father, who stood in front of them, asked, “Why?” The wives were startled by the question the girl’s father, who was the eldest elder in town, asked. An important question, a man had never asked them before. All the questions the men in their lives asked them were not important, like what food they prepared for them. They were startled by the fallen elder’s old face, by the fallen stooped shoulders; in one day he’d aged a thousand years. Men in their town, when their daughters died, the wives could never tell what they felt, if they felt loss over their losses. They were startled by his dark eyes that looked at them as if . . . as if waiting for them to answer. Waiting for women to answer an important question; they didn’t know men could do that. The elder was acting strangely, and they didn’t know if where they stood, at the old tree where his daughter hanged herself, was why. The men in their town, including their husbands, were like the black flowers found on the edges of town, the black color not changing for thirteen months, every year. But now, when the elder asked again, “Why you buried my daughter here?” and he waited for them to speak, the men in their town wore another color, and a terribly too too late thought shivered them. If they’d spoken to him, if they’d gone to his hut or the old tree where he always sat with the town men and told him about his daughter who cried on her knees, this man, this elder who wore another color, maybe . . . they could not believe they were thinking this, maybe he would have listened to them. “So we see—” the wives paused, looking at the elder and their husbands, “what we did when we walk around town, when we walk past the tree.” The silence came again, louder than the swaying of the old tree’s branches, louder than the old wind. “You saying,” their husbands shouted, pointing at the tree, “our fault?” “Yes.” Their voices came out quietly, but they knew they were heard; they’d spoken at the same time. “Not our fault!” This, not caring about girls, was familiar, old, as old as the old tree where they stood, as old as the mountains, their husbands behaving like themselves, their husbands wearing the same black color. But now the wives wanted the unfamiliar, something new, a color they had not seen in their husbands, not the old, old black color that made them keep shouting, “Not our fault.” “She not wanted arranged marriage,” the wives said, “she not wanted to marry at sixteen.” “But that our tradition.” Their husbands were quick to answer. “We not know why she did what she—” They stopped talking for a second. “We dig the grave and take her to the mountains.” The wives looked at the top of the mountains, at the church found there. “She stays here,” they turned to their husbands, “you not dig her.” The silence that surrounded the old tree was louder than the swaying of the old tree’s branches, louder than the old wind. * Days later, when their husbands left their beds and tiptoed out of their huts at night, the wives followed them. At the old tree, their husbands stopped. Kneeling at the grave was the elder, the girl’s father. Their husbands were going to dig the girl’s grave; this was the only thought that came to their minds, and they pulled up their long skirts from their feet, and they were about to run to the tree when what they saw next stopped them. To show any emotion for girls was something the town men never did, and yet their husbands knelt behind the girl’s father. The wives knelt. They’d walked on the familiar scratchy grass and touched it all their lives, but at that moment the grass they touched didn’t scratch at their naked feet, didn’t scratch at their hands. At the old tree, their husbands stayed, kneeling at the grave for a few minutes, and their husbands under the foreboding tree looked small. They stared at their husbands, and for the first time in their lives the feeling of smallness that breathed down on their shoulders when they looked at them didn’t breathe down on them. They smelled the grass and the night air and the mountains, and they didn’t know what a bright color smelled like, but they could swear, even put their right hands on their hearts, then make a cross sign with their forefingers, that they were that sure they smelled a bright color. The next morning, in a coffee ceremony, in front of the town people, they would tell their husbands what they saw at the old tree the night before, and their husbands would tell them, looking them in their eyes, in voices that threatened to never speak of it again, “You mistaken, you not saw us.” And the wives would know their husbands would hide the bright color from the town people, and even from themselves. Weeks later, city people came to the town to visit the old mountains and the old tree, and they asked the wives about the cross under the tree. They were about to speak when they saw their husbands walking toward the tree. Waiting for their husbands to reach the tree, the wives didn’t speak. When their husbands reached the tree, their eyes spoke to them, in that familiar way, in that old way, to stay silent, and the old wind blew harshly, threatening to blow away their new selves, and the wives shivered, swallowing what they wanted to speak about. But then they turned to look at the old tree and heard the last words the girl spoke to them: I not want to marry, I not want to marry. They’d wanted to say no to their fathers, no to their husbands, all their lives, but this want, they never spoke of it to each other. But there she was, on the last day they would see her alive, next to the burning fire in one of their huts, kneeling on the wooden floor in front of them, speaking out loud her want, and they didn’t know what to say to a want they never said out loud even to themselves, and even when she kept crying, kept repeating the strange words I not want to marry, I not want to marry, there they were, standing still, staring at the girl whose want mirrored theirs, the girl who burned with a want that burned more than the burning fire next to her, and they—they stayed silent, they didn’t move toward her, they didn’t pull her up from the wooden floor, they didn’t dry her tears. Now the grass under their feet burned them as they stood on a burning fire. They turned to look at the city people. “A girl,” they said quietly, “h-hanged herself here.” The silence that surrounded the old tree was louder than the swaying of the old tree’s branches, louder than the old wind. “She dead because of us.” The old branches of the old tree swayed with their old rhythm, high in the air. And the silence of their husbands was terrifying. Any minute now they would tell the city people their wives did not know what they were saying; they would shout at them to behave like the town wives they were, but they remained silent, and in that looooooong silence the wives, slowly, learned what the strange silence meant. What they were doing after they found the girl’s body- they—they were the reason for the silence. Shocking their husbands into silence, a silence that disturbed the old tree, a silence that quieted the old wind; they didn’t know they could do that. Then the old tree’s old branches bent, swaying downward like they’d lost their old rhythm, like the silence that quieted the old wind became a violent thing that made the branches lose their old rhythm. In the coming months, when the wives would keep speaking about the dead girl under the old tree to more city people, the old branches would bend all the way to the grass. When the last branch would start bending the wives would sit facing the tree but the old wind would blow harshly like it wanted the last branch to stand where it’d stood for centuries, tied to the old tree, high in the air, and the wives would watch the branch the whole day and it would not fall to the grass that day and they would come and face the old branch and the old tree, their shoulders up, for months until the last branch would fall on the grass, until the old tree, without its old branches tied to it, would no longer look like a foreboding old tree. ### 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. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Babs Gons was the poet laureate of the Netherlands from 2023 to 2025 and the author of Doe het toch maar. Babs Gons is a Dutch writer, spoken word performer, and host. For decades, she has been a driving force behind numerous poetry stage initiatives. Gons made her debut in 2021 with her poetry collection and has since published several books and won several prizes for her work. She has been presenting her work for years at festivals, in museums, debate centers, on radio and television, and has traveled with her work to South Africa, Sudan, Curaçao, Suriname, Colombia, Italy, Hungary, and Brazil, among other places. Gons was the Poet Laureate of the Netherlands from 2023 until 2025. The selection committee of the Poet Laureate praised Gons as "one of the most appealing poets the Netherlands has right now, with a voice full of fire, burning and warm, both on stage and on paper. She is a poet who knows how to give passionate and committed words to what is going on in this day and age, in a society that she, full of conviction, connects with poetry." Could you be black for us on Wednesday? hello we would like to invite you onto our stage as a woman would you like to be black during our event this Wednesday we have a show and are looking for people like you your type on our show on our stage in our magazine in our debate a little less feminine please tonight and we’d like to book you for Saturday a little less on the dark a little more on the light a little more like the average, normal for the tone of our show we’re looking for a little angrier more foam at the mouth and more pointing of fingers could you be sexier? could you smile more? could you could you could you give us more global issues a little #MeToo a bit more single mom more absent dad bad childhood don’t emphasize it too much and in between the lines some trauma we’d like it if you wear a dress a headscarf, a dash of Badu, soulful don’t you have some more angry black woman a little more woke unapologetic not too much just uncomfortable enough for the audience to snap their fingers clap will you bow for us? we’ll skip you for now we already have someone like you we already have enough of your type thank you maybe another time we had hoped you’d be a little younger more feminine more left-wing more right-wing a little whiter, blacker a little more a little less visible don’t get angry we’d love to have you on our show on our stage in our magazine in our debate to talk about that anger of yours we’re actually very interested don’t get angry we’d just love to you actually fit so well we’d like to talk about that anger please we would love for you to don’t get angry we mean well Translated by Fannah Palmer do it anyway do it anyway tell yourself in those moments when you don’t know what you’re doing it for why for weeks, months sometimes even years you keep chewing on a mouthful of sound why you’re trying so hard to translate the images in your mind to tell stories that force their way out through your skin do it anyway occasionally whisper into the mirror when you see how those late nights the stooping posture the loneliness the bright lights and badly ventilated dressing rooms leave their traces on your body on the skin of your face how time and again you’re faced with the judgment of anyone whose eyes keep snagging on what they’re seeing anyone who simply feels the need to make and think something of you and to share that wholeheartedly with the rest of the world do it anyway even though they’re making fun of your art cutting down on your work think you’re a leftist’s fancy think you should just act normally do it anyway tell yourself whenever you’re tempted to go and do something with which you’ll be sure you can pay next month’s rent and your son can go to college do it anyway, repeat that to yourself whenever you realize once again you will never change the world with a handful of artfully constructed sentences not a single war will you settle with them no heart will not break because of you you won’t be able to write away the woman next-door’s loneliness nor heal a loved one’s rotten disease what then, for heaven’s sake, is it worth? do it anyway even after, you’ve knocked on closed doors till your knuckles bleed build your own houses don’t wait to be invited throw your own party do it anyway get out of bed on those mornings when exhaustion deadens your hope and your limbs even when you think the world doesn’t notice you and isn’t holding its breath for you and your stories tell them anyway just do it because deep down you know that this is the only thing allowing you to live at peace with yourself and the world Translated by Fannah Palmer Go back to your own country go back to your own country greet yourself at the border welcome yourself on your own soil your country where the dust of the earth the heat of the asphalt the noise of life come together in your own midriff go back to your own country set foot on your own soil deep within yourself lay your hand on your capital city take a long breath in your suburbs where the streets are named after your true heroes go back and be your own country know your own country always just behind your eyes tucked away just below your chest between your thumb and index finger never be a foreigner because all of this is your own country i’m going back to my own country set foot on my own lands full of tales of ancestors where the spilt blood brought forth deep-rooted oaks that hold me upright among the remnants of plantations overgrown with thistles and cover-ups let us go back to our own country make the soil belong to everyone again let everything that has been trampled on grow again upwards to the sun let us purify the air with camphor, coconut, lemon burn sandalwood and sage listen to the legends learn to listen to silence once again under the sequoia, the baobab the ceiba tree amidst the noise link the voices of those who went before us with the soil the sky the rivers come back to your own country greet yourself at the border welcome yourself on your own lands always keep your country in hand’s reach somewhere just behind your eyes in the roof of your mouth even amidst bleak concrete let your feet dance softly on the earth make sure there are always enough herbs growing in you enough sand under your fingernails that the magic of the wind can always find you that you never forget the language let the country speak to you don’t ever forget that all this is your own country know your own country always just behind your eyes tucked away just below your chest between your thumb and index finger never be a foreigner because all this is your own country Translated by Donald Gardner If you have never walked in her shoes if you have never walked in her shoes never cycled in the dark with your keys between your fingers an extra-large hoodie over your dress your high-heels exchanged for sneakers so you can peddle home as fast as possible through the night if you have never walked in her shoes don’t know how exhausting it is to have eyes and ears over your whole body the hairs in your neck warning you like alarm bells when you need to make a quick getaway always making a mental calculation, what time you have to be somewhere, when you have to leave and if you’ll get there just in time not to run in the dark not via the park avoiding groups never losing sight of your drink if you have never walked in her shoes don’t know what it’s like to avoid eye contact, to pretend to be on the phone to walk with more confidence to keep a can of hairspray up your sleeve to keep an eye via shop windows on who’s following you making a detour so your pursuer doesn’t see where you live only sometimes to face the greatest danger in your own home it’s often someone you know if you have never stood in her shoes don’t know the feeling of not being able to breathe because someone suddenly locks a door a taxi takes an unexpected turn if you don’t know what it’s like to be in her shoes don’t know what it feels like not to be listened to, not to be believed not to be helped to start a new day the following morning the fresh wounds, the damage invisible under your clothes, your skin getting through the day with a smile then don’t ever tell her what she should do what she must wear that she would have to give birth and how she should behave how to move when to speak how she her body how she her life but teach the world to love her so much she no longer needs to look over her shoulder so much she can dance when she wants go where she wants just let the world start to love her with all their heart Translated by Donald Gardner THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Babs Gons and Jae Nichelle on April 29, 2026. Thank you so much for sharing these poems. I really appreciate “Could you be black for us on Wednesday?” Thinking on that subject, what things do you consider before you accept performance or writing opportunities? Has this changed over the years? With every request, I consider what motivates it. Over the years, these motivations have evolved. Sometimes requests included statements like, “Our organization is too