Elizabeth Acevedo was the 2022 Young People’s Poet Laureate and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Poet X. Elizabeth Acevedo was the 2022 Young People’s Poet Laureate and the New York Times-bestselling author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, the Carnegie Medal, the Boston Globe–Horn Book Award, and the Walter Award. She is also the author of With the Fire on High—which was named a best book of the year by the New York Public Library, NPR, Publishers Weekly, and School Library Journal—and Clap When You Land, which was a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor book and a Kirkus finalist. Her next book, Anger Is Only a Shadow, was released on September 15, 2026. She holds a BA in Performing Arts from The George Washington University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo has been a fellow of Cave Canem, Cantomundo, and a participant in the Callaloo Writer’s Workshops. She is a National Poetry Slam Champion and resides in Washington, DC, with her family. HEIRESS After Firelei Baez’s given the ground (the fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it, 2017) adorned in incarnadine headdress / her mouth is a blank slate, but is not a comb / a mouth full of teeth? / blades hidden in her tignon / the same needle / that threaded her headdress pierced her ear / azabache dangles feathers from an ear lobe / the fist as blessing, the fist as ancestor / woman with cosmos gas / tatted on her shoulder, and throat, bright as magic / that does not require tonguing / right cheekbone, starred and puce / she is grandmother of the turtled-shell forehead / and framed in unpainted porcelain /she spawns a legion of heiresses we count ourselves one, and one, and one MAGNALIA In the neonatal care unit the slippers the nurses gave me scritch the linoleum with every step I am the wound of me gauze-less stitches need to breathe for the first few days I do not know the shape of my son’s nose distorted by the nasal cannula I learn a lot of words I learn all the human systems that need to lockstep in order for a babe to breathe tomorrow momma is going to weep, it is going to all hit her the head doctor tells Shakir in the morning when the unrequested breakfast tray arrives an everything bagel sliced on its side I count the smallness of each poppyseed stuck in the bread sesame seeds like slivers of nail beds bright under an incubator’s light SELF PORTRAIT AS LILITH some days you seem so disappointed, love but you knew what it was. i am your dread wife. you will not throw me out of eden i walk myself to the door. o! there is no snake i plant the tree. i pluck the apple i bite. the pomegranate the passion fruit whatever the fuck. i am feast unto myself. in this wilderness the feral things name me. & i was raised to one day wash my husband’s feet at night. of course i molted made myself a woman who unmakes home. refused to be whittled to a fine point but you like me piercing. beloved i will not only writhe when coming. my vow: break through every shell fully impossible. your vow: lap every slick of the yolk. THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Elizabeth Acevedo and Jae Nichelle on August 27, 2026. These poems are incredible; thank you so much for sharing them. Can you speak to the moments that birthed “Heiress”? What was your first reaction entering Firelei Baez’s exhibit? I was a couple of months postpartum when the National Gallery of Art had an exhibit titled Afro-Atlantic Histories. Her piece “given the ground (the fact that it amazes me does not mean I relinquish it, 2017)” took up almost an entire wall. There was a bench placed in front of it, and probably on three separate occasions I visited that piece and just sat with it. I was moved by the details, the headwrap, the comb, the galaxy with fuchsia pop painted onto the skin, the missing mouth–the mouth I imagined. Something in my womb-wound body wanted to commune with her. That final image of “Magnalia” is so evocative. At what point in the drafting process of this poem did you know you would end here? Okay, I just realized that all these poems are tinged with my postpartum experience! I tried to put language to those early days of having my son, and him needing to be in the NICU. Childbirth is so, so huge, and the baby is so, so small. I would stick my hand in through the bassinet hole on the side, and let him wrap his tiny fist around my finger. You know, their nails aren't hardened when they’re first born. The nails are soft, peelable, smaller than a grain of rice. Which is to say, I had no idea that the final image would be the final image. I didn’t know this would be a poem. I was trying to language the vastness and the small gestures; what fed me and allowed me to feed him. The splitting, splitness, of practicing motherhood in those early days. What was different for you about the process of writing your new book, Anger is Only a Shadow, from your previous books? What did you have to learn before you could write it? I had to learn a different relationship to time. Both the time it took to process my brother’s illness, which this novel pulls from, and the time it took to revise, and revise, and revise again. To surrender myself without impatience to the language. I used to say I had to write fast enough to outrace my anxiety. But with this novel I had to write slow, invite my anxiety to sit and rest, and not bother me until I was done. I also had to try and figure out the prose poem. How does one balance narrative and language and the trappings of the sentence? In a 2020 Oprah Daily Interview, you mentioned wanting to be “thoughtful about pushing against the expectations” when it came to your second book. Is that still something you consider when drafting? How much do you consider your audience and readers when thinking about what to do next? Or is that too much of a distraction? Nah. I follow the ideas, the language, the urgency of a story pulsating beneath my skin and itching for me to write it. I think that what makes an artist and audience relationship special is that the artist creates from a place of what thrills and haunts them, and then an audience that didn’t even know they wanted to be thrilled and haunted is moved by the offering. I’d love to know: What was the most memorable poetry slam you ever attended? What do you wish you’d known at the time? The Women of the World Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas, 2014 was really special. I hadn’t competed individually as an adult, and it brought me into the community of slam in a way that was really meaningful. So many incredible writers and thinkers! I don’t think I broke the top twenty-five that year, but I learned a lot about myself and about how spoken word in that space had grown from when I’d been a young person. How incredible to be surrounded by so many competitive and creative women! You said in a LitHub interview that you love the cooking show Chopped. Do you think you could beat your culinary-trained character Emoni in a Chopped competition? Out of all the characters you’ve written, who would place second and third? Ha! This is such a fun question! I think Emoni would kick my ass if she was able to keep things timed tightly. I’ve been preparing to be on Chopped my whole life, though. I know exactly what I would make for the entree and dessert regardless of what ingredients I’m given–so I’m ready! I would say that my girl Yadi from Family Lore is an incredible vegan chef and would place second, and Tía from Clap When You Land would probably take third if she’s able to pull off a sancocho with the basket ingredients. What in D.C. keeps you inspired? I love the skyline here. How low it is. I have so much sky. I love the water–the Tidal Basin, the Potomac, and the Anacostia River. I love the museums and that they are free and that they welcome us. I love the metro, the fashion; D.C. has a relationship to color and structure that’s unlike anywhere else. How can people support you right now? Order Anger is Only a Shadow! Name another Black woman writer people should know. Eve Ewing. Amber McBride. Naima Coster. ### 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.

Sheree L. Ross is an award winning screenwriter and director, born in the Midwest, with deep southern roots. She is Black, female, queer…and her stories often reflect the strong, flawed nature of Black southern queer folx, whether through action, drama, mystery or comedy. Sheree was one of the co-writer's for the Audible narrative drama, Loops, starring Vivica A. Fox, produced by Migrante Media. Her romantic comedy Accidental Hearts won the Austin Short Film Festival and was a quarter-finalist for The Page International Awards. Her original pilot Kingdom, was a Second Round finalist at the Austin Film Festival and her action adventure feature Dr. Frankenstein: The Black Diamond of Bamileke, was a quarter-finalist for Fresh Voices Screenwriting Contest. Sheree has also written three metaphysical books, and is the founder of the popular social media platform Women Filmmakers of Color @womenfilmofcolr. Her most recent work, a play, Two Million Years of Rain, was a semifinalist in The Austin Playhouse’s 2026 Festival of New Texas Plays. TWO MILLION YEARS OF RAIN THE MAIN CHARACTERS Breanna, 38 - Desperate to prove her worth. Angel, 34 - Very ambitious and unconcerned with the past. THE FRIENDS Jas, 38 - Along for the ride, unless she feels ignored. Imani, 38 - Mothering to almost smothering. Makena, 38 - Codependent to her wife, and her friends. Karma, 38 - Life of the party, clueless to the impact of her actions. THE STRANGER Octavia Smith, 60's - Famous author. Sometimes oracle. THE STORM The beginning of the next two million years of non-stop rain, though no one knows that yet. It is relentless and is heard throughout. It creates tension and is unsettling as it does its best to blow down the walls of this house and its occupants. ACT ONE A NOTE: A video display: BREANNA and ANGEL on their social media account, The Happily Married Lezzies, with five million followers. The video shows how happy they are as a couple, their glamorous travels, enviable brand campaigns, and their life at home. This will run until the curtain rises to... SCENE ONE A BANG of thunder, flashes of lightning, and rain coming down in buckets. Breanna struggles to wrestle out an oversized suitcase from the trunk. Angel impatiently looks on, holding an umbrella. Eventually... ANGEL (over the loudness of the storm) Move. Let me try! Breanna does not move, so now the both of them are trying. ANGEL (CONT'D) (frustrated) Forget it! Angel slams the trunk shut and exits the stage opposite Breanna. SCENE TWO A gust of wind enters with Angel, Breanna is not far behind. They work together to shut the door, then immediately start to strip, moving towards the kitchen. Angel holds on to her clothes as she disrobes, Breanna drops her wet clothes where they lay. ANGEL (picking up behind Breanna) Not on our new teak floors! SCENE THREE They enter the kitchen. The storm in here seems louder and even more menacing. Angel puts on the kettle, then goes offstage. She returns with fresh towels. They wrap in the towels as Angel pours them both cups of tea. ANGEL (sipping tea) You okay? BREANNA (off somewhere in your mind) Oh, sorry. Yeah. I'm just...exhausted. ANGEL Your flight was delayed... BREANNA ...five hours. ANGEL I'm just happy you're home. (still probing) I missed you. Did you get our agent's schedule? BREANNA (taking a sip) Yes. ANGEL You sure you're okay? BREANNA It's late. ANGEL (annoyed) It's 7:30. We don't go to bed mad. What's got into you? Work? BREANNA No... ANGEL (alarmed) Is your mom okay? BREANNA Oh, she's fine. ANGEL Okay, I'm all out of guesses. Breanna hesitates then moves to the other side of the island, putting it between them. ANGEL (CONT'D) Ooo...it must be serious. BREANNA Um. Karma told me something. ANGEL Oh? BREANNA About a little secret of yours. ANGEL Okay? BREANNA A secret that could ruin everything we've worked so hard to create. ANGEL Tell me! BREANNA She says you were sleeping with your ex the whole year we were engaged. ANGEL (hiding relief) Oh. A huge clap of thunder scares them both. BREANNA Oh? That's all you have to say? ANGEL I never lied to you about it...directly. BREANNA So, you lied indirectly...for years. ANGEL You and I got married. I stopped sleeping with her. Done. What difference does it make, now? BREANNA What difference does it make, now? We've built an entire empire on us being “The Happily Married Lezzies". You don't think that little revelation isn't important? ANGEL We weren't even married. BREANNA Yeah, but sleeping with your ex the whole time we were making money off of our "perfect engagement" isn't great. ANGEL People won't care. BREANNA I care! Angel heads off stage to the perceived laundry room. You hear her starting the dryer. BREANNA (CONT'D) (shouts after Angel so she can hear) Brand partners care! You slept with somebody you swore broke your heart! Was it worth possibly breaking mine? ANGEL (O.S.) That! I didn't want to hurt you. BREANNA Come on, Angel, be serious. ANGEL (O.S.) It happened. I regretted it. BREANNA (getting angry) Regretted it? Angel returns to the kitchen. ANGEL Regret it. (pause) If I had told you...it would have hurt in the moment. But you knew how much I loved you...love you. Would it have really made a difference? BREANNA Of course. I could have processed it. We could have run some kind of PR around it. ANGEL Do you ever think about anything without a business angle? (annoyed) Process....PR... BREANNA It's how we make our living. ANGEL But it's not. We both have other businesses. BREANNA (on reflection) It's how we've made our lives. Neither of them knows what to say to that. ANGEL You and Jas were sleeping together while we were engaged. BREANNA But you knew that. ANGEL You didn't try to PR that... BREANNA Hmmm. Why'd you do it? ANGEL (enough) I don't know. BREANNA By the way, it's called ethical non-monogamy. ANGEL What is? BREANNA What we agreed to be, before we got married...it's called ethical...non-monogamy. ANGEL (sarcastic) Sooo sexy. BREANNA Open communication...consent by parties...not lying by omission. Angel pours more tea and goes into the living room. She wraps herself in a blanket, clearly frustrated. Breanna follows. SCENE FOUR BREANNA It may be in the past, but for now it's making me really upset. There is something about this night...something in our Universe has been disturbed. ANGEL Well, that's ominous. BREANNA And this storm isn't helping. What is that Shakespeare saying? "By the pricking of my thumb, something wicked this way comes." There is a big BANG of thunder and the lights flicker. ANGEL Stop it. You're scaring me. BREANNA How did she know, anyway? ANGEL Who? BREANNA Karma. ANGEL I really don't remember. Best guess, since she is your best friend, maybe I needed some advice. BREANNA Some best friend. ANGEL Well. You didn't marry Miss Perfect. You married me. BREANNA (mellowing) I did. ANGEL And I didn't marry Miss Perfect, either... BREANNA My father would agree with you on that. ANGEL Please stop blaming him for everything that disappoints you in your life. It's not a good look. Who cares how we got here. (sassy) We're here, baby! BREANNA I need a drink. You want one? ANGEL Sure. Breanna pours them a stiff drink from the bar cart. Angel joins her. ANGEL (CONT'D) Remember our trip to Italy? BREANNA I thought you didn't dwell in the past. ANGEL I thought you'd enjoy this stumble back in time. BREANNA (holding up your glass) Cheers! They clink glasses together, standing close, and take a drink. ANGEL We had a glorious time. BREANNA It was paid for in full by Virgin Airlines as part of a promotional. And I think we got 100,000 new followers from that trip. ANGEL We did look amazing in that campaign. There is sexual tension growing between them. BREANNA We did. ANGEL There was that one night, we had been dressed by Louis Vuitton, given box seats to La Boheme at La Scala. Then we had chef's table seating at Seta. BREANNA (happily remembering) And had Michelin Star Italian decadence. Mmmm... ANGEL After, we decided to ditch the photo crew... BREANNA We slipped into this bar. ANGEL I can't even remember the name. BREANNA It was perfectly dark and seedy. ANGEL Yes. I said to you, ''drinks are on me!” BREANNA And drink we did. ANGEL Whew. Yes. Anyway, I got out my purse, looked inside...and...no wallet. BREANNA Noooo...wallet. They stay close but the temperature has cooled a bit between them. ANGEL I thought it had been stolen. BREANNA I remember how upset you were. ANGEL You paid, graciously. BREANNA I did. ANGEL Here I was trying to do something special for my beloved, who treats me like the queen that I am, and I had no money to pay for it. BREANNA I remember. ANGEL So after you paid, the photo crew caught up with us but we begged off. We wanted to get back to the hotel and file a police report. When we entered our hotel room...there...on the bed, was...my wallet. BREANNA You had changed purses and forgotten to take it. They stand apart. A different tension surrounds them. ANGEL I had changed my purse. I laughed...as much out of relief as anything. And I said, let's go down to the bar...drinks on me...for real this time. And you said... BREANNA I have a headache. Go without me. ANGEL Yes, you did. BREANNA I did have a headache. ANGEL And I...went...without you. Had a wonderful time. Very cute girl at the bar... BREANNA I remember. The photo crew remembers, too. It cost us a pretty penny to spin those photos. ANGEL But she was so cute and quite delicious. (pause) It was petty. I see that now. BREANNA It's just how you communicate when you get upset. You turn your affections to someone else. ANGEL You say that in the present tense? BREANNA If the shoe fits... ANGEL So, you still haven't really forgiven me for that night. BREANNA (downing rest of drink) I thought you said...you didn't like to dwell...(exasperated) besides, we've been over this in therapy... ANGEL Well, I'm sorry it hurt you. (pause) I do love you, you know. BREANNA You frustrate me. ANGEL (fishing) And, I love you. BREANNA (giving in) I love you, too A thunderous clap! BREANNA (CONT'D) (standing) I'm gonna to go stay at my sister's when the rain lets up. I already called Jenta and let her know. ANGEL (seriously?) Really? You told Jenta...our manager, before you told me? BREANNA Business, before pleasure, my dear. ANGEL Did you call Jas and let her know, too? BREANNA Why would I do that? ANGEL She is our accountant. Did you call our lawyer, Saja? Our pool person, Matt? BREANNA Funny... ANGEL And you wonder why I don't tell you things. The rain is very loud. BREANNA (worried) It's really coming down out there. Breanna goes over and turns on the radio, looking for the weather channel. After a few staticky turns, Mary J. Bilge - Be Without You, comes on. ANGEL Baby...baby...stop, it's our song! BREANNA (nonplused) Yeah. Breanna moves past it. ANGEL No...go back. Angel goes over and puts her arms around Breanna, from behind. Breanna moves away from the embrace. Angel fiddles with the dials and gets it back to the song which she turns up and begins to sing to Breanna. ANGEL (CONT'D) Come on, dance with me. "...and I can't live without you, baby...." Breanna dances stiffly as Angel takes her hand. Breanna gives in a little. They start to sway back-and-forth, then Angel starts to sing again. ANGEL (CONT'D) (not thinking about the lyrics) "...but I wanna ask you...would you lie...make me cry...do somethin' behind my back and then try and cover it up...?" Breanna pushes away. Angel turns down the radio. ANGEL (CONT'D) (finally hearing the lyrics) Huh...maybe we need a new song. Car lights appear in the large window. The couple doesn't notice. Hot lightning fills the windows followed by a thunderous BOOM. The lights go out. BREANNA Shit. KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! BREANNA (CONT'D) SHIT! Breanna grabs a bat that is by the coat rack. ANGEL Who could be knocking at our door...in this storm? Angel comes up behind her, a large flashlight now in hand. BREANNA This cannot be good. ### 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.