white and too masculine; could you help us change that?” Occasionally, it felt as if genuine change was desired, but often, the push for diversity was driven by a need to maintain funding. At times, I chose to be the person who embodied that change, recognizing that a shifting literary landscape benefits me as well. However, I only embrace such opportunities when they feel sincere, and my contribution as a writer is valued. But as I said, things have changed a lot over time, at least for me. You also learn to spot insincere requests quickly. These poems have been translated into English from the original Dutch you wrote them in. How involved do you like to be in the translation process? Have a translator’s choices ever surprised you? I played a modest role in the translation of my poems, mostly because the translators encouraged my input and collaboration, which I truly appreciated. But as I said, it was modest, both translators are very experienced. I occasionally proposed an alternative word to better reflect the original rhythm and tone of the Dutch poems. Sometimes, the translator asked me to clarify my intended meaning. Translating poetry is always challenging, especially when aiming to preserve both the spirit and rhythm of the original text. When my work was translated into Portuguese and Spanish, I wasn't directly involved—even though I speak those languages, I'm not fluent enough to participate deeply. In a 2018 interview, you mentioned how far people’s understanding of spoken word has come in the Netherlands since you began Poetry Circle in 2007. What has been most exciting to see happen in your poetry community in recent years? What excites me most is witnessing how the landscape of poetry and performance poetry has truly blossomed over the last decade. In the past, I always felt the literary world here was quite closed off, with rigid boundaries around what counted as poetry. For instance, written poetry has traditionally been placed at the top of a kind of hierarchy, while other forms—like spoken word or poetry in different languages—were often sidelined, even though poetry has been an oral tradition for ages and ages. Now, I see so many poets breaking open those old ideas by embracing multilingual performances and spoken word, making poetry accessible to much broader audiences with diverse backgrounds. I love the world of poetry to be as colorful and multi-voiced as the communities we live in. Though there is still work to do, the literary scene is becoming more inclusive and inviting. After many years performing, what was your relationship to publishing when you published your first book in 2021? Was the experience what you expected? I had almost given up hope of publishing, even though I approached several publishers years before my book was released. So, when I finally got the chance to publish, I didn’t expect much. But now I can say that being published has been incredible—my audience grew dramatically. I was already a busy performer who traveled a lot, but the book took me to even more places. It’s wonderful to have so many people reading my work, and my book continues to be reprinted. There is not a week going by that I don't receive messages from readers, letting me know how much my work means to them. Crazy! End of May, my second poetry book, will be published and I’m looking so much forward to introduce new poems to the world. What was your favorite moment or project during your tenure as Poet Laureate of the Netherlands? Oh my, there were so many memorable moments, but one stands out. The final verse of the first poem I wrote as Poet Laureate was engraved at the town hall of a city in the East of the Netherlands. During its unveiling, the mayor publicly and unexpectedly apologized for the city’s involvement in slavery. It was a deeply emotional occasion that moved many people to tears. And then, the moment right afterwards, my words were revealed, immortalized in marble. Yes, that was very beautiful and memorable. What do you hope emerging writers are paying attention to? I hope new writers recognize the responsibility that comes with being a writer, stay mindful of the platform and stage they possess, and appreciate those who paved the way before them. They should understand just how powerful words can be. And also, take your writing seriously, but yourself not too much :). What’s something that relaxes you instantly? My home, my sanctuary. The afternoon sun on the balcony. Walking, be it through nature or the city; I love walking. As a poet who has traveled a lot, how do you approach performing for audiences who may not share your same language? It’s actually quite special—I’ve performed in Dutch worldwide, sometimes with subtitles projected, sometimes accompanied by a live interpreter. These experiences have been truly rewarding. Most recently, during a performance in Sweden with a renowned actress, we collaboratively developed new works based on my poems, wherein I presented them in Dutch, and she integrated the Swedish translation between the lines. Similarly, in Colombia, collaborating with a local actress was incredibly enriching. What’s wonderful is that when you invite the audience to engage with your poetry beyond just the language, something special occurs. They begin to connect with its rhythm and flow. You can listen to poetry without knowing the language. How can people support you right now? Thank you for asking this question. I would be thrilled to have my book translated and published in the United States. So, I'm putting that intention out into the universe. Furthermore, I think poetry makes this world a softer place, so I hope that people read and share poems with each other. Name another Black woman writer people should know. Two poets come to mind: Lisette Ma Neza and Danielle Zawadi are two exceptional Afro-Dutch poets who excel in performance. I eagerly anticipate the publication of their works. ### 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. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Ashley M. Coleman is an author and music industry executive whose work sits at the intersection of literature, culture, and community. Her debut novel Good Morning, Love (Simon & Schuster, 2022) was featured by Joy the Baker and Katie Couric Media and named one of Bustle's Most Anticipated Books of June 2022. Coleman is a fellow of Torch Literary Arts (2023) and Kimbilio (2025), and the founder of Permission to Write, the writing community she established in 2017 to create space to support Black writers. Philly born, LA based, she brings a decade of experience working alongside artists from marginalized communities and a nuanced, insider understanding of stories about creativity, identity, and what it costs to be heard. What Was Never Named It gets harder every day to tell the difference between being asleep and being awake. The urgency of the hospital staff changes when it’s understood that you’re not making it out alive. Or so they think, because the next time the doctor is in, you’re telling him you are going home to die. They let their guards down when they think you can’t hear them. This one is sleeping with that one. Another one might fail an important exam. But over the beeps of the machines and the constant traffic in the hallway, your thoughts are interrupted by a presumptuous statement. “She has no family.” It’s matter-of-fact as one of them looks over your chart. As if family only means one thing. There have been people who loved you, though most are gone. You had a real community around you once. A lover or two, though most pale in comparison to your first. You’ve seen the world, written some notable words, and yet, here in a sterile hospital room, you’ve been reduced to the children you never carried in your womb, the parents who are dead, the siblings that never existed. But then you hear a voice. “She does have family. I’m Lily.” You only realize you’re asleep when you can’t respond. You simply drift back into the in-between plane. Lily waits quietly as you sleep. You can’t see her, but you feel her presence. It’s calming. A world away from the nurses who show up to stick or poke or prod. Eventually, she begins humming a soft tune. One you recognize. One that her mother always used to sing to her when she was a baby. One that had sweetly covered your skin before this moment. * You met her mother, Bella, during your freshman year of college. You were completely lost trying to decode the massive map in front of you. “You are here,” but where exactly was here? You were close to calling it quits when she stopped mid-conversation with someone to ask you if you needed help. You were lost, and she was a sophomore; you’d learn. Just like you’d learn the lyrics to the song she always hummed and the way her brows knitted when she was determined, and memorized the way her soft curls cradled the nape of her neck. You told her you were a writer, though you barely had the right to call yourself that. She was majoring in poly sci with an art minor. You both had dreams of what it meant to change the world through organizing and art. All the ambition and blind rage at a broken system that was cultivated on most college campuses. Young, wild, and free. So, the first time she kissed you, you barely skipped a beat. It dissipated in the effervescence of the champagne that made you feel more mature than you were. You had too much to drink with the excitement of having her first piece placed in a gallery downtown, or maybe it was when she’d made her first sale. Either way, the excuse littered the space between you on the couch the next morning. As if it never happened. As if the kiss hadn’t stained your lips. As if anything would ever be the same. Whatever was between you and Bella was never named. You were friends. Who made a home within each other. Who held each other when life threw you haymakers. Who couldn’t help but make wagers on senseless competitions, holding your breath or running the fastest. You were friends who certainly couldn’t put language to the synchronization of your heartbeats. After graduation, when you both made your way to D.C., you were still inseparable. Deeply rooted. So, you never imagined seventeen years would have passed between speaking, holding each other’s hand, or engaging in late-night debates at the kitchen table. * My dearest, … you validate my existence in a way I cannot explain. You see me when I’m feeling most invisible, and push me when you can envision the finish line, and I’m stuck at the starting blocks … * You wonder if you sound like yourself today. In your mind, you’re still the same able-bodied person, but the way people’s eyes shift when they see you registers that you must be in bad shape. Lily’s eyes are steadfast. She is still, with knitting needles in her hands, yarn wrapped neatly around her fingers. When she notices you are awake, she stuffs her project in the corner of the chair before leaning forward, “You know who I am?” “Lily, I’m not dead yet. You look exactly like your mother.” * In D.C., Bella started her political networking at an entry-level gig for a congresswoman. You followed her there because you could write anywhere and nothing was waiting for you back home. You shared a one-bedroom apartment, a sublet in Foggy Bottom from a woman who had more money than God and let you rent her space for ridiculously cheap because it was held up in litigation during her divorce and she was a “feminist.” She told you this as she tried to decode the relationship between the two women standing in front of her. Your understanding was just as scrambled. The apartment was fully furnished, the walls adorned with trappings from her travels, but the two of you were simply happy to have a roof over your heads, trudging through the ominous fray of post-grad life. But D.C. was a wonderful place to be figuring it out, with a buzzing nightlife, amazing food, and other young professionals trying to make some sense of the world. Your place was small, but that didn’t stop you from hosting salons and game nights, and random after-hours gatherings after a night out on the town. You were poor, but life was rich. The next time Bella kissed you was in that apartment, and there was no champagne. You were tinkering at a newsletter you’d been hired to write that was soulless but paid well. It was a particularly trying day for her on the Hill, and she’d barely painted in months. You made dinner, and she cried over Hamburger Helper and canned biscuits, or maybe it was your pasta with vodka sauce, but it was the notion, the thought. “That you were always looking out for her,” she said to you from across the kitchen island. At that point you realized that you were always more attracted to aura than anatomy. The bright orange light that radiated from Bella threatened to consume you from the moment you heard her voice. But there was the cement wall between the two of you. Black. Churched. Woman. It felt impossible to climb. Already three strikes against you, so you tucked away the queer. You told her the two of you couldn’t keep doing this; it was confusing you. Then someone else began auditioning for the role of looking out for Bella. Someone who could check the boxes that would make a life much more palatable than one with you. Marcel was a law student at American. A mutual friend brought him over for one of your meetings of the minds, and he and Bella hit it off. He was a kind man who shared your love for activism, who was studying to become a civil rights attorney with dreams of opening an affordable legal clinic. You weren’t jealous of Bella and Marcel, but you were careful. A willing third wheel, you were able to keep close watch. Was he genuine? Was she? Were you? He’d developed an interest in your writing, reading the journals that your work was published in. Even encouraging you to think bigger, to start working on your first novel. You wouldn’t say you were waiting for her; you maintained a life outside of them, but you were present. As things progressed, the uncertainty of your heart settled. She slept out more nights at his place. You hid your disappointment when she had to choose between your reading and his fancy dinner with a law firm he was courting. She asked you to be her maid of honor. And when a precious flower came along, a baby girl, you thought that there was nothing you would do to jeopardize being in their lives, and so you even let her convince you to take the job offer at American that Marcel arranged. He spoke so highly of you because anyone that Bella loved, he did too. And so, you loved them. Trips to the playground. Overnights with Lily while they had date night. Vacations where you tagged along. Proms and graduations, you played the role. You entertained someone of your own. A poet. He took you to London for the first time, where you fell in love with travel. You traversed Europe and wrote postcards and mailed them from foreign cities as you pieced together your first manuscript. But the last time Bella kissed you, you gave yourself permission to kiss her back, and you ended up making love in a hotel a few miles from Lily’s school. You’d dropped her off for her freshman year of college at Penn in Philadelphia and were much too tired to drive back. With snacks spread all around on the floor, you caught Love & Basketball on HBO, only for a debate to ensue about whether it was a romantic movie. To you, it was insufferable, but Bella was glued to the screen, her eyes hopeful, her posture swooning. “It’s not always easy to admit how much you love someone,” she said. “Especially not after you’ve started a path for your life.” “It should be that simple,” you replied mindlessly as the character Monica begged her childhood friend to play her for his heart. When you turned to look at her, the earth seemed to be rotating off its axis with the slight turn of her lips and the way she inched closer to you. She told you that she loved you much more deeply than she’d ever wanted to admit to herself. She caressed the side of your face and pulled you into her. You melted into her embrace as if it was the only place you’d ever felt safe. As if you both had finally come home. * My Dearest, … I’ve always admired how you never gave up on your art. Somehow it all got so muddy when the politics took over my creativity. I’m painting again now, and I realized they’re all some version of you … * When you arrived at her house the next day, Marcel was waiting, his arms crossed; he was back early from the work trip that prevented him from accompanying Bella to drop their daughter off at college. “This,” he snarled, spraying a bit of spit when he said it. “Is over.” He had a box in his hands. Your box with its pinstripes and floral stickers. The box she’d kept all your mementos in from over the years. One that held the letters you had written to her, the dried flowers from her first gallery exhibition, your first literary award. Naively, you assumed it would be the moment she would run away with you. From the veneer of a life she’d manufactured that was molding beneath the surface. Instead, without a word, when her hand slipped out of yours like sand, you knew the castles you’d built overnight were being washed away. They turned and left you standing in the middle of the yard, surrounded by the brown