Nora Hylton is a Jamaican American writer from San Francisco, California. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from Yale University and is the recipient of the Charles P. Howland Fellowship for her writing. Her fiction explores themes of young adulthood, focusing on experiences of love, loss, and grief in urban Black and West Indian communities. The Path of Least Resistance The bodies at the party were hot and timid; barely concealed desire quivered between them like gelatin. I couldn’t make out faces in the dark, but I looked anyway. Some swayed in circles, their feet moving independently from their bodies as if the room was melding into a swirl of colors and lights. Others looked nervously at everyone else and took small sips from their own cup. It was reassuring that no one wanted to seem as if they were having too much, or too little fun. It was everyone, not just me, who was pretending, molding themselves like stiff clay into the person they wanted to appear to be. Letty saw James first, sitting on the couch against the opposite wall with his long legs crossed at the ankles. “There’s your boy.” Letty pointed, and I grabbed her hand down. My stomach felt as though it was collapsing in on itself, and I fought to keep my breathing regular. A lanky girl wearing a red halter top got up and switched the radio station. The beat became jumpy, embellished with metallic synths and a loud thumping bassline. Letty pushed me up from the couch, and as if controlled by a remote, I was walking over. “I’m Abigail,” I said once I was standing in front of him. I tucked a loose curl behind my ear and tried to smile without my bottom teeth, the way Letty and I had practiced. Up close, James was just as beautiful as from far away. His eyebrows were thick, and I felt an urge to run a finger against the grain of the hair and smooth it back down. “We took AP Literature together.” “Abigail. From AP Lit. Sorry, I don’t remember.” “That’s fine.” “Do you smoke?” He gestured to a pair of French doors which led out to a dark backyard. “Not usually.” I shrugged. My heart felt like it was beating triple time in my throat. “But, yeah. Let’s go.” The first week of senior year, Letty and I decided we would become the best versions of ourselves. Letty was closer than I was. She was already detached and cool. She had lived in Southern California with her mother until seventh grade and had a certain kind of nonchalance which couldn’t be faked. She could make light-hearted jokes about her C-minus papers and sent pictures of her naked chest to boys from Mill Valley, kissing them without shame in the back of their mother’s minivans. The first time I saw James, I was struck that I had never seen anyone like him before. He joined our class after our sophomore year summer—his father was a neurosurgeon who had been relocated to UCSF from a smaller hospital in New Hampshire. James was attractive—not like those billboards on Market Street where men were draped sensually over women in a way that made you want to buy the perfume they were wearing. He didn’t look like a model—the bump in his nose was too pronounced, and his cheeks were peppered with the beginnings of stubble and pockmarked by old acne scars. He was thin, but it wasn’t a curated thinness. It was a lankiness, the length of his limbs emphasized by the way he sat, one leg slung over the other, so casual you had to look away. He was the type of person who only existed in the far reaches of the northeast—I imagined he’d spent his summers at his grandparents’ eclectic country home where they picked blackberries and talked about electoral politics over dinner. I’d never wanted someone, or something, so much. He wore his pants too short, and his exposed ankle—just bigger than my wrist—made me aware of the burn in my thighs as they rubbed against my jeans. The best version of myself went to parties thrown by girls she didn’t know. She laughed hard at jokes and woke up early to straighten her hair. She kissed boys because she could and didn’t feel weird about it the next morning. Outside there was still a chill in the air—June was just barely awake, and the city didn’t get really warm until late August. James bent over me and put his rusty silver lighter to the end of the joint held delicately between my fingers. “To your mouth. Bring it to your mouth and suck in.” The lighter ignited with a click, illuminating both of our faces. I could see colors in the flames, bright blue near the base and a muted orange at the tip. The first drag wasn’t so bad. Based on what I saw on television, I thought my first time smoking would make me cough or maybe throw up. I sucked on again, the orange tip glowing in time with my breath. “It’s not bad for you. Weed.” James took the lit joint from my hand. My skin buzzed where his fingers touched mine. He took a slow drag, watching my face closely. “It’s just a plant. Tobacco, too—not as bad for you as everyone says.” I didn’t know what to say. I just nodded. “That makes sense.” When the joint was down to the butt, he showed me how to put it out. Lifting his foot, he mimed rubbing the lit end against the sole of his shoe. I copied his movements, the black ash clinging to the bottom of my Converse. Then, he leaned in and touched his mouth to mine. His lips felt harder than I expected, two muscly pieces of flesh moving rhythmically against my own. I closed my eyes and tried to let the moment sink deep inside me. This was kissing. I was being kissed. The first time I drank, I stayed over at Letty’s house. Her parents were out at a gala, and we had the house to ourselves. She didn’t live in an apartment like I did; it was a proper house. We drank vodka from her parents’ liquor cabinet mixed with lemonade we bought from the deli a few blocks away. When we finished pouring the alcohol, we filled the empty bottle with water. After an hour of drinking, the world around me was spinning. I was sure it was the movement of the earth I was feeling. If I lay on the carpet with my eyes closed, I swore I could feel the twenty-three-degree tilt. “You need to throw up.” Letty told me matter-of-factly, as if at sixteen years old the world was so obvious to her as to be boring. We’d leaned over the toilet together in the guest bathroom. I put two fingers into my own mouth, which felt soft and warm, and then further back. I could feel the ridges of my throat contracting and pulsing. It felt unnatural, as if I was a machine receiving a factory reset before being recycled into something new. “Hold still.” Letty’s fingers joined mine. We fought for dominance, fingers slick with spit and bile before Letty said, ‘stop,’ and I relented. She was fair and efficient; she prodded the back of my throat only a few times before my stomach contracted and the toilet was full of vomit. My mouth tasted sour and felt hot. I thought I might cry. My knees ached from being pressed against the tile floor, and when I sat back against the bathroom door, they were covered in thin red lines where the skin pinched. “You’ll be okay now.” Letty’s smile was intended to be reassuring, but I still felt the burning from my stomach up to my throat. I couldn’t meet her eyes. That night, I called home. It was late, and I hoped for a second my mother wouldn’t be up. The line rang and then crackled. “Abigail? What you doing callin’ this late? Is everything okay?” “Yes, Mummy. I just wanted to call to see that you were alright,” I lied. “I just miss you, that’s all. You and Daddy.” She paused. In my mind, I could see my mother sitting alone in our small kitchen, weighing her next words. I cradled the phone next to my face. “Do you need to come ’ome? You sound funny, Abigail.” “No, Mummy. It’s okay. I just wanted to call.” “Alright, then. Goodnight, baby.” “Goodnight.” After that, I started throwing up after every meal. I pictured my stomach as a vat of acid, which in some ways it was. Corrosive, defective, bubbling inside of me and threatening to make itself known. “You have great tits,” Letty told me one night. It had been unusually hot all day, but a cool breeze had come in from the Pacific as the sun went down, providing a reprieve and the occasional whiff of salty seawater. We were sitting with our feet up on her parents’ balcony, the skyline glowing in the distance. It felt like the whole city was stretching out to meet us, each building lit up for our benefit. She wiggled her red-painted toes in my direction. “They’re big but perky. That’s real luck.” Her compliment made me feel a rush of pride. I’d never thought about my body like that before, as something that belonged to me that other people might envy. Before, it didn’t seem to matter that much. But, looking in the mirror that evening, I found myself agreeing with Letty. It did matter that I had great tits, and my stomach muscles were taut, hidden under a layer of fat and skin. I could tell I was almost there, even if I didn’t know where there was. My mother always told me that I looked like my brother. She didn’t mean it as either an insult or a compliment. It was just true. We had the same flat nose, the same big eyes. They came from our grandmother. My mother said she brought them all the way over from Jamaica, just to remind her of home. The week before graduation, James asked me if I wanted to get coffee with him. It seemed so mature, asking someone out for coffee. I said yes. It was the part of the year at school when no one could get any serious work done. The teachers don’t even try anymore, and everyone just wants out. We had nearly done it; high school was almost over. Our weekends were full of pre-graduation parties and the jitters of knowing that in a few months, our lives would be completely different. Letty helped me get ready. She blew out my hair with a hairdryer and pinned it to keep the loose curls intact. I shivered each time her comb scraped my scalp, parting my hair into precise sections, which she held against the mouth of the hairdryer, fighting to make my curls straight. It was raining, and Letty gave me a scarf to wear around my head, which felt silky cool against my skin. I felt Audrey Hepburn glamorous. When I arrived at the coffee shop, James was already sitting by the window. I ordered a hot chocolate, and he paid. I ignored my mother’s voice, which echoed too loudly in my head, don't take nothing for free from these people dem, dem come back for it someday. Four years at St. Andrew’s had taught me a lot about rich kids. When they mentioned “family friends,” they were often talking about important people like CEOs of companies or well-known artists who made political art pieces out of recycled packing peanuts. Rich kids ate at expensive restaurants, described items on the menu as ‘pricey’ with near-authentic concern, and then paid for the meal with their parents’ metal credit card. Between sips of coffee, James told me about his family. The youngest of three, his older brother was a financial analyst who lived in North Beach, and his sister was about to graduate college. I told him I lived with just my mom, which was true. I didn’t elaborate and hoped he would fill in the gaps of what I didn’t say with romantic ideas of what my life was like. When we’d both finished our drinks, he invited me back to his apartment. The building had a doorman. James signed me in at the front desk, and we rode up in the elevator holding hands. The window in James’ room was open, and the rain had formed a puddle on the hardwood. He started to take his clothes off, starting with his jeans. This is the man I’ll marry. We’ll have three kids; we’ll name them things like Olivia and take them to sushi restaurants in Pacifica for their birthdays. He bent to take off his shoes, and his back became a pale arch in the fading afternoon light. I reached out to touch his skin, and it struck me how dark my hand looked against his body. It was my first time having sex. He whispered, it doesn’t matter, in my ear, and I agreed, it didn’t matter. It felt good, and it felt good to feel good. If I had to describe it, I’d say it felt like cracking the shells of sunflower seeds between your teeth—that same anticipation. James groaned quietly, his hard body pushing me into the mattress. When he pulled me on top of him, I thought about ecstasy. Was this it? Was I touching it right now? Afterwards, he asked me about growing up in San Francisco. People were interested in what it was like to grow up somewhere, instead of nowhere. I told him about the public swimming pool a block from our house where I learned to swim, and the ice cream trucks swarmed by young children spending their allowances on popsicles shaped like cartoon characters. I told him about my elementary school, stuck between two city blocks, and how from the playground we could see blue and red blurs of cars speeding past the chain-link fence. His hand lazily brushed my bare side, stroking up and down in small circles. The feeling of his fingertips made my skin prickle. “You’re going to Middlebury, right? My sister’s a senior there.” “Yep, in a few months.” I glowed with happiness, nodding. “I’ll say ‘Hi’ if I meet her.” “You don’t have any siblings, right?” “I did. I do.” I began. The words tumbled out of me, my mouth moving without my permission. “Just one brother. But he’s in jail.” James paused. He turned towards me, as if waiting for me to acknowledge a poorly timed joke. Then, he blinked rapidly and turned away. “What did he do?” His tone was hushed, like I was telling a ghost story. “Killed someone.” I shrugged like it didn’t matter to me. Like I didn’t know how else to say it. “Oh,” he said. The ‘Oh’ hung in the air, hollow and floating. Not like the sound, but the letter. O. He looked over at me, the left half of his face illuminated in a warm, yellow glow of his table lamp. From his expression, I knew I made a mistake. I could see that the sympathy ended at his eyes, which appeared unfocused in the harsh light. I tucked my toes under myself and buried my face in the sheets, cooling down from the shame. James lifted his chin up towards the ceiling once more, staring at the headboard above us. “Fuck. That’s intense.” “I don’t talk to him much.” I was backtracking, giggling anxiously. The room had grown colder, and I scooted closer to his warm, naked body. “It’s not a big deal.” I watched the wrinkles around his eyes until he closed them. He nodded, as if he understood. I never thought about Linton. I didn’t know what made me say it. The memories I had of him were clouded by childhood, and by a sense that the brother I’d grown up with wasn’t real. It was a lie; a person he created to trick me into loving him. I’d gone on visiting days with my mother, but seeing him sitting in the jumpsuit, his face worked into a permanent guilty grimace, was too much. My mother still visited him every week, but I hadn’t been in years. “Oh fuck,” James said. He’d pulled the sheet back to get out of the bed and was staring at the mattress between my legs. I looked down to where James was looking. The sheets on his bed below me were stained red. It was a small puddle, no bigger than a Post-it note. But it was there. He looked at me then with terror, so much so that for a second, I thought he must’ve seen something else, a ghost or his parents coming home. His eyes were wide and his breathing so heavy that I thought he might faint. My heart was beating very fast, and I closed my legs to hide the stain. He asked me if I was okay, if he had hurt me. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” I started laughing then, a laugh closer to a bark. I didn’t know exactly where it was coming from, but it was somewhere deep in me. I didn’t even know what was funny. I felt crazy. I wondered if he thought I was crazy, too. He told me where the bathroom was, and I got up to clean off. My body felt full and heavy with each step. A rivulet of blood dripped down my thigh. I locked myself in the bathroom off his room and leaned over the toilet. The toilet seat felt cool against my pounding head. My fingers tasted chalky, and it only took a moment before I was spitting the contents of my stomach into the toilet bowl. With the flush, it was all gone. I felt lighter for a second, and then heavy again. “Are you throwing up in there?” James called from his room. “No,” I called back. “I’m almost finished.” I wiped my mouth on the back of my sleeve and left the bathroom. James was in the hallway, pretending not to listen to me. He looked young in the darkness, like a child. We both were, I guess. Children. “Thanks for having me. I had a great time.” He walked me to the front door, and I cried on the train ride home. My mother met me at the door of the apartment. She didn’t mention that I was an hour past curfew. If she could see that I’d been crying, she didn’t say anything. She just held me and rocked back and forth. I thought in that moment she might say something—something wise and knowledgeable about the way the world worked. My mother tended to turn these rare moments of intimacy into pronouncements about the world and our place in it. Usually, they had to do with Jesus or white people or America. But she didn’t say anything. She just held me and rocked, stroking the top of my head with her open palm. ### 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.