leaves that had been discarded by the trees. But he still had the box in his hands. You walked over to the doorstep to retrieve it as their voices violently breached the windows, but decided to turn back to your truck. The words you could decipher were heartbroken, betrayed, crushed. The most you’d had in common with Marcel over the years. Three months later, she was outside your window. For a while, after that day, you used to think you were still connected. Like all you had to do was think enough about her and something would happen. You would see that she viewed one of your blogs or she liked a social media post. One night, she showed up. You watched her from behind your window curtain. She stayed there for a while, through the unanswered doorbell, the missed calls and texts, and even for a minute longer as light rain formed from the clouds. Tap, tap, tapping on the pane. And because you hoped this was the moment you would both allow the true contents of your heart to spill between you, you let her up. She loved you, but she couldn’t leave Marcel. Too much was in motion. They were right there with the clinic starting, and her chief of staff position was about to be within her reach. And she looked different to you then. And the song she hummed sounded like noise. And you promised yourself that night that you wouldn’t think about her so hard again when you clicked submit on a tenure track position at Tulane. * My dearest, … Marcel told me that you resigned, but where will you go? And how will my heart keep beating in rhythm if you’re gone? * “Why couldn’t my dad see how much she loved you?” “Oh, Lily, I fear the problem is, he did.” A sharp pain tears through your left shoulder, radiating and spreading like a tree branch through your skull. Your face must be contorted as Lily springs up from her seat and holds your hand. It had been too long since you’d been touched with gentleness. She uses her free hand to ring the chord for the nurse. “You were always there, then you weren’t. This staple in my life growing up. You were mom’s best friend.” Lily tries to make sense of it. When the nurse arrives, Lily excuses herself to grab a cup of coffee before you can warn her that it’s nothing but mud. Though your taste buds had been changing, you knew good coffee from the months you spent in residence in Paris. The nurse wears a goofy expression as she pumps your veins with what you dub liquid crack. It is fast-acting, and your limbs go slack. The cold rush is icy in your bloodstream, and when you wake up again, Lily is there, successfully progressing on what looks like a knitted top. You can’t help but wonder why she’s here. Save for a glimpse of a mutual friend’s post, it was much too painful for you to attempt to keep up with their lives. But because the world is small, you know Lily married an architect, and they live in Silver Springs with their two children. “I found the letters.” Lily finally offers. “The ones you always sent to her and the ones she kept writing long after you were gone.” As if the connection you and Bella had was passed down to her. The ability to read your thoughts. Bella is dead. Lily holds her composure the best she can, but there is a tremble in her bottom lip that she bites until it is white after she tells you. “Your mother was always competing with me. Couldn’t even let me die first.” A tear manages its way down your face, detouring in the deep wrinkles that settled in and made their home on the planes of a once buoyant canvas. You hate that you allowed this space and time between you. That she would have suffered without you being able to hold her hand or rub her hair, just like you did when she brought Lily into this world. “There was a dedication in your book that led me to them.” She digs into her tote bag and pulls out Far from Home. While it wasn’t the commercial success of your debut, it was acclaimed in smaller literary circles. “A daunting tale of longing,” you remember from a review, maybe Kirkus or some other. “A name perfectly ascribed to a beautiful and rebellious woman and the loveliest flower I’ve ever known.” Lily’s eyes are veiled with silver, the slight film before the tears form. “Bella and Lily?” You can’t manage more than silent agreement. “It had lilies all over it. I don’t know; I just remembered how sacred that box was to her. How much she cherished it. How much she hid it from my dad.” * Over the next few days that feel like weeks, Lily keeps showing up. She reads the letters to you that all start “My dearest.” They are everything Bella said after the day your world bent into something unrecognizable with Marcel standing at the door. It is every letter you could never answer when you thought she’d moved on from you and you tried your best to love others: a visual artist, a dancer, a musician. You and Lily review your estate planning, and she is surprised to see that she’d already been the benefactor. You meet her family who are all staying in a hotel close to the hospital. Her children are gorgeous and well-mannered. Her youngest has Bella’s zeal, her confidence. You share with her a letter of your own that you were too much of a coward to send. It starts, “I’ve only kept writing to find my way back to you through these pages.” And on your last day on this side of the plane, you can feel Lily’s soft breath as she holds you close. It gets hard to tell the difference between her face and Bella’s. All that time you thought she’d let go, all that time she’d been holding on. You know someone is holding you, and someone is humming, and the chatter is muffled, and the beeps are slowing, slowing. ### 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. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

In this special joint feature, literary powerhouses and best friends Lynne Thompson and Patricia Smith talk about sisterhood. Lynne Thompson served as Los Angeles’ 4th Poet Laureate and is the author of four collections of poetry: Beg No Pardon; Start With A Small Guitar; Fretwork; and, Blue on a Blue Palette. A lawyer by training, Thompson serves on the Boards of The Poetry Foundation, Los Angeles Review of Books, her alma mater, Scripps College, and is the current President of Cave Canem. In addition to featuring for Torch Magazine, Thompson’s work appears or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, The Common, Tiferet, and the Georgia Review. Her website is www.lynnethompson.us. Patricia Smith is the author of ten books of poetry, including The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems (Scribner 2025), winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Poetry, finalist for the 2026 Pulitzer Prize, and winner of the 2026 NAACP Image Award for Poetry; Unshuttered; Incendiary Art, winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2017 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the 2018 NAACP Image Award, and finalist for the2018 Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist; and Gotta Go, Gotta Flow, a collaboration with award-winning Chicago photographer Michael Abramson. Her other books include the poetry volumes Teahouse of the Almighty, Close to Death, Big Towns Big Talk, Life According to Motown; the children's book Janna and the Kings and the history Africans in America, a companion book to the award-winning PBS series. The Flower & The Navel-Gazer by Lynne Thompson After a clink of champagne flutes filled with the eponymous liquor laced with creme de violette, one poet introduces herself as Anemone, says—coyly— to be specific, I am Anemone Thomsonii, come from Mt. Kilimanjaro, East Africa, daughter of the wind, tears of Aphrodite following Adonis’ death. Her fellow scribe, her lips moist with the sparkle and tickle, replies they call me Omphaloskepsis, Navel-gazer. Look to the monks of Mount Anthos or those who practice kundalini yoga—they will instruct you to find the soft center of your heart where your bountiful powers reside, the place you will find unending joy. And in this way, they spoke into that first evening’s hollow and until their souls— flower and navel-gazer—found their own harmony; became musky essence and light-gathering seer. A Talented Felon, Branzino and the Green Dress by Patricia Smith Who knew that there was joy in just comparing liver spots, reluctant squeaks the body makes, or warbling ancient tunes that everyone’s forgotten? Girl, who knew that poetry would hold us close this long, through deaths of mothers, menopause, the loss of men we swore we’d kill for once upon a time? Who knew we’d wind up here, content to write our long and jumbled lives in rhyme, to throw our heads way back and laugh at just how silly it’s all been, and look— the world is perfect from this perch, where we’ve seen everything and nothing, where we’ll die content in sisterhood. We lived so loud. THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted separately between Lynne Thompson, Patricia Smith, and Jae Nichelle on April 17 and June 25th, 2026. What a joy to have you both in conversation here! I’d love to take it back to the start. From both of your perspectives, how did your friendship begin? When did you know it was going to be a key relationship in your life? LT: Although we had met sometime before, I think it was about 2011 or 2012 when Patricia was in Los Angeles and desperate for a friendly face that she called me to “rescue” her. I went to meet her in Santa Monica and we lingered over a great champagne brunch (one of our favorite things to share) for several hours talking about everything from family to what we were writing before she had to catch a plane…and the rest?…you know….. PS: I think we were aware of each other on the margins—I realize now that Lynne was breaking her way into the poetry community and wasn’t yet her currently feisty self. But she was the only person I knew who lives in the glitzy wilds of Los Angeles, and when I got stuck here—in some insane mansion in the Hollywood Hills where there were live fish in the chandelier—I sent out an SOS for rescue. She declined my late-night plea, but later we couldn’t stop laughing. I’d found a soulmate. Older women (I don’t like that phrase)—let’s call us “queens”—have a very particular sense of humor, a shared love of real music, a bemused outlook on “the same old thing,” and the toughness that only experience can bring. I’ve been lucky to find a gal to grow up with. We’ve transcended words—a look, or a quick gesture, can say everything. I enjoyed listening to a conversation you both had with The Hive Poetry Collective, where Patricia says, “I might feel differently about my career right now if it wasn’t for Lynne. I think I’d feel more isolated.” What has your friendship taught you about being a writer? LT: Having a “bestie” who is also a writer, particularly a poet, and most particularly, who is the Patricia Smith, means that you can discuss the strengths or weaknesses of a particular line, how it should be broken, it’s music or lack of it, whether it needs to be put in a drawer or how and who to approach for publication, etc. and you can also talk about what it means to be a Black women poet in today’s America, movies, gossip (literary and otherwise) or whether that dress you want to buy is flattering…or not so much….. PS: It’s funny, because we don’t write together. We don’t even look at each other’s work much. But as I’ve grown older, my concerns have changed, my voice has changed, the things I think are worth writing about have changed. And it’s invaluable to have someone see you through those changes as she’s going through them herself. Lynne’s only a little more than four years older than I am, but she’s a bona fide beacon. She’s tireless (I can hear her laughing), and spirited and sharp—at a time when society expects us to “slow down.” She’s the reason I don’t tumble into ruts. She’s the reason I never stop looking for new ways to surprise myself. She’s the reason I’m not slowing down. You’ve both been featured in Torch Magazine previously—Patricia’s first feature being in 2007 and Lynne’s in 2024. As celebrated members of this community, what does “literary sisterhood” mean to you within the larger world of Black women writers? What do Black women writers need to hear or consider? LT: I’ve recently been reading The Sisterhood by Courtney Thorsson about a group of black women writers in the 1970s who, as the cover proclaims, “changed American culture.” Toni Morrison, June Jordan, Ntozake Shange, and others combined their knowledge, their resources, and their respect for each other to produce some of the most important work in American literature. Although difficult to maintain for a variety of reasons, I think Black women writers are no less in need of a sorority like that—or at least considering that model—whether it be only 2 people or a larger group. The support and honesty are invaluable in ways that may seem invisible to others but create an advantageous environment for its members. PS: Wow. I’m pretty sure I would have answered this differently back in 2007. Literary sisterhood could be defined as women supporting each other in their writing. Now it’s women who support each other in their lives. The writing isn’t all there is. Literary sisterhood means holding on to each other—supporting self-care, forging paths through grief and loss, comforting during illness. Each sister needs to be the best she can be so the writing has a clear path forward. A good sister will see to that. Black women need to hear that everyone wants to be us. They’ve worked diligently at convincing us that we are what is wrong in this world. It’s so empowering not to listen. What’s an early example of Black sisterhood (in life or media) that impacted you? LT: Waiting to Exhale, four women with different styles and approaches to their lives, who supported each other even when they disagreed. PS: Back in 1977, a spectacular group of Black women gathered in June Jordan’s apartment. Toni Morrison. Alice Walker. Ntozake Shange. They gobbled gumbo, guzzled champagne, and proceeded to change the lives of every Black woman writer who came after. “The Sisterhood” later opened its arms to others, including Audre Lorde, Margo Jefferson, Paule Marshall, and met every month for two years—can you imagine? They talked craft and revolution and Black love. They surveyed the literary landscape that sought to erase them. And they laughed and leaned on one another. Do you see echoes of each other’s language, rhythms, or obsessions in your writing after years of knowing one another? How do you feel about that kind of creative influence? PS: I don’t think so. Part of what makes us friends is how absolutely different we are. On the other hand, some influences are hard to see if you’re the one exerting the influence or the one being influenced. I think someone outside of the two of us would be a better judge of that. I’m not sure we’d be able to see it. LT: I think at a very base level, we’re both committed—in different ways—to the narrative and love pursuing the myriad ways to put it on the page. Moreover, we’re both obsessive about “the best words in the best order,” but what influences me most about Patricia’s writing is her work ethic and commitment. When she’s in “the zone,” don’t call her—not even when that dress you’ve both been drooling over goes on sale. The good news is she’ll call you back when she’s done and say “buy it—immediately!” You are both incredible at using and subverting new and classic forms, and you both often talk about your willingness to try new things on the page. What new things are calling you these days? What are you playing with? LT: Largely influenced by Patricia, I’m playing (as I have been for quite a while) with the crown sonnet… its possibilities are breathtaking, and I hope to conquer my anxiety about it in the new manuscript I’m contemplating. PS: No matter what Lynne says, I CANNOT craft her concoction ‘the centorina” (I think that’s it), where she combines the sestina and cento. It is utterly impossible. I’ve also decided, just last night, in fact—to create my own form. I’m currently checking to see if it’s already been done before I tell Lynnie about it. I’m also about to dive into a memoir, and I fully intend for it to be hybrid and surprised in both form and content. We’ll see how that works. The last thing you ate is the name of a new poetic form. What is it? LT: Black beans. PS: CAVA! What’s a memory you have together that you laugh about to this day? LT: Patricia was a featured speaker at a conference in Chicago, and I was in Chicago at the same time….we were staying in a fabulous hotel that had a “private room” above the lobby that served wine and other beverages and small bites, and we loved being in there, mostly by ourselves, and people-watching from a perch where no one could see us! PS: SO MANY. I wonder how many I can reveal publicly. One of the funniest ones involves a car, a mother, and prison. And no, neither of our mothers has been to prison. Lynne, what do you wish more people knew about Patricia? Patricia, what do you wish more people knew about Lynne? PS: I wish more people knew how hard Lynne works at her craft. She’s constantly reading, studying, reaching—and just when you think she can’t get any better, she does. She refuses to sit still, creatively and otherwise. I also wish more people knew that, as a former lawyer, Lynne can be delightfully insufferable. For instance, while we were in Las Vegas for her birthday, we went to a show by the magician David Blaine, who performed a trick that was absolutely impossible. Instead of enjoying the trick for what it was, Lynne will NOT REST until she figures out how he did it. Which she never will. LT: Most people who know Patricia know about her generosity, but I’d like them to also recognize her thoughtfulness, which is something a little different. If she has you in her sights—whether for a birthday or a literary recommendation or anything else—she carefully considers the best way to achieve a goal in a way the recipient will forever treasure. What’s your favorite poem of each other’s? LT: You ask the impossible! Have you read Patricia Smith!!!?!? Ok, today I’ll say "To Little Black Girls, Risking Flower." PS: Umm…this should be interesting. My favorite of Lynne’s is “How I Learned Where We Come From,” from—I think—Beg No Pardon. I love it best when Lynne writes about home, her people, and I can feel how firmly she’s rooted in her beginnings. The poem just lifts me up and puts me down right in the center of it, with that call and response singing in the air. I don’t think she knows how much I love it. How can people support you right now? LT: Of course, if people read my work, I am forever grateful. But even more important, if they would add poetry to their reading regimen, particularly the poetry of Black women, their reading would “lift all boats!” PS: CASH MONEY. We LOVE to travel. That’s what’s so good about being queens (remember, that’s my term for “elders”)—we can afford to be fascinated by anywhere, and (usually) we can afford to get there, to laugh and luxuriate and revel in everything we’ve learned. Just recently said “Costa Rica?” and Lynne said “Yep!” WE COULD USE BENEFACTORS. Seriously, just keep reading what we write and keep challenging us to do better. Expect something new every time you see us. Besides each other, name another Black woman writer people should know. LT: Taylor Byas….her newest poetry collection Resting Bitch Face is a must-read. PS: Aris Kian. I’m the editor of the Miller Williams Series at the University of Arkansas, and I just chose her phenomenal book, Heartless Architecture, for publication next year. It amazes me when a stellar poet emerges, then you find out that they’ve been doing the good stuff for a while and you just weren’t seeing. She’s a Houston Poet Laureate emeritus, and writes with an unflagging love about her hometown and the roots of our folk in the American South. ### 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. Click here to support Torch Literary Arts.

Jordan Bolden Majewski (she/they) is a Black queer poet and essayist living in the Bay Area. Her work explores the embodied experience of Black motherhood in its full spectrum– the many dangers, surprises, and joys. Bolden Majewski’s work has always been grounded in the body– the places we touch and pull away, the ways we hurt and are healed, the things we carry inside ourselves that we hold apart from others. They write about the systems we must carry our bodies through– the medical system which fails Black women intentionally, repeatedly, and dangerously, and the education system which echoes the same failings with a callous neglect for Black children. Through the lens of motherhood, they are interested in the ways racism entangles itself in our intimate and daily relationships and routines, especially as they parent their three children surrounded by mostly white parents. Bolden Majewski seeks to highlight childhood from a place of agency and dignity, and wonders how that might change our politics. Their work appears or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Shenandoah, Crab Orchard Review, and The Panafold. She received an MFA in Poetry from New York University, and is currently at work on a poetry manuscript and a collection of essays. Lot His family flees, but Lot’s wife cannot resist a parting look on her home, the land where she walked dusty streets each morning to pull water from a deep well for her children, her tears crystallizing into long white rivulets down coarse salt cheeks cast in shadow. I walk over one block and down Bedford, sun bursting from concrete as I exit the train. I’m walking quickly past another woman. In her wake, I catch a man’s voice saying … pussy! Ohh— you smell nice. I smell you! I pass through words meant for her and they hang in my hair like smoke. What do you call the clean, round way words spring from meanness? If the lyric is a distillation of time, let me break, for you, the sudden-quick slap of another woman’s body in a strange man’s mouth against my skin. How to stop myself from turning? In the bible, Lot offers his virgin daughters to the crowd of ravenous men gathered rather than allow the men to harm the angels bringing destruction on Sodom. No one calls for help. This morning, I turn a corner. A man fills the avenue and grabs me as if my body were a song he wanted to play. This world, full of stories in which someone turns and a woman disappears. ### 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. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga is a third culture kid who’s allergic to place. She writes about migrant experiences with the help of a tornado auntie, lion goddess, immortal witch, the occasional ghost, etc. Her work has recently been published in Uncanny Magazine, Augur Magazine, Andromeda Spaceways, GigaNotoSaurus, Fantasy Magazine, and FIYAH Literary Magazine. It has also appeared in anthologies such as As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories and Africa Risen. You can find links to her works on her website: aline-mweziniyonsenga.com/ My Friend the Lord of the Forest Like her missing cousin had advised, Gabi focused on one thing over studying: making friends. This was easy. As soon as she landed in the grey iciness of a foreign autumn, in a flat city of sharp rectangular lines, Gabi joined the community association and attended its youth conference event. This was a good distraction from her cousin’s disappearance. She could pretend his messages from a month ago were sent just yesterday. Introduce yourself clearly. Enunciate. Ask people about themselves. They’ll immediately feel closer to you. People love to talk about themselves. Gabi had laughed at the advice. She had no trouble being social. Her cousin had pointed out that she had spent most of her life among family at home, among friends at school. She didn’t have enough practice with meeting new people—total strangers, her cousin had stressed. He had been the same before he studied abroad. He didn’t want her to make the same mistakes. “Channel your inner Lord of the Forest,” her cousin had said. “Strong. Confident. Like you rule over trees.” Gabi had laughed. Her cousin would always make silly references to his favourite made-up character: the Lord of the Forest, both beast and mighty king. Gabi didn’t understand her cousin’s admiration, but the silliness of the memory was a good distraction. At the youth conference, Gabi ignored her freezing wet flats and laughed with other smartly blazered young people. “We haven’t seen you before. Where are you from?” was the common refrain. Questions of location, high school, university flew across the room. Common points were highly sought after. Once found, shoulders loosened. Then a man leaned close to Gabi’s ear and said, “You’re Ingabire, right? I know your cousin, _____.” Ice rubbed down her neck. Her nametag said Gabi. Not once had she introduced herself in full. “Oh, really? My cousin?” She hadn’t told this man where she was from. Her brain struggled to place him as the nerves in her chest squirmed with wary confusion. He wasn’t in the family group chat. Her cousin’s name was no longer mentioned there because who knew who was watching. “Yes, I read his article,” the man said. He didn’t introduce himself. “I study information technology. Where do you study?” “I’m job hunting,” Gabi said, and waved at someone behind him. She made three rounds around the velvety room, feet burning. In the bathroom she sobbed with her fist in her mouth. She grabbed her coat and left. Outside, a warm wind surprised Gabi, followed by a fleeting shadow. A big dog running past, Gabi reasoned. A big, big dog. Strangest of all was the smell of wet soil that lingered. # After the conference encounter, Gabi spiraled. Normal guests would come to her aunt’s house, but their questions unnerved her. Who knew who was watching. “I’m sorry about your cousin,” one friend of a friend said. Gabi avoided further visits. She hibernated at school throughout the winter, morning to night, weekends at the library. She spoke to no one. Would they ask about her cousin? Would they watch her every move? Would they report back? Her cousin was still missing. Him and his obsession with the Lord of the Forest. Gabi’s cousin was obsessed with one umugani he heard in primary school: the story of Sebwugugu. It was about a foolish husband and the poor wife who bore with his foolishness until he got himself killed. A ferocious beast killed him, so his wife kept house with an axe in her hand, ready to kill it should it come back. One day someone did knock at her door, introducing himself as the Lord of the Forest. Go away, beast! the wife said. I know who you truly are. Gabi didn’t remember how her cousin described it, but the Lord of the Forest was able to show that he was a noble individual who ruled justly over the forest and its creatures. I cannot ignore a woman alone. I simply wished to see you well. He might have left her gifts or the help of ten enchanted ploughs to help her through her harvest, but eventually she trusted him as someone more dependable than her husband, and they married. At this point, Gabi would snort, “That’s not even the right version of the story. A beast killed her husband, yes, but then the woman killed it, and the chief of a nearby village found out and rewarded her for getting rid of something that had killed his people. She married the chief.” “I’m asking you to imagine,” her cousin would say. “Imagine if the chief and the beast were the same. Then the Lord of the Forest would be like a metaphor for protecting our trees.” Her cousin had studied environmental science. “Imagine if he was still around to protect forests today. There’d be less deforestation, less bandits and poachers hiding in there.” Her cousin had written an article—a personal essay, he called it—about the Lord of the Forest and forest conservation, the dangers of overdevelopment, all in an effort to promote an equal exchange with nature, and pay it respect. Five months had passed since Gabi’s cousin went missing. Four months since her arrival abroad. The snow thawed. Her aunt must have complained, because her mother was urging her to say hi to so-and-so, to meet with so-and-so’s daughter, to show her face at parties. To pretend everything was normal for who knows who is watching. So when Gabi saw a poster for a student club, she decided to join. # Gabi joined Sanctuary Club on a sunny Monday afternoon. A place where everyone is welcome. You can make friends, or you can enjoy silence together. Arts and crafts activities are provided. The sun was setting later and later every day, making Gabi wonder if one day it wouldn’t set at all. The colourful people of Sanctuary Club were even stranger, with their dyed hair and clinking bracelets, studying degrees her parents would never pay for her to study. Their club president was a taller-than-tall man named Murugo, who smelled like Vaseline and eucalyptus. For the first time in months, Gabi felt she was at home. Murugo played an RnB playlist mixed with amapiano and old songs from home, while the club crocheted or glued magazine clippings to pieces of construction paper. Gabi did not know how to crochet, so she picked up a pair of scissors and an old student magazine. Murugo sat across from her. Up close, she could smell wet soil. It reminded her of the southern bamboo forest back home, where it was said Ngunda fell. She thought of swaying bamboo shoots. She cut a whole background of them off the magazine and glued it onto a blue piece of paper. “Where are you from?” she asked Murugo. “Gisenyi. I came here a long time ago, in the 90s.” He didn’t look that much older than her. He must have been a baby. They skirted around the topic of genocide and spoke instead about school and what was missing on the playlist. Murugo was also studying environmental science. Maybe because Murugo grew up outside, Gabi felt safe to speak about her own two siblings, her extended family, but nothing about her missing cousin. An old poet crowed over the Bluetooth stereo. Gabi snorted. “You’re like a grandpa.” But the steady drumming and keening words made her eyes water. Her cousin loved this song. Murugo had no siblings. No parents. Gabi bit the inside of her cheek upon hearing it. At least her cousin was not dead. He couldn’t be. Her first piece of art was a forest of smiling faces, the words rest and family big across the middle. The word rest reminded her of death, so she ripped that part off the artwork, crumpled the whole thing, and threw it away. No one questioned this. # Murugo hummed while he worked, a habit that reminded Gabi of her cousin, and for a moment she felt safe in the knowledge that somewhere somehow her cousin was humming. He was safe. The club didn’t have an end time, but Gabi left before sunset. When she left the club room for the day, Murugo’s hum would carry into the hallway, following her all the way outside like a low buzzing in her eardrums. Her cousin was safe. He must be. # Once during club time, Murugo stretched his arms up and yawned. His shirt was cropped so Gabi saw the scar on his belly, like the bullet scar her grandfather had, and suddenly she could see the bullet holes under the kitchen window in her grandparents’ house. Her cousin’s article mentioned how her grandparents had never found out who was shooting. Was it bandits? The old regime? One thing was for sure: they had come from the north. The article could have had to do with his disappearance. That’s what her family thought. He had been on his way to renew his passport and didn’t come back. The article had to be the reason, but sometimes there are no reasons. Sometimes family just disappears, and the people who took them never tell you why. Tears welled up in Gabi’s eyes, dripping onto the words family, lost, and found. She left the clubroom. Murugo followed her. “I’m just going to the bathroom,” she said. “I know a good place to cry.” He led her up a set of stairs, and more stairs, until they reached a door that pushed onto a roof alive with whirring sounds. Fans spun at the corners of a verdant paradise of potted ferns that formed a square around a swinging bench adorned with vines. The air was warm like home. The plants were outstretched arms like home. Gabi’s tears fell like so much rain back home. Murugo pointed to the swinging bench and said he’d be right back. Gabi let herself sink into the bench’s plush cushions. She wrung her tears out, wailing just loud enough to blend with the chorus of fans and mechanical whirs surrounding the garden. It all became a hum of noise, steady like a lullaby. Gabi woke to a tap on her shoulder. Murugo handed her a wad of tissues and she blew her nose. She hugged a cushion while he watered the plants with a plastic can. He scratched his belly, where the scar was. “How did you get shot?” she asked. Murugo looked out at the pinking sky. It was almost sunset already. “Bandits.” Of course. “My cousin is missing.” Gabi bit the inside of her lip to steady it. “They want to hold a funeral for him.” It hadn’t been a year yet, but did his family want to wait that long? One year would be agony for them, unspeakable for him. Better to believe he was dead. It was eight months since his disappearance. Murugo wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him. As the sky blued, his arm warmed like fur. # “I remember the forest,” Murugo said. “It was vast back then. I’d climb the tallest tree and look out at everything. It smelled like damp leaves, like fresh oxygen, like soil. There were so many birds back then. And the mountain gorillas. They were many. I remember that white woman would be around them a lot. That was when the forest was smelling more and more like gunpowder, more like diesel. I heard more gunshots, people who didn’t belong running around. People fleeing.” Gabi tuned in around the mention of gunshots. “You remember all that?” He didn’t look older than thirty. He must have been a child. “I had to flee in the end.” Their silence skirted around war again, and the snip-snip of scissors carried them through the afternoon. Gabi glued a forest scene again. It had a monkey (she couldn’t find gorillas), birds, and a man with darker skin than Murugo. The only word she cut out was home. # Murugo announced he was travelling for a few months. The new club president was a pale girl with longish teeth. Good-bye was a brief hug and a promise to exchange song recommendations. Gabi swallowed her loneliness and redoubled her focus on her studies. One time she went up to the