As a writer, director, music artist, and DJ, Melanie Mitchell is a modern-day Renaissance woman. Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, she grew up immersed in the arts and developed an early passion for writing and storytelling. Inspired by The Twilight Zone from a young age, she became fascinated with television and the power of stories to explore the strange, philosophical, and the unknown with underlying commentary on society and the human condition. Before college, Mitchell wrote and directed her first short film. She later attended New York University, studying Dramatic Writing, and Ithaca College, where she received the Park School Scriptwriting Award of the Year as a freshman. Her work has also been recognized by NBCUniversal and national screenwriting competitions. Her most recent feature screenplay, When Willows Weep, explores the intersection of racial and environmental injustice through a horror-thriller lens. Mitchell's stories blend wit, philosophy, and existentialism across genres including horror, thrillers, comedy, and speculative fiction. As a multidisciplinary artist, she draws inspiration from music, performance, and visual storytelling to create work that challenges perceptions and defies genre conventions. Now based in Los Angeles, Mitchell develops television and film projects with the goal of becoming a genre-defying showrunner who centers women, queer voices, and people of color while pushing the boundaries of what television and media can become. When Willows Weep This writing sample is excerpted scenes of the feature. The '-------' lines indicate scene jumps to a different page/part of the script, not continuous scenes. EXT. UNKNOWN ROAD - NIGHT Parallel perfect allée of weeping willow trees line both sides of an empty gravel road. The air is still. Slowly moving in towards the trees, it’s evident they’re in bad shape. There’s peeling, discoloration, rotting, cracks, dead branches and spotting leaves. ON A SINGLE WEEPING WILLOW TREE, as a single thick drop of sap forms. It begins to trickle down the bark. OVER BLACK: “What cannot be said will be wept.” -------- EXT./INT. SEMI-TRUCK - SUNSET SYDNEY BANKS (27, Black American, slim but toned, wears glasses) takes in the scenery behind the wheel. CURTIS WILTON (54, Black American, dad-bod) is focused between his phone and clipboard in the passenger seat. The houses are large, bright and beautifully designed. Classic Americana vibes here— overwhelmingly white, kids playing in the large front yards, white picket fences, neighbors openly talking and laughing with each other. But as Sydney quickly cleans her glasses, she notices things more clearly. The weeping willow trees lining the homes and streets are in bad shape. There’s peeling, discoloration, rotting, cracks, dead branches and spotting leaves. Most houses have Trump signs and discriminative slogan signs throughout the yards. Sydney tenses up in her seat, growing a bit uncomfortable. Noticing her, Curtis quickly glances out the window. CURTIS We’ve driven through plenty of towns with signs like these almost everyday. That’s why we get in and get out. You’ll be fine. Sydney slowly nods as she puts her eyes back on the road. Curtis goes back on his phone. EXT. LONG ROADS IN JASPER TOWN - NIGHT The semi-truck lights the roads that have narrowed and switched to gravel as the sky has gone dark. There are longer distances in between houses, but still a lot of willow trees surrounding, leaning into the roads. Curtis loudly streams a basketball game on his phone as Sydney keeps her eyes locked on the road. Suddenly, SOUNDS FROM THE PHONE STOP. Curtis holds up his phone, moves it around. CURTIS Dammit. We might be out of reception for awhile. SYDNEY (nodding) I downloaded the route for offline usage. Sydney makes a big left turn. CURTIS Too wide. SYDNEY I’m sorry. CURTIS It’s not that much street to work with anymore. You need to be more careful with your turns. Sydney nods as she adjusts her glasses, a bit nervous. CURTIS Are your high beams on? Sydney nods. CURTIS Clearance lights? SYDNEY (a bit stern) Yes. I have everything needed on. CURTIS It’s still your first week on the road. You never know. Eyeing the GPS back and forth with the road, Sydney shakes her head but keeps quiet. CURTIS Especially since you seem to not be able to do much without checking your notes. The road begins to do twists and curves. Sydney manages to keep up, but she’s visibly growing upset. SYDNEY (snaps) Why would that not be good to do during training? CURTIS Because this is on the road training. Not training from taking notes from books. How will you ever be ready for something on the fly? Sydney shakes her head, both hands tightly grabbing the wheel. CURTIS Look out for squeeze trees. SYDNEY (beat) How am I supposed to learn from you when you either barely speak to me or speak in code?! I have to take notes to keep up. CURTIS (stern) Use context clues. Sydney turns to Curtis, glaring. SYDNEY (raised voice) If you don’t help me at- Curtis is looking at the road still, pointing to the window. CURTIS (abrupt) Watch out- Sydney is caught off guard by this tight right turn. She manages to quickly turn but... SYDNEY NO! BANG! The THUNDEROUS SOUND OF A TREE CRACKING is heard as airbags explode from the steering wheel, dashboard, and side door panels. The tree falls right in front of the truck. Curtis fights the airbags and instantly looks to Sydney. CURTIS Can you hear me? Are you okay? Another BOOM is heard, catching them both off guard. Sydney begins to cry as she covers her ears, panicking. EXT. BUTLER ROAD - CONTINUOUS Curtis jumps out the door. With a bit of a limp, he moves past the tree and debris as he goes to the driver side. He opens the door and pulls Sydney out as she cries. SYDNEY Oh no.. No no... Sydney puts her hands over her head as she breathes panicky. SYDNEY I didn’t mess up the turn. I didn’t...I did not- CURTIS Just take a breather, alright? You’re fine. Stay right here. Sydney nods as she turns around trying to collect her breath. Curtis walks over the tree to the right side of the semi to inspect the damage. The front right corner of the truck is shattered from the willow tree, narrowly missing the passenger door. Stepping over debris of the front area, he moves to the back. The trailer of the truck has completely tipped over onto the road, not touching anything else. CURTIS (murmurs) Shit. Sydney wipes her tears and puts her glasses back on. SYDNEY’S P.O.V. through her now slightly cracked glasses: This whole street is lined with parallel perfect allée of weeping willow trees on both sides. These trees are also in bad shape, but much larger and stronger than the trees in the main streets of town. The symmetrical planting of the trees combine to look like an endless forest in the night as they lean into the street. A beat of silence. RANDOM WEEPING WILLOW TREE P.O.V. on Sydney, as she begins to back up a bit, closer to the truck door. SYDNEY (softly) Um, Curtis. (beat, louder) Curtis. CURTIS Yeah? After no response, Curtis looks over from the back of the truck, walks over to her. SYDNEY These trees look...really weird. Curtis turns to look out into the vastness of the trees. CURTIS Nighttime can do that to you. Especially given you’re all shaken up. Plenty of forests on the roads. SYDNEY I need to sit down. Sydney opens the truck door and gets back in. Curtis hesitates, but joins her. EXT./INT. SEMI-TRUCK - MOMENTS LATER The truck, now slightly leaning to the right, is disheveled. Curtis rummages through their belongings behind the seats. CURTIS I don’t know if there’s any first aid kits. You need something from it? Could help if you have any cuts. After a beat of silence, he goes back to the front seats as Sydney is still looking out at the trees. CURTIS Do you see someone? Something? SYDNEY (shakes her head) It’s...it’s just this weird feeling. Almost like how I’m staring at the trees, they’re staring at me too. --------- INT. BUTLER FAMILY HOME - SPARE ROOM - DREAM Sydney and Curtis are both knocked out. HEAVY WIND SOUNDS wake Sydney up and she almost instantly sits up and grabs her glasses from the night stand. SYDNEY’S P.O.V. as she scans the room, noticing the small window above Curtis is open. She sees the vast lined trees outside. The winds cause them to steadily sway. She looks to Curtis, who is sound asleep on the couch. SYDNEY (whispers, panicky) Curtis...Curtis! He doesn’t budge. SYDNEY (rolls her eyes) Ugh! She hesitates, but gets out of bed and hurriedly walks over to the window. As she reaches her arm out towards the window... EXT. BUTLER FAMILY ESTATE - FORESTS - CONTINUOUS - DREAM ...Sydney is now outside with her hand reaching toward a willow tree. SYDNEY What the?! She quickly puts her arm down and looks around. SYDNEY’S P.O.V. as she sees she’s surrounded by the lined willow trees forest in the dark. SYDNEY (whispers) Hello? There’s a silence in the air as Sydney looks at the trees. They look even more sad than before. Some branches hang so low they might as well touch the ground. They’re disfigured, some stripped of bark. Still peeling, discolored, rotting. CRACK! Sydney jumps, turning to see one of the tree branches falling off. Instantly backing up, Sydney gasps as she’s run into something— a hangman’s noose. It dangles from this tree. Out of nowhere SOUNDS OF A CHAINSAW is heard in the distance. SYDNEY’S P.O.V. quickly scans the forest again. There’s no people in sight, but other trees now have noose’s on their branches too. Before she can move again, a SCREAM is heard closer to her. Sydney puts her hand over her mouth in horror and runs to hide behind one of the trees. Gripping the tree, she sees dark sap that has gotten on her hand. Looking up at the tree she realizes the tree is leaking sap at random, like tear drops. Suddenly, a mix of GROANS, SCREAMS, CRIES, AND CHAINSAWS SOUND up close and in the distance, growing louder. Sydney cries as she covers her ears. And all the willow trees leak sap with her, too. -------- INT. BUTLER FAMILY HOME - SPARE ROOM - MORNING Sydney wakes up to see Curtis already up, staring out the window. Hearing her covers move, he looks at her then back out the window. CURTIS The night before...when you woke up scared. What did you dream about? SYDNEY (chuckles) You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. CURTIS I had a nightmare last night. Sydney puts on her glasses and sits up. Curtis points out the window. CURTIS I was outside in the middle of the road, by all the trees. I saw the crash all over again. Curtis turns to face Sydney. CURTIS You didn’t mess up that turn. (beat) It’s gonna sound crazy but, I think- SYDNEY The trees remember it all. A beat as Curtis nods. CURTIS If those trees have some sort of ability to send a message, it could’ve easily decided to fall onto the front of the truck. But it’s like it almost...took the hit for us. A beat as Sydney looks out towards the trees. SYDNEY I decided not to tell anyone about my dream. Figured no one would believe me. (beat) That’s why I couldn’t strip the tree bark. Curtis nods. SYDNEY There was this dark sap. CURTIS That was in mine too. So much that it started to come down like rain. SYDNEY Like...like they were weeping. ### 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.