roof to cry, but the door was locked. Through the fogged-up window she saw grey shapes, like sleeping beasts in the gloom, and she remembered dozing on Murugo’s shoulder, how it had warmed like fur. “I promise you. Your cousin will be found,” he’d said. Gabi had chuckled. “You can’t promise that.” “I simply wish to see you well.” That day, Gabi left the clubroom after sunset. As she walked down the hall, noise exploded from the clubroom. Laughter morphed into barking. Shouts became howls. And there was a new smell, like wet soil, the same smell from the night at the youth conference, now coming from the room. Gabi walked away fast, following an instinct against trouble. The smell of wet soil lingered in her nostrils, following her all the way home. A shadow slipped under the streetlights. A big dog running past. A big, big dog. # Gabi ditched Sanctuary Club to form a study group with two people she met at a party her aunt dragged her to. They became fast friends. Their taste in music was fresh, not like Murugo’s grandpa's taste. She joked about this with her new friends. They teased her about how she might like him. The funeral was postponed. Gabi exhaled then remembered it didn’t mean her cousin was any less missing. She forgot how to inhale and spent the next few weeks relearning how. A second time she went up to the roof, but it was bare. The whirring came from generators, no fans, only a cold wind, reminding her of the day she first set foot on this strange country. It was supposed to be a new start, distance from her cousin’s disappearance, but the fact of his absence haunted her still. Her breath stuck in her throat and stayed there through winter. She holed up in library study rooms, this time with people she could laugh with. Her throat loosened just a little. A year and a half since her cousin went missing. She learned to breathe around the absence clogging her throat. A third time she went up to the roof to cry, but the door was locked. The window was too dirty to see through. It shone like the white haze of a winter storm. This time Gabi sank against the door. Was it even the right door? Had the verdant garden been a dream? Her phone vibrated. She ignored it. Ten missed calls passed from her mother. Gabi rubbed her eyes dry and called back, both wishing for and dreading the moment her mother picked up. “Gabi,” her mother sniffled. She didn’t like that tone. Gabi reached for the locked door behind her. She yanked on its handle, as if it might help her escape. “Is he dead?” Gabi asked. The lock clicked, a clear sound in the trembling silence. Gabi tumbled onto the roof. The white haze broke into golden sunlight over the verdant garden, alive again with potted ferns arranged in a square around its creaking swing. Vines wrapped around the swing, and Gabi pulled on one of its leaves as she sat on the swing’s cushions. The smell of wet soil filled her nostrils. “Your cousin is back,” her mother said. “Kasha is back.” Gabi’s throat loosened into a squeak. “Alive?” The sound of a hum grew deeper than the whirring fans. Gabi lowered her phone to listen, checking behind her. A fleeting shadow blinked past. A dog running. A big, big dog. “Gabi?” Her mother’s voice faintly bleated through her fingers. “Are you there?” Water poured from a plastic can, showering the ferns in the garden. Gabi did not have to see the face that did it. She knew who it truly was. “Murugo?” The air was wet soil, the smell of home. Her cousin was home, but the Lord of the Forest was not. ### 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. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Desiree Cooper is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated columnist, award-winning author, and a member of the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective. Desiree Cooper is a 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, former attorney, and Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist, and editor of the groundbreaking 2026 anthology, Black Summers: Growing up in the Urban Outdoors. Her debut collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother, won numerous awards, including the 2017 Next Generation Indie Book Award. Cooper’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Oprah Daily, MSNBC Daily, Flash Fiction America 2023, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Rumpus, River Teeth, Best African American Fiction 2010, and noted in The Best American Essays 2019. Cooper’s children’s picture book, Nothing Special, is a 2023 Paterson Prize winner and included on the New York Public Library’s “10 Best Children’s Books of 2022.” Cooper is a founding board member of Cave Canem, a former board member of Furious Flower Poetry Center, a Kimbilio fellow, and a current member of the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective. After spending 30 years in Detroit, she now lives in coastal Virginia where she is raising her three grandchildren. Hell and High Water In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bob-Lo Excursion Co. v. State of Michigan that a Detroit amusement park ferry could not ban African Americans from riding the boat. The little-known case was initiated by 24-year-old Sarah Elizabeth Ray and championed by the NAACP. It was one of many cases that helped pave the way to the seminal 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision striking down racial segregation in American public schools. When did Sarah Elizabeth Ray, a skinny, colored girl from Wautachuie, Tennessee, decide to take up the torch of righteousness? Perhaps it was in July 1945, as the twenty-four-year-old stepped onto the upper deck of the steamer Columbia, which ferried passengers down the Detroit River to a Summerland amusement park. The waves lapped the hull, ready to buoy her on a celebration journey. It was her secretarial school graduation day, and she was headed to Bob-Lo Island, the place of Ferris wheel dreams. Look at her, a school dropout, now a certified secretary, floating above the city on the top deck of the steamer, along with her twelve white classmates. She marveled at her bird’s-eye view of the world–until she saw the uniformed white men approaching. Her body filled with that familiar dread, but she stood fast. Surely they would see that she was now educated, that white people were her friends, that her polka-dotted dress was brand new from Kresge’s, her shoes were shined up with Vaseline, her demeanor was bright and respectable. The men insisted that she follow them; the boat was no place for coloreds or zoot-suiters. The magical ferry became an ark of white power. Her classmates silently watched as her Judas teacher said: “She will go quietly.” The very one who’d invited her along–who had deemed her “witty for a nigra”--had tossed her overboard. On the dock, Sarah held her refunded fare, but the worthless coins singed her palm. As the ship set sail, she flung the money into the cold, dark river. There had to be a moment before that one on Columbia, before she walked straight into the Detroit office of the NAACP to file a complaint. It takes patience to become a controlled burn. She’d kept the old embers warm–like the ones that were lit that day in 1935 when she was waiting for a train in Chattanooga. There she is, standing on the colored end of the platform, her arm looped in the arm of that boy, Frank Ray, the twenty-two-year-old from Jersey who opened her nose for freedom in the North. You can see them grinning hope-drunk as the train chugs into the station; they can’t wait to take their final ride out of that white trash, backwoods town. Sarah smugly hands the purser her ticket to Detroit, where she heard that Negroes walked with their heads up high. Look at her, spitting on the tracks before she and Frank step aboard. No, these notions blaze slowly, like a tallowed wick. Sarah didn’t light the fuse in that instant she was kicked off the Bob-Lo Boat. Or, even when she was a teenager with a one-way ticket out of bumfuck Tennessee. It had to be that day outside of the five and dime, when her mother tried to make her greet that greasy EmmaJean Lester, a redneck who wasn’t so poor she couldn’t boss niggers around. “You a skinny thing, ain’t ya?” the white lady says, bending over to pinch the skin of the black child’s cheek, which even then stretched taut against her regal bones. “Say ‘yass’m,’ Sarah!” her mother coaches, tugging her arm nervously. The little girl levels her hot gaze, then deliberately pronounces, “Yes, Miz Lester,” just as pretty as you please. Her mother’s eyebrows rise in sync with EmmaJean Lester’s. Both of them know to leave well enough alone; they’d never get a “yass’m” from Sarah Elizabeth. Not now, not ever. Months before that, the school board noted that there were only two nigger families in all of Hamilton County, Tennessee. That wasn't enough to justify the expense of a school bus to tote them to the shack behind the schoolhouse. If they wanted to come to school, they’d have to walk the five miles there and back. So, at six years old, Sarah walked, her eyes tearing with grit as a bus full of white children rolled past her every morning. The county finally found a white man to take Sarah to school on his way into town to get slops for his pigs. School was her way up and out, so she clambered onto the back of the truck eagerly. The method of travel never mattered much to Sarah; the only thing that mattered was where she was going. She learned cursive by practice. She learned to calculate in her head. She learned the meaning of words like “dignity'' by being forced to live the opposite. Wherever that notion started--on the back of a slop truck, outside the five and dime, in the colored car of a northbound train, at the sound of the timer when she realized she was the fastest typist in her class--it finally ignited that summer day on the Detroit River, there on the top deck, when Sarah Elizabeth Ray’s classmates, pink with privilege, did nothing to help her as the steward tossed her from the Bob-Lo Boat. There was nowhere else for the fire to go. So she laid it upon the river of injustice, stood back, and watched it burn. THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Desiree Cooper and Jae Nichelle on March 13, 2026. It is so wonderful to read “Hell and High Water” and learn about Sarah Elizabeth Ray. Can you take us back to when you first encountered this story and what moved you to do deeper research? I encountered Sarah Elizabeth Ray’s story when working as a columnist for the Detroit Free Press. A reader told me about the forgotten civil rights pioneer who had integrated an amusement park ferry in 1948. Evidently, she was living alone on the city’s east side. I interviewed Sarah Ray in early 2006 and shined a light on her U.S. Supreme Court win years before Rosa Parks’s infamous bus ride. She passed away at age 88, just months after the article was published. In 2019, filmmaker Aaron Schillinger was researching the Boblo Boats and came across my article about Sarah’s integration fight. He reached out to me and we established the Sarah E. Ray Project to raise awareness about her contributions to civil rights. We held community lectures, engaged school systems, got her inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame, and even brought her to the attention of the New York Times. Her obituary is now included in the New York Times’ book, Overlooked, which celebrates “underappreciated people who broke the rules and changed the world.” This piece was a catalyst for your Black Summers anthology. What was the process of bringing this project to life? What are you most excited about? Sarah Ray was part of the Great Migration—the era when Black folks fled the terror of the Jim Crow South and profoundly changed America’s cities. I wondered if she were alive today, how would she view the fruits of her battle? The anthology was an attempt to let the children and grandchildren of the Great Migration answer that question. Each contributor considers how race continues to shape their ability simply to enjoy public spaces. Because I had lived in Detroit for almost 30 years and had been a journalist there, I knew many gifted writers (both experienced and new) who I invited into the project. Detroit’s Wayne State University Press immediately embraced the proposal. Detroit artist Senghor Reid gave us permission to use his art on the cover. The result is Black Summers, a completely homegrown effort that took three years to develop and publish. Despite its central focus on Detroit, the collection reflects the common experiences of African Americans who fled to cities in the North and West to find sanctuary. What excites me most is the prospect of starting conversations among Blacks across the nation about how race continues to impact how they engage with the urban outdoors. I expect there to be as much discussion about racial barriers as there will be about the creative ways our people have insisted upon joy. What do you miss most about living in Detroit? What has the return to Virginia, your parents' homeplace, given you? I MISS EVERYTHING ABOUT DETROIT! It’s where I grew into adulthood, raised a family, and developed lifelong friendships. Folks know a lot about the city’s struggles, but they know far less about the artists, food scene, and history that permeates the city. It’s a great town and it has done a lot of work around creating inviting, inclusive outdoor spaces. I left Detroit ten years ago to care for my aging parents in Virginia. They both have passed, and I’m now raising my grandchildren in the home that my parents prepared for us. At 66, I’m amazed at how fate has given me this opportunity to come full circle. I love Virginia as much as I love Detroit, and being here has taken me inward in profound ways. The slower lifestyle, long summers, ancestral roots, and proximity to the ocean have fed me as a writer. I feel like I’m in the season of “off-loading” – thinking and writing about things that have dwelled inside me for decades. Your children’s book, Nothing Special, is inspired by your family and showcases that movement between Detroit and Virginia across generations. What literary choices did you make while writing for an audience of children? As someone who writes across many genres, did this project feel like it worked new or different creative muscles? During the Great Migration, my father, who was born and raised in rural Virginia, enlisted in the military instead of moving North. Despite 20 years of travel in the Air Force, there was never any question that “home” would always be Virginia for us. Even as I carved out a life in Detroit, we journeyed South every summer to maintain our connections. This is a story repeated by countless African Americans in Northern cities, and one that I wanted to honor in Nothing Special. The children’s book does not speak of the pain of separation that the migrating families experienced, nor of the sacrifices our ancestors made as they sought equal opportunity in the North. Instead, it only speaks to the permanence and value of the “home place,” no matter where we go. We were torn from our families and our land by terror, not by choice. We continue to observe the family reunion as both ritual and relief. Children will see Nothing Special as a multi-generational buddy book. Their parents (including those of other backgrounds who have migrated away from their origins) will recognize the historical underpinnings, and the unbreakable kinship ties that bind. As a journalist and flash writer, I gravitate to the short form. So, writing a children’s book was not a stretch for me in terms of structure. But children’s books require a close collaboration with the illustrator. In Nothing Special, fabric artist Bec Sloane hand-created each character and everything in the scenes, then photographed the work. It was a stunning experience to watch her bring my father to life again through art. We negotiated countless details, and decided which part of the story would be conveyed by the words, and which would be conveyed by the art. It was an unforgettable experience. As a founding board member of Cave Canem and a current member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective, can you speak to how you see the state of Black literary organizations and institutions today? What are your hopes for the future? Black writers changed the arc of my life: from the first time I read The Bluest Eye as a child, to breathing the air of poets with Cave Canem, to finding sustenance and sisterhood with Wintergreen. Each time that I was unsure about my worth, hesitant about my voice, or questioning my belonging, Black arms pulled me close and pushed me forward. The Black writing community continues to play that role in my life (and following their example, I try to play that role for other Black writers). But there’s much more at stake now. Sometimes, I worry that Black literary organizations will not survive the current socio-political climate. I forget that we are a network of necessity, and that we will double down on our commitment to Black voices, no matter what. I’m heartened that our literary organizations are having many joint conversations about strengthening our roots, expanding our missions, and ensuring our long-term viability. The collaboration between Torch Literary Arts and the Wintergreen Women Writers Collective to offer the “Welcome Table Talk” is one powerful example. My hope for the future is that these organizations and the writers they serve will emerge stronger than ever. Do you have a go-to karaoke song or a song that always gets you in the mood to dance? Hands down, “Groove is in the Heart,” by Dee-Lite feat. Bootsy Collins How can people support you right now? They can support me by supporting Black Summers: Invitations for community readings and college visits, posting about it on social media, including me on podcasts, and suggesting it for book clubs. Toward a longer view, being intentional about supporting Black authors and donating to organizations that sustain Black voices is mission critical. Name another Black woman writer people should know. Jean Alicia Elster has been out there for a long time writing great books for young readers. Her latest book, How It Happens, is a YA novel about the women in a Black family that moved from the South to Detroit. It deals with rape and colorism. It’s a great book. ### 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. Click here to support Torch Literary Arts.