Elizabeth Alexander is the author of multiple award-winning books, including The Trayvon Generation, American Sublime, and The Light of the World. She has been awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the George Kent Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes for Poetry. Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times best-selling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate. Her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award. She composed and recited "Praise Song for the Day" for President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration and is currently president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder of the arts, culture, and humanities. She lives and works in New York City. Conduct Your Blooming In the children's book Frederick by Leo Lionni, the eponymous hero—a mouse who turns out to be a poet—gathers stories while his mouse companions harvest corn in the warm months for the coming season. In this fable, when winter comes and it is cold and gray and the harvested food is scarce, it is Frederick who brings the community through with stories, invocation of the warmth and color of spring and summer that would shine the spirit light to sustain and move them through the long, dark days. Frederick was published in 1967 in a time when the country was riven with civil rights struggles, the seemingly intractable war in Vietnam, and a vertiginously evolving society. Looking back, I think that Lionni was asking in a very specific time, why do we need art? What counts as good and helpful work? What is the role of the artist in community? What does the artist have to offer that is not of clear material value? “I am gathering words,” Frederick says to his community, “[f]or the winter days are long and many, and we’ll run out of things to say.” The mice ask, Frederick, why don’t you work? and he replies, “I do work. I gather sun rays for the cold dark winter days . . . I gather colors, for winter is gray.” He asks them to close their eyes, “And when he told them of the blue periwinkles, the red poppies in the yellow wheat, and the green leaves of the berry bush, they saw the colors as clearly as if they had been painted in their minds.” As Frederick speaks of the sun, it begins to actually feel warmer. And the fellow mice, marveling at the magic of his words, call him “poet.” The community needed what Frederick brought, even if it might have seemed abstract and unpractical. I am a poet, having lived my life by and through the word. To me, being a poet not only means making poems. It also means being attuned and reverent to the power of distilled, precise words in the form of poems but also as carriers of souls. Here is my essential self in these words, bone true. Being a poet means I believe in patterns, in serendipity. I follow the logic of Muriel Rukeyser when she says, describing islands, “O for God’s sake / they are connected / underneath.” Galway Kinnell said being a poet means you should be able to talk about anything, and that is what I hope. “Nothing human is alien to me,” wrote the once-enslaved Roman playwright Terence. Many things are true at once in good poems, and that is how I experience life itself. Contradictions coexist in poems, even as form is resolved and made felicitous. When we are in the presence of art we are multidimensional and enlarged. Being a poet has brought me the rewards of travelling the world with my wares in hand and connecting deeply with other human beings in the process. Being a poet has taught me—and so I remind others—that we make com-munity through our words, and through listening. How can we move in the world building communities and making resilient and true human connections? The world is spinning and turning, and I continue to believe that precision with the word is spirit work that will help us through the whirlwind. The late 1960s are an interesting point of comparison to today, another time when the country was wracked by internal conflicts and questions that foregrounded how we might respond to what Gwendolyn Brooks—my guiding-light poet, bard of Chicago’s South Side, twentieth-century American genius—called “the whirlwind” in her poem “The Second Sermon on the Warpland,” published, like Frederick, in 1967. This is a section: The time cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace. . . . . A garbageman is dignified as any diplomat. Big Bessie’s feet hurt like nobody’s business, but she stands—bigly—under the unruly scrutiny, stands in the wild weed. In the wild weed she is a citizen, and is a moment of highest quality; admirable. It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud. Nevertheless, live. Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind. “Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind” is a mantra for me. Our world is filled with beauty and possibility but also with violence, condoned hatred, and injustice. Who is going to win this battle? I choose and believe in light and love. But it is not enough just to hope for it. It is not enough to wish for justice. It is not enough to hope that people will do right. If we value it, we must stand for it, and fight for it. That can look many different ways but what if we all described ourselves as justice warriors, each in her own way? What if—as countless people do—we consciously measured our actions large and small by the questions, Is this generous? Is this fair? Is this just? Is this kind? An earlier section of the poem seems to speak to today: All about are the cold places, all about are the pushmen and jeopardy, theft— all about are the stormers and scramblers but what must our Season be, which starts from Fear? Live and go out. Define and medicate the whirlwind. Brooks’s verbs are quirky. Our actions “medicate” (To cure? To narcotize?) the whirlwind, improve the health of the infirmities of the polis, if we follow Brooks’s exhortation. “Conduct”: an organized and mindful action, a way a group is brought into harmony. Another side of the word, conduct, and behavior that is structured and hopefully admirable. “Your blooming”: The word itself opens up and expands possibility. When you say “blooming” your mouth rounds and prepares for song, for elevated words. “In the noise”: Undifferentiated sound that is not symphonic, sound that covers other sounds, the sounds you need to listen to for pleasure or instruction. “And whip”: The whip of the wind, sharp and punishing, the historical shadow of flagellation, violence that specific, which needs to be not only withstood but countered. “The whirlwind”: That word is written by a midwestern poet of the prairies, who understands the power of that lifting vortex. She knows it is a word of great consequence and force that we encounter many times in the Bible. We can stand in it, but how can we withstand it? And we cannot, to use her word, “straddle the whirlwind.” The poet, writer, teacher, and activist June Jordan, who lived from 1936 to 2002, is another of my touchstones of the same era. Jordan published more critical prose than any other African American woman writer in the twentieth century, as well as plays, anthologies, children’s books, and the tough-minded memoir Soldier. She did much of her work later in her life in the Bay Area, with her Poetry for the People workshop that opened the walls of the university to people in the Bay Area interested in the liberatory possibilities of poetry. Jordan was fundamentally a fighter, a comrade, a stand-up-and-be-counted kind of woman. And yet so many of her poems are love poems of the tenderest variety, as well as poems of exaltation. In her epistemology, love exists on the same force field as struggle. In political contexts, she would ask these crucial questions: Where is the love? Do you know what you are fighting for as well as what you are fighting against? She wrote, “I am saying that the ultimate connection cannot be the enemy. The ultimate connection must be the need that we find between us. It is not only who you are, in other words, but what we can do for each other that will determine the connection.” It was love, in her unsentimental vision, that could blaze a path through a world in which violence is a commonplace. It is not paradoxical that love should inform and guide our struggles and battles. She said we must remember, it is not just what we are fighting against. It is what we are saying yes to. Where is the love, she asked, that informs our political struggle? Without love, we are just fighting. These are some of the questions a poet asks. Poets—if we live up to our calling—are guided by a strange courage that takes us into thickets of self and society without fully knowing the answers, to bring into form what we see and seek to understand. We offer what we find to community, for the poem does not live until it has been set forth to be taken in by others. As Brooks says, you cannot straddle the whirlwind. We are in it, you are in it. How will you stand and withstand when you face injustice, her poem asks. How do you open the door and build communities? Why have you been placed where you are, at this moment in time? How do we find real courage when we are uncertain or afraid? How can artists help us ask these questions? How will you stand and withstand the whirlwind? Excerpted from Signals Across Vast Distances: Essays and Tales. Copyright (c) 2026 by Elizabeth Alexander. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Elizabeth Alexander and Jae Nichelle on September 9, 2026. Signals Across Vast Distances is gorgeous. I especially love how you pair your essays with artwork by various artists, including your late husband, Ficre Ghebreyesus. I would love to hear more about your process for selecting those specific pieces. Are there any works you came across that didn’t make the book but continue to stick with you? The art is a late-breaking entry into the process of writing this book. For every one of my books, I carefully chose a cover by an African American artist, and made sure they were reproduced really well. I think that's the respect that books need to give to art. At the end of the writing part of things, I sensed that I wanted to have a conversation with artwork. I live in the midst of art and artists. It has been a part of my seeing and thinking and feeling and teaching and knowing for a very long time. And it's already a multi-genre book. It ends with a to-do list that is meant for you to keep going with your own to-do list. There is memoir and personal essay; there are essays that are in sections, and there is literary analysis. There are all kinds of different modes in this book, so I felt that having art as literally a part of the text, not illustrative of each essay or tale, but rather as an opening, as something that belonged with—but maybe sometimes in a little bit of an oblique way—would make the experience of encounter much richer. That you might stop on a work of art and just think and feel, and then move into the words. There were many works that I could not include. The outtakes were agonizing! There's just so much extraordinary work by various artists, Black and Latinx artists here, that live in me. I also give great gratitude to Norton, my publisher, because including artwork added time and resources to the making of the book, but they never hesitated. They understood why it was important as soon as I introduced the idea. I just finished reading Ntozake Shange’s Ridin’ The Moon in Texas and was thinking how much we could use more books that include prints of art and writing in conversation with or around it. Shange's work has been very important to me in so much of what I've done. I wrote a play called Diva Studies, in which I was really seeing what she did with verse form and poetry on the stage. I learned so much about that from her writing and the way she moved between genres. And also what I love about Ridin’ the Moon in Texas is that some of those [artists] were her comrades. Thinking about this opening chapter, I love the summary of Frederick, and thinking about a poet's place in community. Historically, we know storytellers, griots, oral historians, bards... we've always been part of the ecosystem of a functioning society. Do you remember storytellers in your family or community that you or other people gave that title, and are there words from them that have stayed with you? First of all, I think Black people, we have so much storytelling in our history, in our communities. In