Lolita Stewart-White is a poet, playwright, and filmmaker from Liberty City, Florida. She is a Pushcart nominee and winner of the Paris American Series Prize. Her collection, black frag/ments, was selected by poet Ashley M. Jones as the winner of Hub City Press’s BIPOC Poetry Reader Series Prize. Stewart-White’s work has been featured in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, Callaloo, and the African American Review. Her poem “Healing” was featured in the award-winning NAACP anthology This is the Honey, curated by New York Times best-selling author Kwame Alexander. It was also selected by Sonia Sanchez as a winner of the Boston Review’s annual poetry prize. Stewart-White is an alumnus of Miami City Theatre’s Homegrown Program, a playwriting development program that nurtures emerging BIPOC playwrights. She is a Cave Canem Fellows Fund Project Grantee for her play-in-verse, Liberty City Vignettes, currently in development. Stewart-White has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the South Florida Cultural Consortium, the Miami Light Project, and the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Her films have been exhibited at the Los Angeles Pan African Film Festival, the Seattle Black Film Festival, and the Miami Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA). Good Times (Strange Fruit Episode, 1976) Norman Lear has sent out a lynching invitation to the nation – sent it out on the cover of a crumpled TV Guide. The black father on Good Times must die. Die because Norman Lear says he must. The lynching takes place in a CBS studio. The lynching airs prime time on Tuesday night. I watch as if I’m at a wake – the linchpin in my heart loosened. Remember the last scene? How Florida Evans throws the punch bowl? Black mother shattered / black father gone / black family fragments / jagged glass on a project apartment floor. Damn Damn Damn ### 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. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Nimalah Baaith-Ducharme’s work has appeared at Poets.org (where she won the Harold Taylor Prize in 2019), Nighthawk Literature, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Of Rootwork, was a finalist in the 2025 Alta California Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Gunpowder Press and judged by Raina J. León. She has received support from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, earned her MFA from Emerson College, and is currently a PhD candidate at Texas Tech University. Fried Chicken Prison the name of your Thanksgiving sentence, to be held consecutively for the duration of our lives serving legs, wings, and thighs butter and oils again making the underlying rhythm by which we conduct our year cooking with butter even after Paula Deen was deemed racist cause we been doin’ this— When am I gonna get my show? Who don’t use butter? sizzling underneath the conversation of fried chicken prison // we’re fat on the best food fat, like phat, like Baby Phat, like beautiful fat thighs, stomach and chunky behind like bragging about your empty plate fat as you move for seconds // During that time and every other time, I ate memories of white rice and fried egg— Girls with long hair fighting at the bus stop— Cocoa Puffs squirming with wings and legs— Oops babies and ghetto twins— Corned beef and spam— Now you cook with white wine and prosciutto and we think charcuterie is a meal and you resent breakfast for dinner because you can’t show us how far you’ve moved from your mother yelling at her boyfriend to stop calling dinner poor people food and now we’re fat on the best food waiting for you to ask what’s for dinner knowing you’re going to cook whatever you want anyway ### 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. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Amanda Borquaye is a Ghanaian-American creative nonfiction writer from the American South. She writes from the interior of a youngest daughter in an immigrant family, using the lyrical essay as a way to wade through the fragility of belonging in a decaying empire. Her work embodies the necropolitical, exploring who is allowed to live and who must die in the context of immigrant identity. By day, she works in humanitarian response and international development. She is an alum of the McCormack Summer Workshop, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and was the 2026 Disquiet International Literary Prize winner in nonfiction. She is at work on a memoir exploring migration as a ghost story shaped by the specters of empire, colonialism, and the yearning of a life elsewhere. Her work has been featured in The Audacity, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. Get Ready, Room on Fire [Verse 1 - Tell us a story, I know you’re not boring] You’re listening to The Strokes on an iPod Nano during middle school band class. You feel a little bit special when you tell people you’re in band because it’s jazz ensemble, and every other school has a marching band. You like the chaos that jazz invites. You like how forgiving it can be. You’re frightened by sight reading, the expectation that you’ll be perfect and precise on your first try. You’re frightened but excited by improv, the assortment of notes you can string along however you please, how it’s scary not to know exactly where you’re going but comforting once the last note has rung out and it’s all okay. You chose the trombone, or rather it chose you. You got a sound out of it easily, to your relief. Your sister plays the saxophone, and you don’t want to be like her because you are so aware of how much you want to be like her. Your tuning note on the trombone is a B flat. Tuning requires pushing in the tuning slide if you are flat and pulling it outwards if you are sharp. Your teacher teaches you a silly way to remember this — sharp - shout - out, flat - fin - in. You’re used to blowing air through the brass bell 2.5 times before confirming it’s in tune. You’re listening to The Strokes on an iPod Nano because the teacher had an injury. Some risers fell on his head as he was setting up for a gig, and he’s a short man so you imagine they crumpled down on him with a loud crunch like a car going over a tin can. He’s been gone for several weeks, and I guess there are only so many substitute band teachers in Savannah, so they put you all in a small auditorium to watch The Temptations miniseries for the trillionth time. Your teacher is a white man who always says that white people stole jazz and sanitized it into something palatable called swing. And now he’s put you in an auditorium with a bunch of white kids to watch this very Black series about Motown. You remember all of the plot points. How the story starts out promising. Black boys racing across the screen with gleaming smiles chasing youth as if it were a lightning bug. You vacillate between which one you find the most handsome. You wonder what it would be like if there were more boys who looked like that at your school. You remember their big dreams and the big talent they each had to back it up. You remember how they serenade girls in fluffy skirts as they walk home and sneak out at night to make out with them in milk trucks, flirting with fatherhood in their cresting youth. You remember how boyish they are at the start, screaming in salon chairs while chemical relaxer sears their scalps until each kink of hair is smooth and straight, inviting a comb to pass through with ease. You’ll go and do the same to your hair in a few weeks as you have done since the age of 6, but you won’t be pleased by the end result like them. [Verse 2 - The room is on fire as she’s fixing her hair] You’ll hate how stringy your hair is, how now it never grows quite past your collar bones, how you’ll adopt deep side parts and Sperry boat shoes and Lilly Pulitzer dresses as armor. You won’t laugh like everyone else does when Otis and Al fan themselves wildly with newspapers as the chemicals spread across their scalps with ferocity, a forest fire determined to decimate. You won’t laugh because you recognize that pain. You won’t laugh because you recognize how sometimes Blackness can look like endurance, enduring unseen pains just to dance between invisibility and hypervisibility. You will think of Miss Angie, tall and skinny like her cigarettes she puffs on after slathering the perm on your hair. You will think about how you sit in that chair, squirming as stinging turns into burning, how you endure it so every last follicle can be straight and your mother can get her money’s worth — how even the signal to get it washed off is a cry for help, the wild waving of your two hands or a holler so Miss Angie can see or hear from outside and come rescue you. Most of all, you remember your favorite picture of yourself from when you were little, your Kindergarten graduation. How Miss Laurie, your teacher and swim coach and woman who let you read in the corner during nap time hugged you tightly, her arms covered by your soft, blown-out hair exploding underneath a white graduation cap, the hair not yet tainted by chemicals and the girl not yet tainted by a desire to be invisible. You recall yourself small, criss-crossed, between your mother’s thighs. Her arms raising high above your head with a wide-toothed comb and a hard-bristled brush, how this motion tugs at your scalp and how you cry. Your father comes in and says, “Why are you hurting my child?” which is to say she is our child, but she is my baby. Your exasperated mother looks at this man and the sheen on his bald head and explains she has to detangle your hair before she can twist it and put the little balls on the end. You are probably still crying. From then on, you will sit in the salon chair where your follicles will comply to chemicals. When you reach senior year of high school, you ask Miss Angie to cut off every last straight strand on your head. On the drive home, you wonder how many times Black parents have tried to hide their Black children from a world of pain but inadvertently welcomed the hurt inside instead. You like the series even though you’ve seen it too many times to watch it again. You like it until the plot of their lives becomes depressing. You watch these boys become men and how that destroys them, like aging is an automatic catalyst towards doom. You watch how David Ruffin gives the group hit after hit with his commanding and raspy voice. You watch how he becomes combative, can’t quit shoving coke up his nose. How this habit costs him his spot in the group and friends who care about him, but have their own futures and families to consider. There are the parts you really like, so you’ll somewhat pay attention while Julian Casablancas’ voice croons over a thudding bass line and determined drum fills. You like how his voice sounds sleepy amidst the urgency of the guitar, the bass, the drums. When your dad attends your jazz concerts, he is always drifting to sleep in the darkened auditorium, and one day you will empathize with him. One day, you will know what it’s like to desire rest as the world drones on around you. You like when they circle up and toss their hands in the center to shout “Temptations forever!” after they audition for Berry Gordy at Motown Records, and he really likes them. It makes you feel mature that already you know that nothing lasts forever, that people can get tangled up in drugs and deception, that death steals, that declarations made in youth rarely survive to adulthood. Your favorite song by The Temptations is “The Way You Do the Things You Do”, so you take out your earbuds for that part. Eddie Kendricks’ falsetto cradles into your ear while the rest of the vocal parts anchor the melody. You remember the choreography they do, how they dab imaginary perfume onto their necks when they sing, “And baby you smell so sweet / You know you could've been some perfume”. You remember how they struggled to get a hit before then, how the record label was perplexed at how all that talent couldn’t yield more hits. When they sing the demo, Berry Gordy asks a focus group if they would spend their last dollar on that record over a sandwich. Their hands shoot up in affirmation. You don’t think you like anything or anyone enough to spend your last dollar on it, but you wonder if you ever will. They take that song on the road, touring down south in high school gymnasiums. The screen brightens up with their red coats twisting and twirling in synch under the red of the Confederate flag hanging above them. The crowd stares back at them as cops part the white kids and the black kids down the middle like Moses parting the Red Sea. You don’t like when you have to watch the euphoric high of that performance come crashing down when a truck full of racists shoots at the boys and tells them to go back up north. Your sister has gone to college up north, and you’re always visiting her there, daydreaming of when you’ll be a college student too. You want to go wherever she goes. You remember when Blue and Otis are visiting Blue’s mom, and Blue goes to the kitchen to check on the ribs, but we don’t see him again. You remember that part because even though you’ve seen it so many times, it always makes you cry. Blue was your favorite, and bass singers never get the appreciation they deserve. Your friend J is the bass player in band. You sit together under the giant oak tree in the quad in between classes, Spanish moss sighing above you. He tells you another boy noogied him on the head, hard. Recoiled and looked at his reddened knuckles. Walked away, declaring that Black people’s hair is so rough and unpleasant. There’s another Black boy in your class on the football team. You ask if they won the away game. Someone tells you on the bus that a boy made a joke about how he didn’t want to sit next to no nigger. [Pre-Chorus - You’re in a strange part of our town] You know all of the plot points, so you’re listening to The Strokes on an iPod instead of watching. One earbud is in your left ear and the other in the ear of a white boy you’ll unfriend on Facebook sometime in college, when it’s 2017 and you’re up north and when you tell a homeless man you’re sorry, you don’t have any change, he spits at you and calls you a word and a word becomes a fist that steals the breath from your lungs even though you hardly had any from the cold New England night heaving your chest. You know you heard it, clearly, even though you’re listening to that alternative music you always listen to, according to your mom. Folks you grew up with are on Facebook, foaming at the mouth for that man to become President. You’ll love a boy for the first time, and after America decides that that man will in fact be president, he taps off a text to you as you walk back to your dorm holding photobooth strips of you and your friends from the campus election watch party at the student center. In one of the pictures, your best friend, Ilana, is flanked by a Hillary Clinton cardboard cutout you’ll see by the dumpster the next morning. You’ll never watch election results with other people again. Goodnight, my angel. Sleep well. Today saddens me very deeply. I know that a Donald Trump presidency will never hurt me. It doesn’t make me fear for my citizenship, enfranchisement, safety, or life. But there are so many people in this country who do justly have those fears, and my heart breaks for those people. As a black woman in this country, you have some of those feelings, and I am so, so sorry that this country has chosen a path of hatred that will only amplify them. I love you very, very much, and no matter what, I will always stand by your side. You’ll be impressed that a pre-med brain can write so emotionally and beautifully. You’ll think this is the most romantic string of words you’ll ever read. You think you’ll love him forever. You’d spend your last dollar on it. [Chorus - You’re not trying hard enough] You have a habit still of wanting your mom and dad as soon as anything goes wrong. You text your dad frantically. You ask why he chose to come to a country that hates him. He’ll respond