every kind of Black community I've ever been exposed to, there is story. There is also language play, playing with metaphor, playing with simile in everyday speech. There is often—and I'm thinking about things that have affected my work—a reverence for and belief in dreams, signs, and symbols. So I think that that is just very, very rich soil for any Black writer coming out of. My mother is a historian, and so her storytelling is in the form of deeply researched history books about Black women's history. That is one form that is not necessarily an oral form, although it came from her having heard stories. And remember, for people of my generation and people of my mother's generation, her grandparents, who she knew, were enslaved people. There is such an amazing span of history in our families. My father was more obviously a great storyteller and talker, very playful with language. Both of my parents are from Harlem. My mother has roots in Alabama. My father has roots in North Carolina and Jamaica. And if my room was a disaster—which I mean it was never, but so much of a disaster because you couldn't get but so messy in my home—he would look at the room and he would say, "We are not living like the Collyer brothers up in here." Now, the Collyer brothers were a pair of Harlem brothers who, when they died in their house, there were floor-to-ceiling newspapers in every corner of the house. So this was more vivid than “clean up your room,” right? Or he would say, “This room looks like the wreck of the Hesperus.” He was very hyperbolic, very vivid. He was extraordinary with a curse word, gorgeous in that regard, and there were so many different kinds of language in his declamation. He would tell us stories that we called Shakespeareans, which is to say Shakespeare-like. He would play with all that “doth over yonder” language to tell us some tale from the magic land of Harlandia, which was Harlem. So I think that these are my stories, but these are not unfamiliar stories. And I'm very grateful that they opened my ears to history and language and story and song. What a beautiful thing that we have as Black people and writers, the ways that we just take language and make it our own, fold it and bend it and use it in just so many different ways. The Zora Neale Hurston essay "The Characteristics of Negro Expression” is one of my favorites. She talks about decoration and about what she calls “the Negro's will to adorn,” and I just think that's beautiful. When did you first call yourself a poet? When did that feel like you couldn't deny it? I can tell you exactly when. When I was twenty-three years old, I was about halfway through a master's program in creative writing at Boston University. I had not written poetry, but I had written fiction, and I was admitted into the fiction part of the program. But I went there because a poet who I loved above all others at that time, Derek Walcott, was teaching there. So I went to his office. I presented myself to him. I asked if I could be in his class. I showed him my scribblings. They were not in the form of poems. And I've told this story before, but it's kind of an amazing thing that happened. He looked at my journal that I showed him, and he then took a yellow legal pad, and he copied out some of my lines with line breaks, and he said, "See, that's the one thing you're not using here is the line break. But you're starting to write poems.” Then he said, "Now go, and don't come back until you have some poems to show me.” He was that kind of teacher. So, I might have discovered that I didn't know how to do that. Or that I didn't want to do that. But as hard as it was, it felt like the thing I was supposed to be doing; the thing I had been trying to get to. The thing that gave me fever. When I was midway through, when I'd finished a semester of that work, I said I am a poet. That's amazing. And it’s like you already knew because you approached him knowing you wanted this, but maybe didn't yet know what it would mean to you. I think there is something interesting about a teacher being open to someone who comes not yet in polished form, and for a teacher—like any good elder—being able to see something in you that you can't see in yourself. Because I didn't see it in myself. I just knew that I thought he was amazing. His work meant so much to me. So it could have been actually a fine outcome for him to have said, “You can stay in my class, but maybe you know we find out that you don't write poems so well.” Then I would go back to writing fiction, or then I would be a scholar of poetry, or then I would have just been a lover of poetry. There are a lot of different ways that it could have gone. Now I'm thinking about so many educators who do the opposite. They tend to discourage people when they don’t see the potential or are not willing to look for it. I hear that a lot, especially from people who are up-and-coming poets; that some of their teachers are not supportive. Well, and I think I'm saying a very precise thing, I also think not everybody is a poet. I'm just going to say that. I think there are many ways of being a caring adult educator. Not everybody's a poet, but everybody can be encouraged. Everybody can be seen. Everybody can be respected. Everybody can be taught some things. Absolutely, and that brings me to another question I had going back to this first chapter. Toward the end, there’s a question to the reader: “Why have you been placed where you are, at this moment in time?” Do you feel a person discovers or creates the answer to this question? I'm so glad you point out that question because it's actually really a book of questions. But none of them are rhetorical. They're all real to the reader. Just like you’ve taken it, I’m really asking you. Now, where that comes from in me is… I kind of situate myself in time. [I was] born in 1962. The introduction before the chapter that you all have excerpted talks about a Muriel Rukeyser poem that I find extremely powerful and helpful. I lived in the first century of world wars for right now, and we get the title from it: signals across vast distances. “We send signals across vast distances, trying to connect.” But she wrote it in 1967. And then I say, what was happening in 1967? Well, we were at another moment in this country where there was tremendous turmoil, where progressive movements and retrograde movements were at war with each other, where the country was in unpopular wars, where there were forces that were trying to dam the progress of the movements that made me: the women's movement, the civil rights movement, the LGBTQ movement—all of the movements for our full personhood and for our full inclusion in American society. That's the water I was baptized in. I would ask myself as I was coming of age—I would think about people who I admired from that time period: civil rights activists, people who took real risks so that more of us could have liberties and rights, and I would say what would I do if I wasn't ten? What would I do if I wasn't twelve? What would I have done? Here again, I ask it with Muriel Rukaiser, who comes from a wealthy Jewish family in New York City, in the early part of the 20th century. She's an early feminist, and in the early 30s she leaves Vassar College at the age of nineteen to go to Alabama to bear witness in writing to the Scottsboro Boys trial. She goes to another world from the world that she came up in because there is injustice, and she wants to tell people about it. So I would think, would I have done that? What risks would I take? And then you become a grown-up, and you say, well, here I am right now. What am I going to do? And I hope I'm gonna do the brave thing. I hope that I will always remain a servant of society and other people, that I will always take it back to the simplest lessons from my childhood, from my grandmother, to be a helpful person. “Are you helpful, baby? Are you helpful?” I’m always asking myself that, so that's what I hope the question does for readers. Do you remember how you felt when your first collection of essays came out versus how you feel with this new book? Every book is different. Every stage of life is different. When my first book of poems, The Venus Hottentot, came out, I literally couldn't believe it. I held the book in my hands. I knew that I made it, but I had never imagined I would be a poet. So, it was miraculous and strange. I had to get used to it. When I wrote my memoir, The Light of the World, I wouldn't have imagined I would have written a memoir in my early 50s at that point in my life. But the sudden death of my husband meant that writing was the way that I was staying grounded and alive, and that I was bearing witness to my own life in order to understand what happened, what was happening. So that book surprised me and took it out of privacy. My kids at the time were thirteen and fourteen, and I read the whole book to them with full veto power. And they are very extraordinary people because they understood almost more than I did. They came home from school one day, and I was crying. And they said, "Why are you crying?” And I said, "Well, I think I've really finished this book, and I want to share it with you.” So they took off their knapsacks, snacked, sat at the kitchen table, and they said, "Okay, go.” I didn't quite think it was going to be like that. Then I started crying again, and I said—it's funny now. It was funny then…dark humor—I said, “But Daddy dies in it. How can I read you this?” And they said, “Mama, we know that, read.” And then, while reading through, they would stop me at amazing moments where they'd say, "No, you said Daddy had on a blue jacket, but he had on a red jacket.” Hearing how they felt about things that we experienced together, it was really profound. To this day, I regularly get letters from strangers saying that the book was meaningful to them in one way or the other. For my first book of essays, The Black Interior, I remember feeling really proud because the scholarship was there, the research was there, and the wrestling with arguments was there. There was some writing in there about film and popular culture that hadn't been done much at that point. I felt proud of it. I felt like I worked hard and I did a lot of things. This one I feel proud of because I have a whole other huge full-time job running the Mellon Foundation, and so what that's meant is that for the last ten years that I've been working in philanthropy—Ford Foundation before that—I have had no time. I have a day job that is demanding, that is creative, that is exhilarating, but I don't have academic sabbaticals. I don't have summers. My creativity and my energy are taken up with trying to do grant making well. So this was written little bit by little bit over a long, long time, and that is what feels really good about having finished it now. In another interview, you said after finishing a collection you were glad the “house was clean,” so to speak. I love a domestic metaphor, so I feel like yeah, the house is clean. It's sparkling. Whatever comes next will be new from right now. It's a great feeling. And also, I’m always, always nervous when something goes out into the world. I always think about things that I have either forgotten or that I didn't emphasize, and I think that, you know, you just need to steal your courage a little bit to know that that's the experience of engaging with readers. So I do think that as much as books are fixed and finished, there is the life that happens when you let them go and release them. Talking about philanthropy, did anything surprise you going into or being in the world of philanthropy and art? So much learning. There is just so much amazing work that people are doing in arts and culture, in the humanities. There is so much that is happening in this country. We have work in all the states, and the privilege of being able to travel and hear people's ideas and help support things folks are trying to do that are so far outside of my experience. That has been surprising, but more of an incredible learning opportunity. I learn every day. I can imagine over the course of your career, the engagement you've had with so many different types of artists and professionals is mind-blowing. It really is, and I think that also what I have learned from being able to support so many grantees is it's still—and I don't say this naively—I am surprised that so many people are so angry about a variety of American experiences and stories; that so many people don't want to embrace the complexities of our culture. Now, the flip side of that, people are curious and avid learners everywhere all day long. That never surprised me. So the ways that people engage with the work, the positive side, are just exciting. But that so many people resist, don't want to learn, don't want to let people read, don't want to let people tell stories in public, want to lie about our history… I am surprised by that. Absolutely. It's horrid looking out sometimes these days and seeing how much backlash there is for just things that seem so regular, so simple. I think about all of my teaching years, which is thirty years, always in mixed classrooms at the colleges and universities where I taught, teaching African American literature and culture. And every semester, there's someone who said, "Why wasn’t I taught that? Why didn't I know? Why had I never read a Black writer before?” You know, this work is fascinating. This work is amazing. This work is helping me ask questions. This work is enriching my life. To go back to thinking about storytelling and how Black people interpret dreams and have so many different ways and vehicles of telling stories. You have also mentioned that you were a vivid dreamer, and that maybe has something to do with why you're a poet. I'm curious to know if that's still the case for you. If so, where have your dreams been leading you lately? Alas, sometimes I am exhausted, and then the dream space goes a little dark. But where the dreamscape leads me is into the strange juxtapositions of language. The unexpected words that appear in dreams, the things that are surreal in our dreams. Why is the dog blue, you know? I think it's another way of asking questions and getting to meaning that is not necessarily on the surface. I have a book of poems called Antebellum Dream Book, and there are a number of poems in there—actually, in two books of my poems—that start with the strange juxtaposition of dreams. Sometimes the stories of dreams are just wild tales unto themselves, but I think they invite interpretation, and they also invite the beautiful strangeness of language that is at all of our disposal. You know, twenty-six letters in the alphabet and infinite combinations. I think of one dear friend of mine in particular who, when I say that I dreamed something, he will immediately take it as if I told him I went to the grocery store and I got eggs, juice, and butter. We will talk about it like it was a thing that happened, as a way of unpacking the meaning. Yes, because I mean, speaking of signals across vast distances… There you go. In one of the later chapters of the book, you also say “living joyously is a dead serious choice that I believe is our only choice.” I'm curious about your personal definition of living joyously and what it looks like in practice for you. Well, this conversation, honestly. Having a conversation with a new person with whom we share some ideas and interests, we’re discovering. That process is a very joyful one to me. Connecting with people, talking to people, seeing where it goes, spending time with my loved ones, my grown sons, and one of my sons' fiancés. So, now I have a daughter. Being with my young people and talking and laughing and cooking for them, sharing a meal, going to music, either listening—you can be listening to music at home, but also, especially living in New York, there's so much live music, and it could be on a street corner where someone is just playing the drums and you stop and you dance for two minutes, or it could be at a concert hall, or it could be in a little underground jazz club—but I find that of all the art forms, being soaked in music affects me the most deeply and is a great joy. I also am ever more grateful for the functioning of my body. So, I'm going to walk home from work and just walk through these interesting streets with all these people. Who are all these people? What are all these snippets of conversation? What are all these languages? What is that story? Feeling how good it feels in my body to walk—that is a real, real joy for me. And then I guess also I would say tremendous joy in my work, working with my colleagues who are such good people, such helpful people, such interesting people, such devoted people. And every day that I get to encounter a grantee is a good day. And whenever I get to see and talk with old friends, that is a particular joy at this stage of life. Friends from another part of your life, either who maybe you haven't been connected with for a long time, or who you've stayed connected with, that is very precious. I love that all these parts of joy are really just connecting with others! These final two questions we ask everyone that we interview at Torch. The first of which is, how can people support you right now? That's such a nice question. I think by living out loud, by, as my dad would say in his phrase, "keep on keeping on.” Seeing the way that Torch has grown, seeing how Amanda has built Torch… that really is supportive of me because the world of poetry and Black women's culture, Black women building spaces, both physical and also in the mind and on the page, we are connected to each other in that way. So I think that for people to keep on keeping on as loud as they can is really supportive to me. Lastly, and this is sometimes unfair, can you please name another Black woman writer that people should know? It's super unfair because the ones I could give…like, are you going to be surprised if I say Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, and Toni Morrison? No one's going to be surprised, and no one needs to be told about them. But I will say, I do continue to return to them over and over and over again. I think right now a book I'm super super excited to read is by Alexis Pauline Gumbs. She’s got a book on the painter Alma Thomas that is about to come out, and her Audre Lorde book was everything I might have dreamed of in wanting to think about Lorde. Now her singular and gorgeous mind is turning to Alma Thomas. So I would say Alexis Pauline Gumbs. ### 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.

Elaine Omwango is a lawyer who has spent the last decade reading and writing speculative fiction. Her previous and forthcoming publications in Flame Tree Publishing, the African Writer, and Mystery Publishers explore Afro-modernity and Afro-futurism through the lens of familial, societal, and economic relationships. Born and raised in Nairobi, she is a lover of iced coffee, sunny days, and dancing. When not battling mystical creatures and journeying across mythical lands, she enjoys cooking, paints very badly, and occasionally dusts off her violin only to put it back in its case unplayed. Having managed to escape the courtroom, Elaine now works as a strategy and policy professional on projects that sit at the intersection of economics, politics, and social impact. She lives in Kenya with her family and hopes to write her next novel soon if she can stop reading other people’s novels instead. These Shadows Live Nawalu had set out to receive one hundred rejections at the start of the year and was going strong with ninety-eight. In truth, the metric had been nothing more than a thinly-veiled excuse to put her paintings ‘out there’ as her best friend Dalamia insisted. Though she hadn’t painted since her car accident five years ago, one hundred had seemed an impossible number, and yet the evidence in her inbox proved otherwise. Maybe if it hadn’t been so long she might have been able to rely on the strength of her reputation, but Nairobi’s art scene was as mercurial as the city’s weather. Veterans either carried their craft well into old age or ceded ground to younger, hungrier novices. Nawalu’s phone rang from the kitchen and she picked it up dazedly, staring unseeingly at the pile of dirty dishes from yesterday’s sleepover. A twinge in her right thumb signalled that the rainy season was fast approaching. Her body did strange things like that these days. “Did you send it through yet?” Dalamia asked in lieu of a greeting. They’d been best friends since primary school and stayed in touch through monthly calls when Dalamia moved halfway across the world to Singapore for work. Last night’s girls’ night had been a sort of welcome back party after Dalamia had ditched her job and decided to move back to Kenya. “Hello to you too,” Nawalu said, filling a glass with water and taking a long sip to ease a slight headache. Three empty bottles of prosecco stared at her mercilessly from the windowsill. “Nawalu,” Dalamia said in what could only be described as a whine. Nawalu had stopped talking about art since the accident, but she’d been a little tipsy last night and may have rambled about her current piece. It was a water colour rendition of Samburu pastoralists journeying across the Chalbi Desert at dawn in search of water. Her day job as an ecologist had translated into immense travel over the years, but the Chalbi had interspersed her dreams (and several waking moments) for weeks after she’d returned to Nairobi. So she’d chosen to do what she always did when she couldn’t get an image out of her mind. Nawalu glanced at the canvas which sat a few feet from her living room window. “I’m laying the finishing touches.” “Nawalu.” That was very much a rebuke. “The deadline is today.” “I know. I just need—” Her computer dinged. “Oh, my god.” “Oh, my god,” Dalamia said with glee. “Is it an acceptance?” Nawalu’s stomach sank as soon as she read the first line of the email. Thank you for submitting your work to the Nairobi Art Monthly. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your piece at this time. However, we encourage you to… “I’m sorry,” Dalamia said softly. Nawalu sank into her desk chair and watched her rejection folder climb to ninety-nine. “I think I need a break.” “From painting?” Nawalu sighed. “From everything.” The challenge had been fun in the beginning, but between constant work travel and even more constant rejections, she was feeling drained and uninspired. “Can I call you later?” she asked. “I’m going to take a walk.” “Sure,” Dalamia said. “I’ll come by after work and we can hang out.” Nawalu said, “Thanks,” even though she didn’t feel like hanging out. It had been ten years since she’d been able to spend time with her best friend and she really did want to make up for it. “For what it’s worth, I think you should still submit the Chalbi Oasis,” Dalamia said. “It’s an amazing piece.” “Thanks,” Nawalu said again and hung up not long after. On autopilot, she stepped into her shoes, locked her front door, and started down the street with no particular destination in mind. It was the last time she would see the Chalbi Oasis as it was. * The Nairobi National Museum was a proud three-story building that had been renovated five years ago to make room for newly discovered fossils, repatriated artefacts, and a wing dedicated to showcasing up-and-coming artists. Nawalu hadn’t meant to end up there, but the path from her house was so well trodden that she was unsurprised by the outcome. The guard smiled in acknowledgement and waved her through. The empty courtyard echoed with the fountain’s splashing of water. A light breeze ruffled Nawalu’s shirt, carrying the scent of rain. A sign in the lobby proclaimed: Turkana’s Paranthropus boisei on temporary display until 29 February. See it in the East Wing while you still can! Having been on the expedition that uncovered the fossil remains, Nawalu scanned the rest of the posters for something new. A temporary graffiti exhibit in the North Wing. New additions to the Wanga Crown Jewels. An immersive soapstone carving experience. She was about to give up and wander the garden when she saw a faded poster about the Cradle of Mankind gallery The Langat triplets return to the scene for the first time in a decade with a dramatic retelling of the evolution of mankind! Doors open at 5 pm. Free entry, donations welcome! A quick glance at her watch revealed that Nawalu was only five minutes late, and with how far removed acting was from her medium of choice, this was exactly what she needed. She briefly panicked about interrupting the show, but the gallery was so full that the doors had been left open and she managed to squeeze herself between the sound system at the back. An old woman in a woollen jumper and thick glasses smiled at her. “Do you mind if I lean on you a little bit?” she whispered loud enough to attract several reproachful