immediately, reminding you he is proud of you, reminding you that racism is what stitches together the American flag and fascism is the frightening new frontier. You imagine him transporting himself back in time. He’ll remember being an army doctor, how nobody could see the white coat and just his disqualifying black skin. How his accent is exotic derogatory rather than exotic sexy. In the memory, he is a Major, a senior officer, and a Lieutenant, a junior officer, gives him a dirty glance as he walks into the operating room as the attending physician. Hierarchy doesn’t matter to him much, but he learns quickly that it does in this country and its institutions, that whether you like it or not, you are placed into tiers, and the audacity to not remain in yours is a grave offense. So he’s surprised when the Lieutenant, a white lady and the chief of the nurses, looks past the white coat and right to the black skin and says, “And you are?” You know that greeting people is a very Ghanaian thing to do. You know that anytime you walk into a space, you greet everyone on your way in and say goodbye on your way out, an acknowledgment that we are all inhabiting the same space at the same time, and how nice it is that we are doing that in a world as big as the one we all share. He begins to explain that he’s the attending physician, his response quickly turning into a curriculum vitae of why he is supposed to be there, but she stands in the way, still sizing him up even after he’s finished preambling his credentials to her. He realizes this is a burdensome place to be, one where you will think you have proven yourself only to have to prove yourself more. He brushes past her and begins to prepare the students, silently watching the standoff, for surgery. “I am the guy they unleash from Africa whenever Americans need to be taught how to do pelvic surgery.” He’ll remember how she felt embarrassed, which is a tier of feeling humiliated, which is how she made him feel. She’ll find him in the hallway, asking for his forgiveness and informing him she is not a racist. She does not offer any proof to bolster this claim. She does not feel the need to. He will feel like nothing. He will accept her apology because he has to because he has to keep working in this hospital, and he has to keep attending to pelvic surgeries, attending to rooms full of people who don’t believe he deserves to be there. You imagine he steps out of this memory when he attends to you, his youngest daughter, who is reeling with the reality that they live in a country filled with people who don’t believe they deserve to be there. He ends his text with a sentence that brands itself onto the side of your brain: No matter how hard you work and how high your achievements are, to the white supremacists, you are still nothing. [Verse 2 - Now every time that I look at myself / “I thought I told you this world is not for you”] You’re still in middle school, feeling like nothing in the gym locker room, and your friend will slick her yellow hair back and look you in the eye. She’ll tell you, “Obama only won because of gays and Blacks.” You won’t know how to respond or why that’s a bad thing, so you’ll shimmy into the dark green gym shorts your mother labeled with your name in Sharpie on the tag. One other girl will gasp and turn to her locker. You’ll stuff your pink paisley Vera Bradley duffel with your things and wait for all the girls to file out, for their laughter like lashes to reach the other side of the door. You’ll sit there rolling deodorant under your arms, waiting for tears to roll down your face. You’ll push inward because everything outside of you feels too sharp to touch. The second time Obama wins, you’ll still be too young to vote, but you’ll feel grown up because you’re a licensed driver. You’ll put a little car magnet that came in the mail after your dad made a donation to the campaign on the backside of the cherry red Land Rover. You’ll come back to the school parking lot one afternoon to notice it’s gone, silver little lines wiggling along your car door instead. Your mom will ask, “What’s that?" and you’ll shrug, wanting to say “it’s nothing” when it is obvious that it is something. You’ll mumble about “I guess the parking lot is getting tighter these days.” You’ll have your suspects, but you won’t confront them. The boy you’ll unfriend is tapping his thumb wildly to the bass part of Reptilia. It’s the intro, which is defined by the insistence of the bass strumming the B note. B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B like the song is about to burst. For now, the boy is nice, and you may even think of him as your friend. Three of your friends have had crushes on him, but to you, he’s just the boy you’re listening to The Strokes with, playing Reptilia over and over again until the bass and guitar and drums bounce their way into your brain forever. You decide you want to grow up and date a man like Julian Casablancas or Fabrizio Moretti. The bell rings, and the lights come up, and the red glow of the emergency exit sign dulls like the end of a lit cigarette. You watch the other kids shift their sliding backpack straps and shuffle onto the next class, and suddenly, you’ve become adults dismissed into the world with no bell. You are twenty-eight now, and your trombone hasn’t been touched in a decade. It is in your closet, in Georgia, under the shelf with the American Girl doll with skin like yours and plaits your mother’s hands used to make on your head before going to bed. You will visit home and open that closet, scared to touch it, unwilling to invite your past into the present. You are changing from the green line to the red line in Washington DC, and a man who is changing from the red line to the green line comes darting down the escalator to the platform, catching you in his arms as you exit the train and nearly collide. He catches you just above your elbows and holds you there, saying nothing, his two eyes trained on yours. You are reminded that you are a solid thing made of bones and flesh, not a bubble floating aimlessly before its inevitable burst. You want to tell him to hurry before the train door closes, but you say nothing. Others have walked past this scene you are frozen in. You feel like the two of you are in a film, something fast and fleeting that sears on a screen to an audience that cares or doesn’t. He lets go. He shakes his head in apology and smiles. The doors close with him inside as he waves to you. It is just you and the platform and the quiet. In the opening scene of The Temptations miniseries, young Otis is running. He is running to something, but it is implied that he is also running from something. Adult Otis narrates for his younger self: “I was seventeen and about to burst.” A busker at the Gallery Place metro stop puffs his cheeks out like a puffer fish, emptying his lungs into his trombone. Cold metal brought to life with warm breath. You want to feel the once familiar brain buzzing high that comes from willing brass to vibrate with sound, but you feel nothing. You stop for a while to watch, wondering where the notes will take him. You are twenty-eight and about to burst. ### 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. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Breena Clarke is the award-winning author for four novels, including her acclaimed debut novel River, Cross My Heart. She is a co-founder of The Hobart Festival of Women Writers. Breena Clarke is the author of four novels, most recently published, Alive Nearby, a gently ruminative, epistolary work that explores characters in Angels Make Their Hope Here, Clarke’s 2014 novel set in an imagined mixed-race community in 19th-century New Jersey. Breena Clarke's debut novel, River, Cross My Heart, was an October 1999 Oprah Book Club selection and was named by Publishers Weekly as one of the seven essential books about Washington, D.C. Her critically reviewed second novel, Stand The Storm, was named one of 100 Best for 2008 by The Washington Post. Her short fiction has appeared in Washington Post Magazine, Kweli Journal, Stonecoast Review, Nervous Breakdown, Mom/Egg review, The Drabble, Catapult, Solstice, and Now, The Hobart Festival of Women Writers online magazine. She is co-founder of The Hobart Festival of Women Writers, an annual three-day celebration of the work of diverse women writers. She has been a member of the fiction faculty of Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing at The University of Southern Maine. Breena Clarke is co-editor of NOW, an online journal of the Hobart Festival of Women Writers. She is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/breena.clarke, on Substack at https://breenaclarke.substack.com/. Find more at www.BreenaClarke.com. Dog Triptych Maisie’s Account: A dog witnesses the most destructive racial conflict in American history. Tulsa, Oklahoma 1921 May 31, the first night of the white people's rampage, a bottle of gasoline with a flaming rag crashed through our parlor window. We were in the kitchen and fortunate that all of us got out before the house was engulfed. We rushed out to the street, and nitroglycerin bombs were falling from the sky. We dodged about and hid beneath the dogwood tree nearby. Our home was on the second floor of Papa's undertaking business, The Samuel Bazemore Funeral Home. Like the other firebombed houses, our house was quickly consumed by flames because water lines to our neighborhood had gone dry. How? Why? We got nothing through our faucets, and our hoses were useless. Papa would not use the water in the rain barrel because he said that would only waste what little we had to drink. Oh, he was so clear-headed in a crisis! But his heart was broken at the devastation to his lovely funeral parlor and our home. We were not alone. Businesses up and down Greenwood Avenue and Archer Streets were set upon, riddled with bullets, and burned. Then, after the first night's attacks, the sheriffs came and took all the colored folks to "safe" detention. Papa and Mama and Harold and Alice were taken off in a truck. I followed them to the armory and was barred at the gate. Papa and Mama and Harold and Alice were confined for two full days. I saw the white mob. I saw what they did. The aromas of gunpowder, turpentine, nitroglycerin, sawdust, and human flesh permeated. A dense cloud of this malevolent amalgam sat above my head. Add to it the odor of their race hatred, and I could barely catch a clean, unencumbered breath. I sat on the periphery of the marauders and watched, listened as they descended upon Greenwood like a pack of wolves. As a dog, I understood them and understood they could not be stopped. Once a wolf pack has decided on a course of action, they do not arrest themselves for any reason of reason or compassion. I understood that I could not prevent them from carrying out their destruction. I could only witness. I'm very well-behaved and as clean as I can be expected to be. Mama has always regularly washed me with strong soap, and I have the lovely short, brindle coat typical of bitches who've been in Tulsa since the first people called it Tulsey Town. My line is long here about. I am here to watch and witness for Papa and Mama and Harold and Alice. When they were let go, Papa, Mama, Harold, and Alice came back to the place our home was. The enthusiasm with which I greeted them nearly caused my chest to explode, and I almost knocked Mama to the ground. I apologized profusely by licking her hand, wagging my tail, and allowing Harold and Alice to pounce on me and hug my neck. They had been worried about me! The Samuel Bazemore Funeral Home—our home—was nothing but ashes. Our furniture was gone or broken up and left in a pile. They couldn't haul off the bed that Mama and Papa slept in, so the looters hacked it to splinters. Papa took Mama into his arms and whispered to her that we children would lose all hope if she started bawling. She must be brave. Oh, that was all she needed to hear for Mama is very brave. She picked up a piece of the bedstead and used it to poke at piles of debris to see what we could salvage. The soot and ashes of our life covered Mama and Papa and Harold and Alice from head to toe. I could not see myself, but I, too, felt I was covered with what had once been our comfortable, happy home. Why had they burnt us out? We had never harmed anyone. Papa was an exemplary businessman. He was kind and considerate of folks in need. Mama was beautiful and dignified and kind, kind, so kind. Why would anyone want to harm them, their children, their home? A Few Whiles A dog waits at home for five years. Chicago, Illinois 1960 Where is the elegy for the dog named Signal who waited at home in Chicago, in a backyard in a working-class neighborhood, for the return of a boy from a Mississippi vacation? He went to spend some summer weeks with his cousins. We didn't want him to go – me and Mamie Mommy. But he was head-up and happy and excited to go on a trip for fun with his cousins. Summer vacation is our time. We long for it all through the long, tedious months at McCosh Elementary School. We earn our summer frolics because we are good, we behave, we do what Mamie Mommy tells us. We long to be hot and sticky with popsicle drippings. He promised we'll have summer when he's back. He put his arms about my neck and put his cheek to my ruff. He promised. Waiting at the fence, on the porch. Waiting is most of that dog's life if truth be told. There is much running and romping and digging and all. But waiting for that boy is the largest part of it. Longing. Dog longing is different. It's maybe less sorrowful without the realization, the certainty, that the boy will not return. Poor exhausted fool animal to wait and grieve and wait beside the back gate for five years after the summer that boy didn't come back. A couple of times she considered putting the animal down to ease the misery of its waiting. Surely, it is more kind to ease it away from that fence, those sticks and balls and caps and jackets and sneakers and cat's-eye marbles, and those beloved sneakers of his. Couldn't do that. Whispered in its ears; hugged its thick neck. To touch that animal's head, to smell him, to be tugged down the street with him, was to have a fleeting feel of that boy. Let him wait if that's what he wants. She left him to it. My tender, sweetheart boy child. He was a tender aged child still. He wasn't a man. "It would appear that the state of Mississippi has decided to maintain white supremacy by murdering children." —Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP Sleep is fraught for a faithful dog waiting for his boy. Short naps, circulating the yard, waiting at the gate, coming to greet Mamie Mommy home from work, home from church. Where is my boy? Summer goes, Autumn comes. Winter. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter. Spring. Summer again and again. Signal: Why doesn't he come home? Bobsey: The crackers who tied his body to a seventy-five-pound cotton gin fan know. They know that boy won't be home and they know why. Moses Wright's dog, Bobsey, knew what he didn't know. Bobsey figured it. Mr. Moses was scared for himself. His ass was on fire with scared. Who could blame him? Maybe he figured the milk of human kindness would keep them from killing a child. Bobsey knew better. Bobsey smelled him that last time. And Boy's life and limb and luster was the very last thing Bobsey smelled. Bobsey understood it all. For when Bobsey ran at the man's leg to save the boy, to slow the vicious acts, a kick came, and then a bullet. Bobsey's life oozed onto the ground. Bobsey'd set her essentials into this man's leg, the fat part of his calf, and he had to shoot her to take her off. * Mr. Moses and 'em cried, "Bobsey, come off!" They tried to call Bobsey off like they'd call her off a possum. Bobsey ignored 'em. The Testimony of Bobsey: Let me explain it this way. I smelt it all. I smelt the entire outcome. Mr. Moses and 'em can only imagine, but I smelt it. They're free to hope for the best. But I smelled each and every murderous intention in the base souls of the crackers that came for Boy that night. Every muscle in me acted with the instinct to protect Boy from this horror. I put myself between Boy and 'em killers because I knew the odor of their purpose. I did what I was able before I died. I was in heaven forthwith. And I witnessed the ascension of Boy's magnificent, unblemished soul a short time later. Frisky, callow, and still a child. *Subsequent accounts of the events of August 24, 1955, do not include the fact that Roy Bryant sustained a dog bite on that night. Mike, Friend of The Famous A dog befriends a great Civil Rights leader. Washington, D.C. 1974 They say our line has been spoilt by empathy. We are not as aggressive, vicious, driven to subdue on command, or as dogged as others of our breed. We began as offspring of the Great Black and Tan Coonhound, who is said to have been sired by Hellhound, a dog belonging on the plantation at Swanigan's Neck, North Carolina, and a bitch named Black, brought to the Americas on board a slaver from the African coast as a pup. The Great Black and Tan was, for many years, the companion of Caleb Bledsoe, a slave trader and driver whose plantation burned to the ground in 1853. In Black's line of dogs, the bitches are gentle though brave and staunch. And this admixture of compassion is the very attribute that distinguishes our line. Really, our line is wanted for our looks. We are beautiful and imposing. In my youth, I stood tall, had a broad, deep chest, a graceful and powerful line of body, and a lovely black coat with tan saddles. I still have a massive head with erect ears, a long snout, and a mouth full of the most perfect essentials as would ever clamp upon a limb of bone, meat, and gristle. I could do real damage to fleeing flesh. But my heart is hardly ever in the mood. In my working days, I followed commands without question, but I labored to be keen. Keenness for a task, a pursuit is not a learned thing but an inheritance. Most often, my imposing appearance was seen as ferocity, and miscreants froze in fear of me. I was required simply to hold their attention, help the police officer to take them into custody. My complete undoing came when we were urged to step up our ferocity, when we were called to control groups of marching Negro protestors. King Chester, the so-called alpha dog at the Birmingham canine corps, likewise descended from Hellhound, berated me for gentleness. He was always eager for blood on his muzzle and the opportunity to invest his essentials in the flank or backside of a troublemaker. He was vicious and had risen to prominence because he was ruthless. King Chester distinguished himself. He is famously depicted lunging and biting Walter Gadson, a student at Parker High School in Birmingham, Alabama. And he is captured ripping the clothes off Harry Shambry, another Birmingham man who was protesting the unfair treatment of black people in 1963. Photographs of King Chester with his essentials fully deployed appeared in newspapers and magazines worldwide. The New York Times, The New York Daily News, as well as, in The Clarion, Time Magazine, Life Magazine. The nation was horrified at the Birmingham police. But King Chester was a celebrity in some circles. I am seen in this photo, too, though not lunging and biting. I am sitting, watching. I can only say that I must have been pondering our actions, questioning our orders. And then the photograph of me being bussed and petted in the back of a police car by The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. surfaced. I assure you there were no kind words for me. My name became disparaged instantly. "Don't be a Mike," they warned the other dogs. Some solace came several months later when The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. answered his critics and clarified his intentions and his beliefs in "Letter From A Birmingham Jail," which was printed into pamphlets and distributed throughout Birmingham, the rest of the south, and in cities nationwide. My jailers grabbed a pile of mimeographed copies of the letter that they'd ripped from the hands of protestors, and they lined my cage with them. I was compelled to pee and shit upon these papers, upon the words of my friend, The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But I read his words first, and I was buoyed by them. " . . . I am in Birmingham because injustice is here." I was stripped of my rank and pension after this picture became widely distributed. It was seen by some as a testament to The Reverend Dr.'s goodness, his likeness to Christ, and that my evil was thwarted by him. I was turned out by the sheriff's department to fend for myself. "Go down to niggertown," they said as I slunk away from the Birmingham canine jail. I foraged to get along. I was thrilled when the Reverend Dr. was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year. I moaned with abject grief when I learned of the bombing at The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963. I began to question the humanity of the people I had heretofore worked on behalf of. That the perpetrators were known to the police, that they felt they could act with impunity, that they snuffed out the lives of four girls, Addie Mae, Carol Denise, Cynthia, and Carole, that the aroma of the girls’ singed hair still wafted about when I approached the scene, was to me an abomination. Though noticeably thinner, I was still formidable. Onlookers parted and I was allowed to come close to the devastated church. I proceeded on my belly, moving along the ground, but I soon retreated. I do not want to reflect upon all that I smelled, all that was lost. By 1965 I had made my way to Selma, Alabama. I was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge far at the back of the marchers, behind the Great Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and his wife as the protestors began to march toward Montgomery. I was so sickened at the sight of King Alpha and the others with their teeth bared, with hellfire in their eyes, poised, willing, and able to tear the Reverend Dr. and all the other marchers for Freedom to shreds, that I peed and shat uncontrollably at the entrance to the bridge. I was unable to regain control of myself. I ran off in panic as the marchers were set upon viciously by the police and the dogs. How many of us have said that we knew our dear friend The Reverend Dr. would not live a long life? Yet I feel I can say that I did know even as far back as the day I first smelled him in the back of the police car. I have had a presentiment of his horrible death and I have mourned him well before he was shot. My heart felt like lead after April 4, 1968. Curious about the identity of the dog photographed with Dr. King in the back of the police car, Nicolas Von Hoffman, the heroic journalist for The Washington Post who was covering the Civil Rights Movement, sought me out and rescued me from grief and privation. He brought me to Washington, D.C. He wrote a delightful human and dog interest article about me and Dr. King. He wrote of how shabbily I was treated by the Birmingham Police Department and that I was, in fact, without a home. He gave me into the care of a Howard University student named Ifeoma, who works at The Post as a Dictaphone typist. Ifeoma had spoken up to say that her home would always be open to such a heroic dog. Ifeoma had been known as Edna Luise Clarke previously to the African awareness movements of the sixties and seventies. She changed her hairdo—she now wears a pretty Afro bush like Angela Davis—and her name in 1971 and is now known as Ifeoma L. Clarke. I have resided with my beloved Ifeoma for four years. I am occasionally intimate with a brindle bitch named Tammy and am known in activists' circles as Mike, the dog who befriended The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Breena Clarke and Jae Nichelle on March 29, 2026. “Dog Triptych” offers us an atypical perspective on key civil rights events. Can you speak to what led you to tell these stories through canine voices? Well, I am, first and foremost, a lover of dogs. The idea began as a joke. My husband and I joked that Sacajawea may have had a dog named Fluffy on her trip west with Lewis and Clark. From there, I imagined other historical events that may have had canine witnesses. I began to explore the fact that canines have accompanied most of the meaningful encounters in American History. And perhaps most importantly, canines have been active participants in historical events such as the enslavement of kidnapped African people and the subjugation of indigenous people. The most notable aspect of the special relationship between humans and canines is the eyes. They can return our gaze, look back at us with what seems to be understanding. We have had great success with training them to do our bidding. We’ve used them in many capacities. They’ve been hunters, trackers, assassins, guards, intimidators, and loving domestic companions. We are so self-referential and so eager to bridge the gap of understanding with these special creatures that we imagine they understand and respond to us. And if they have understanding – or seem to – then I can explore the idea that they also have a deeply meaningful perspective on what they’ve been made a part of. We look at them, and they look back. We see ourselves as another creature sees us. It’s powerful. We don’t have this relationship with any other animal. It’s about us humans wanting the communication and them wanting to please us. Also, many people find dogs fascinating. They are an easy hook for a story. We associate them with comfort and fun and with noble concepts of loyalty, bravery, childhood innocence, and the pleasures of tactile experience. The use of a dog as narrator is my idea of a good way to make my readers thirsty for the tale. In the first section, the dog Masie says, “I understood that I could not prevent them from carrying out their destruction. I could only witness.” Some people say that witnessing is the role of the writer. What is your relationship to ‘witnessing’ in your work? Does it feel like a foundational part of your job? Indeed, I do feel the role of witness is fundamental to the writer’s job. I think that, essentially, writing is a job. I chose to designate our profession as a “job” so that we don’t get distracted by higher, more lofty ideas about art. We writers are journeymen(journeypersons). Specifically, we look at and experience the world and make a record. We document. I suppose it began as a way not to forget an individual who’d died. This sets up the infrastructure of witness. This is fundamental to my work because I feel it’s necessary to put down an account that is different from the mainstream historical record, very specifically an African American perspective. I chose fictional accounts of historical facts because I enjoy imagining the lives of people who are underrecognized. I can give these people/characters everything that historical America wants to deny them. There’s a wealth of material in there. This feels very important to me, like my niche. Developing these stories feels like something I must do. Fiction is an important device for historical perspective since it lures the reader into the story by hooking their attention with a beguiling tale. I like to say: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. The fiction writer’s job is to make the reader thirsty. Then you don’t have to make them drink. Your newest book, Alive Nearby, further develops characters from your previous books. What was it like to dive back into these characters long after you first dreamed them up? Or had they never left you? I like that “dreamed up” phrase. That is how I feel it happens – dreams. It was fulfilling to return to those characters, and you are right to suggest that they are still with me. Alive Nearby allowed me to look at the residents of Russell’s Knob a bit differently and to expand their lives. I chose to use the epistolary novel format so that I could allow my protagonist to communicate across the life/death divide. There is also an element of this in my dog stories. I am trying to create a conduit for communication across an interspecies platform. Though I have not conducted much genealogical research of my own, I am fascinated by family interconnectedness. Exploring the lineages of the people of Russell’s Knob allows me to speak to the white supremacist idea that African Americans have little or no knowledge of their family. The cruel policies, covenants, traditions, and practices that kept African Americans from realizing potential and even remaining together in family communities are stunning in their persistence into the 21st century. What is surprising you most about your writing these days? That I am still doing it. I’ve recently celebrated my seventy-fifth birthday. The great thing for writers is that advancing age need not affect your ability to continue writing. And, I am happy to note, my maturing brain has layers of insight that were not available to me when I was younger. Now I’m more comfortable with what I can accomplish. I no longer feel the need to measure myself against other people. Longevity is a double-edged sword. I feel privileged to have survived and thrived for so long, but I mourn the passing of others. So, I suppose that recreating them in my mind and my fiction gives them flesh again and gives me comfort. I also feel an imperative to record twists and turns of language and customs that might pass away if not embedded in a novel or story. My sister, Cheryl Clarke, my play-sister, Esther Cohen, and I are contributing to and editing an upcoming anthology of writing by Crones, i.e. women writers over the age of sixty-five. This anthology will contain great work by some wonderful writers. Our work will include witnessing, as well as imagining. You have a very beautiful blog. In it, you mention that you learned to swim at age 49, and it became very important to you. What do you enjoy most about being in water? My first novel, River, Cross My Heart, is my mother’s coming-of-age story. She was a girl who learned to swim as a child when many young African Americans did not. Segregation kept most Black people out of municipal pools. My mother was taught by Charles R. Drew, who was the first African American administrator of a public pool in Washington, D.C. He was, as you know, an outstanding physician who went on to do pioneering work in the development of blood plasma. When I was a young girl, we were discouraged (by my mother) from pursuing swimming because we pressed our hair. Straight hair was mandatory for African American girls in that era. I came of age when Angela Davis famously wore an Afro, so I went natural when I got to Howard University. After writing River, Cross My Heart, I was asked to do a series of talks on the importance of learning to swim for city high schoolers. As compensation, I was given one-on-one swimming lessons at Asphalt Green in New York City. It was a transformative experience. I learned different things about my body: that I am strong, that I can see without my glasses, that floating is easy and sublime, that body size and definition are immaterial in the water, and that my body can accomplish things my mind thinks are not possible. I also learned that much of what I’d written about the experience of swimming was accurate. Since learning to swim, I’ve ruminated about my writing in my neighborhood, municipal pool, and I’ve become part of a community of women who attend a twice-weekly aqua aerobics class. In a 2016 interview, you said that one thing that helps you as a historical fiction writer is “the realization that even verifiable facts are open to interpretation, that many historical accounts are fiction-fied.” When did this realization first hit you? As I undertook research for my novel, Stand The Storm, which is set in Civil War-era Washington, D.C., I quickly saw there was a paucity of accounts by African Americans, and even fewer from African American women. As I read, I began to realize that historical accounts were, by and large, a matter of perspective. If you’re the man atop the horse viewing the rest of humanity from a lofty position, then you will see what is available from your perspective. If you are trudging down a row with your head focused on the ground in front of you, you will see things differently. Generally, the person at the top of the hierarchy gets to call the shots. “The higher the monkey climbs, though, the more he shows his behind.” When the downtrodden get a view and a voice, they very often expose a lot that has been hidden heretofore. What is one of the most memorable moments you’ve experienced at the Hobart Festival of Women Writers, a festival you’ve co-run since 2013? We’ve had many outstanding and important writers at the Festival since 2013. And I’m proud to say, we’re the only women’s writers’ festival east of the Mississippi. The most memorable Festival would have to be our first year. We’d conceived the idea of inviting women we knew and/or had become aware of who’d published work and who, we felt, were underrecognized. We invited them, but weren’t sure they’d really make it. They did, and they were fabulous. The most exciting aspect was the camaraderie. Several collaborations have emerged, as well as lifelong friendships. How can people support you right now? They can support the Hobart Festival of Women Writers at our GoFundMe campaign. The administration of HFWW is an all-volunteer operation. However, we’ve always offered a modest honorarium to all participating writers at the Festival. This means a lot to us because women writers don’t always get the support they deserve. I’d be thrilled to welcome new subscribers to my Substack blog at https://breenaclarke.substack.com/ Check out my books at http://www.breenaclarke.com/ Name another Black woman writer people should know. It is difficult to choose one. I will suggest two names: Alexis DeVeaux, novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, and thinker. Hers is truly innovative work. Check out her most recent novel, “Yabo.” Also, I name Cheryl Clarke, poet, essayist, teacher, and activist writer. Cheryl is my sister, and I have been nurtured and educated by her since always. She has been the most important influence on my life and writing. And she’s a hellified and well-recognized poet. ### 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. Click here to support Torch Literary Arts.