glances. “My back isn’t what it used to be.” Eager to dispel the attention they were attracting, Nawalu shrugged. The woman’s shoulder was warm and she smelled pleasantly of cloves and mint. Her hair was shot through with silver strands, and though her skin was wrinkled, age had failed to dull its luminosity. The play was entertaining, but Nawalu found herself unable to focus, especially after she received a calendar alert to submit the Chalbi Oasis before midnight. The play ended, the old woman thanked her, and the gallery emptied. Nawalu sank into one of the chairs and let out a heavy breath as the crew busied themselves with packing up. It was only eight o’clock, but she wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and forget… everything. Her phone vibrated in her pocket. She reached for it and frowned when her fingers closed around something warm and smooth that most definitely didn’t feel like a phone. She pulled a leather-bound book out of her coat pocket and examined it in the gallery’s fluorescent lighting. Her phone vibrated again. Dalamia letting her know something had come up at work and they should grab lunch tomorrow instead. Nawalu hurriedly responded in the affirmative, then returned to examining the book. It definitely wasn’t hers, a fact that was even more evident from the neat handwriting contained within. On communing with the ancestors. Surrender is the essential ingredient. One must become a receptacle, open to the wisdom granted from those who walked a similar path thousands of years ago, a thousand times over. The value of this cumulative insight is immeasurable, and suitable payment has historically been extracted in a form and manner distressing to the modern individual. Nawalu flipped back to the first page, but there was no title, author, or contact information listed. Simply the words: From the desk of the Chosen. Another chapter was titled: On the danger of divinity. Ancient societies revered divinity above all else, oftentimes striving for it at the expense of that which humanity naturally clings to: love, joy, and belonging. However, this struggle represented not the desire to be a god (though that was sometimes the case), but the pursuit of excellence. One must be careful not to ascribe the same quality, or indeed exact the same demands, of one’s ancestors. They were, after all, the visible consequences of this eternal struggle. And another chapter: On the danger of demands (and the wisdom of inquiries) “We’re closing up now, ma’am.” Nawalu started, then laughed a little when she realised it was just the security guard. “Right, sorry. Thank you.” She dropped some cash into the donation box and drove home where she set the notebook on the kitchen counter as she changed into pyjamas and got herself a glass of water. When she returned, the book had fallen open to an ink-splotched page. On the necessity of embracing incertitude. * Nawalu didn’t so much wake up the next morning as drift out of a state of half-consciousness. After a long night, most of which she’d spent reading the leather-bound journal and agonising over the Chalbi Oasis, she needed coffee and a slow morning. Upon reaching for milk in the fridge, she was bombarded with a neon red magnet proclaiming that she should ‘just do it!’ A gift from Dalamia’s travels. Unbidden, Nawalu’s mind flashed back to the entry she’d spent an hour rereading yesterday. On the necessity of embracing incertitude. 1. Close your eyes and slow your breathing. Divorce yourself from the hustle and bustle of the modern world. 2. Allow your mind to wander. Think of everything. Or think of nothing at all. 3. Feel the spark within you. Reach for it, coax it forward like a newborn lamb. 4. Embrace the expanse laid bare by singular focus. Your ancestry hovers just beneath the surface, the cumulative experience of all those who came before you. 5. Descend, and think no more of your troubles. The more she’d read the entries, the more they’d seemed like a cross between meditation and self-reflection. Perhaps the owner of the journal had found peace in these practices and sought to document them. Nawalu let her eyes drift closed and allowed her mind to wander. It went first to the Chalbi Oasis, predictably, but then it soared to the actual desert and the people she’d met there. The stark contrast between their nondescript clothing and colourful jewellery. Blues, greens, reds, purples, and all manner of colours except those natural to deserts. Her chest tightened and some unnameable emotion welled in her. So strong was it that her stomach dropped and she staggered back. The coffee maker beeped. Suddenly hot, Nawalu yanked open the fridge and scooped all her condiments onto the kitchen counter. Mustard was such a beautiful yellow. How did they make it look so vibrant? It was nothing like the dull red of tomato sauce, several shades away from blood but still capable of virulent stains. Then there was the verdant green of guacamole, the creamy white of mayonnaise, and the cobalt tint of blueberries so close to ripening. There was no such thing as too much. She needed all of it. She needed more. “Oh my goodness.” The words snapped Nawalu out of her daydream, and she vaguely had the sense of something dropping from her hands. Dalamia stood in her sitting room, bags of food in hand and shock on her face. Nawalu glanced behind her and gasped at the mess of condiments that covered her island kitchen. “I uh—” She reached for a rag and nearly tripped over empty bottles of tomato sauce and mustard. “I was making coffee and got a little…” “You mean that coffee sitting on the counter?” Dalamia asked. Nawalu glanced at the untouched cup of coffee. “Yes, I— what are you doing here?” “We had a lunch date, remember?” Dalamia set the bags of food on the coffee table and came to examine the kitchen island. “You weren’t answering your phone, and I thought you were in bed depressed, so I brought your favourite.” Ghanaian cuisine. A smile spread across Nawalu’s face. “I’m starving.” “I’ll bet.” Dalamia glanced around apprehensively. “So, is this a new technique?”Nawalu cleared her throat. “Yeah, all the Gen Z artists are doing it.” She swallowed down her unease at the fact that she couldn’t remember the four hours between waking up and now. “Let me get some plates. I’ll clean this up later.” * Nawalu heaved a sigh of relief when Dalamia left. They’d formed a fast friendship in university ten years ago and Dalamia was one of the sweetest people Nawalu knew but she’d been unable to focus during lunch. Even the food, which had excited her at first, had turned sour when Dalamia inquired about her next project and whether she intended to submit a digital print of her kitchen counter. Of course she didn’t. It was just… a mess. A beautiful mess. Nawalu hesitated at the voice. Go on, take a picture. Just one won’t hurt. That had definitely come from outside her head. But a picture certainly wouldn’t hurt. She snapped a quick picture on her phone and got to work scrubbing down the kitchen. After that, she took a long shower and called a cab to the museum. This side of rush hour, there were barely any cars on the road and Nawalu found herself staring at the picture she’d taken. The colours were even more vibrant on her phone. Best work in months, no offence. Her eyes snapped to the driver, but he was focused on navigating the University Way roundabout. Not to mention the voice had been distinctly feminine and incredibly scratchy. Nawalu patted her left breast where the notebook was warm beneath her coat. We did a number on that one. Nawalu glanced around nervously. “Can you turn on the radio?” “Huh?” The driver took the second exit and continued along Uhuru Highway. What do you think it will take to get her to send it in? Imagine seeing our work in art galleries all over the country. “The window.” Nawalu fiddled urgently with the knob. “I can’t get it open.” The remaining five minutes were the longest of her life, and Nawalu suspected the driver gave her a less than stellar rating after dropping her off. She strolled past the gates, heedless of the guard’s greeting and straight to the admissions office. She would hand over the journal to Lost and Found at once and go back to her normal life. A cool breeze swept leaves across the courtyard. “Hi Nawalu,” Imali said from behind the front desk as she wrote up a ticket. “Where are you off to today?” Nawalu grasped the notebook inside her coat pocket. “I have something to…” Her voice broke. Don’t do it, child. Imali didn’t look up from the ticket where she’d already written Nawalu’s full name. “Sorry, what was that?” We came to you for a reason. Nawalu’s fingers tightened around the notebook. “I—” Nawalu cleared her throat. “I really enjoyed yesterday’s show and thought I’d see it again. While they’re still in town.” “I’ve seen it three times myself. They’re phenomenal.” Imali smiled and handed Nawalu her ticket. “They don’t start until six, though.” It was only half past four. Nawalu wandered the museum aimlessly until she found herself in the Political History exhibit. She recognised many of the portraits from her younger years when she’d visited the gallery on innumerable field trips. Mekatilili wa Menza with her polished spear and vibrant headdress. Field Marshal Kirima with her cow-hide coat and steely determination. Had such women ever felt fear? Doubt? Weight settled in Nawalu’s chest. Had they wanted to quit and kept going anyway? How? “Psst, over here.” It was one of the voices she’d heard in the taxi. Nawalu’s gaze snapped to a portrait in the corner. It must have been a new one because she didn’t recognise the woman depicted even after reading the name Cherop Koech beneath. A regal woman with long locs and thick eyebrows, she had lived and died in the 1800s and had revolutionised livestock farming amongst the Nandi. Once more, Nawalu examined her face but couldn’t remember having learnt about her. “Do you have it?” Nawalu glanced around, but the gallery was empty. All students had long since returned to school, and it was too early for office workers to have gotten off work. “Hello! I’m talking to you,” the voice said insistently. Nawalu caught a flash of movement from the portrait and nearly collapsed from shock. “Yes, you. Eyes over here.” The woman’s lips had moved! “I’m actually going mad.” Nawalu laughed. “Damn, I thought I had a few more paintings in me.” “Silly girl, you’re not going mad,” Cherop said and Nawalu couldn’t help staring at her mouth as it moved. The portrait was actually talking. “Do you have it?” “Have what?” “Is she the one?” Another one of the voices from the taxi. Nawalu whipped around just in time to catch another flash of movement from a portrait across the room. This time she recognised the woman depicted as Cierume, the legendary 19th-century warrior known for her use of a dancing stick in battle. “Quiet while I find out,” Cherop said. “It’s finally time,” the diviner and activist Ciokaraine M'Barungu said. “Silence,” Prophetess Syokimau boomed. A hush fell over the gallery. Nawalu didn’t realise she was shaking until Cherop asked her to step closer to the portrait. “I believe you have something that belonged to me.” Nawalu withdrew the notebook from her coat before she knew what she was doing. A chorus of relief washed over the portraits. “No, it’s yours now,” Cherop said when Nawalu tried to give it back. Anyway, it wasn’t like the woman could reach out from the portrait and take it. Or could she? Nawalu shivered. “The power in that journal has been passed from woman to woman for over six hundred years. Now, it is yours to pass on.” Nawalu glanced disbelievingly at the notebook in her hands. “How?” was all she could think to ask. Cherop smiled. “No clue. But I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” Nawalu couldn’t help a frustrated sigh. Even when the universe conspired to prove her madness, there was no easy way out. “How many women do you think have gone through life feeling sorry for themselves?” Cherop demanded. “Are you aiming to be a statistic?” Nawalu thought back to the Chalbi Oasis, which she’d grudgingly submitted and was waiting to be rejected. What if the reviewers could sense her self-doubt through the image? Was that why the mess — abstract, she corrected — on her kitchen counter had felt so refreshing? “I want to be more,” she said softly. Cherop smiled. “Good.” ### 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.

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.