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Penda Smith is a poet and educator whose work has appeared in Root Work Journal , Huffington Post ,  Frontier Poetry , and Muzzle Magazine . A former First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she earned her MFA in Poetry and Creative Writing from Louisiana State University. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, Hedgebrook Fellow, and VONA alum; her work explores memory, lineage, and the textures of Black womanhood. She recently quit all her jobs and is preparing to move to South Korea, as she is 27 with no prospects and no children. She loves walking, meditating, reading, and rollerskating. Obedience I don’t want to remember you as the woman who forced Islam down my throat, but as the woman who put my siblings and I in private school even though you could not afford it. I want to remember you as the woman who taught me how to cook traditional Senegalese foods: supakanye, theibou jen, theibiop,  and a leg of   lamb.  I don’t want to remember you as the woman who yelled, "show me your panties!" Or the woman who watched eight pm arrive without me. Who believed that I came home late because I laid with a boy as if he was my husband.  I want to say that the woman who sacrificed a lamb seven days after my birth, who named me after my grandmother, Penda Mbaye, was not the same woman who slapped me. Who flicked on the lights, stepped up to me, and pushed me out the door as if I were a thief. I want to rewire my memory. I almost hear you say, "The Bronx is dangerous for a teenage girl, but come here, daughter: You have arrived late, but at least you have arrived." I want to forget the night you kicked me out because I would not show you my panties. I did not show you my panties because I deserve the privacy of my blood. Did someone ask to see your panties when you were a young girl?   Let me remember that salvation is the mother who shoves white rice down her daughter’s throat, who chokes on a fishbone. Let me hold dearly the knowing that mercy is the mother who prays with the same hands she draws blood with. Let me remember that forgiveness is the child who remembers that her mother was once a child.  I want to remember you as a young girl in 1978 on a beach—perhaps in Ngor, Plage Popenguine, or Plage De Yoff in Senegal. In the sepia photo, you are skinny. You wear large circular glasses, a loose shirt, and a long chiffon skirt that brushes your ankles. I want to remember you as the woman who left Senegal at the tender age of 17 to travel to Mauritania, Los Palmas, then Italy, to buy and resell handbags so that you could provide a living for your mother and two children. Where was your first husband? Did he abandon you?    Are you afraid that love will always abandon you? Is that why you clung to me? Why you tied me to your back when I was a baby? Why you expected me by your side in the kitchen, even when I needed a stool to see inside the pot?  *** When I was 17, I prayed to get into college so I could leave home; when you were 17, you prayed for a green card so you could live in America. The American Dream: you would learn English, attend City College, and become a doctor. You would save, and send for your mother and kids. All of you would live together the way the American families lived together in the commercials: A woman pushes a young girl on a swing, they both laugh wildly in the advertisement for baby pampers. The scene of a family eating dinner on Thanksgiving, the mother passing along the slice of turkey to her husband while her two children play footsies.  You will learn that the American Dream is a dream. You will not become a doctor.  You will not get green cards for your family in Senegal. You will create a new family in America, and become a conditional citizen when you marry my father in 1998, and then a permanent citizen three children later.   You will not push a child on a swing.  You will work 12 hours at Seamen's Furniture in Harlem. You will not have peaceful Thanksgiving holidays, nor children who get along long enough to play footsies under the table. Your two children from your first marriage will grow up hating you, believing that you abandoned them, though in your eyes, you left to care for them.   Your three American children will learn to fear the sound of your house key unlocking the door. You will say that it does not matter if your children like you, but they must respect you. You will raise me to be a second mother, and I will resent you for it.  *** I do not want to remember you as a teenage mother who had to mother her mother, but as a young girl with a hand on her hip, sand in her shoes, as she posed for a picture while behind her, the Dakar sun laughed boisterously. I don't want to write about our suffering entangled in a baobab tree, twisting towards God—our salvation on the edge of a leaf's blade. But I must write about my suffering if I am to suffer less. If I am to suffer less, I must name my suffering whilst not drown in a quicksand of the self that clings to the pleasure of forgetting. As I write, I remember. As I remember, I sit. As I sit, I shovel my way to the root of my suffering, which is also your suffering. I breathe in, I breathe out. It was Eid the night you slapped me– the loose skin under your arms shook as you demanded my blood to exit. A good mother sacrifices. A good mother obeys her mother, you tell me, then you spat, "The Bronx is a dangerous place for a girl at night." Then you kicked me out into a dangerous place for a girl at night. Then you let me in a few hours later. Then you did not say my name for days.  You’d say, "Tell the girl to sweep. Tell the girl to fix my bed. Tell the girl to clean the bathroom. Tell the girl she not going to no open mic. Tell the girl that she needs to learn about the Qu'ran. Tell the girl that Allah knows everything done in the dark. Tell the girl to cover her head when she cooks my food. Tell the girl to say Bismillah  when she pour the oil."  *** It’s the morning of Eid. You wear a white scarf and a purple jalabiya. You dip your croissant in your coffee. Daddy, Issa, and Mariam are asleep. You and I sit at the white picnic table on the balcony. Daddy's work clothes, dumb bells, laundry detergent, and black plastic bags are piled to our left, but before the day is over, Mariam will be tasked with revamping the balcony. You gaze into my eyes as if you have seen me for the first time.  You ask, "Do you know why we celebrate Eid every year?" "No, why do we celebrate?"  Below us, on the main street of 161 street, a bulldozer drills into concrete as if to touch the bottom of the earth while cars and buses move along the road like shackled prisoners. The Bronx, a concrete institution, with little trees, and tall square buildings. Our balcony view is the side profile of another building. I don't need to be downstairs to know that the woman yelling at a man who is presumably her baby father has red hair, lives on the 23rd floor, and can double-dutch her ass off. Nor do I need to see the long line out the welfare office on the corner, or hear the crinkle of plastic as a Mexican fruit vendor drops three apples inside. “Ibrahim and his wife Hagar wanted a son, but had trouble becoming pregnant. For over twenty-five years, they have begged Allah for a son. Finally, Hagar became pregnant with Ishmael. One day, Allah showed Ibrahim in a dream to sacrifice his son. The next day, Ibrahim told Ishmael about the dream, and do you know what Ishmael said?" I know the story. Both versions. Christians say that it was Sarah and Abraham who begged God for a son; muslims say that it was Ibrahim and his other wife, Hagar, who wanted a son. In the Bible, the son's name is Isaac; in the Qu'ran, it's Ishmael. In both versions, it is a lesson on obeying God's will. Christians celebrate their lives through faith; muslims sacrifice and eat lamb to remember that Ishmael laid down, closed his eyes, and awaited the knife.  You are passionate and kind when you talk to me about Islam. Your white smile that can bring an alabaster seashell to shame, your raisin hands, thin gray eyebrows, your matching lavender headscarf to cover the onset of alopecia that arrived after you gave birth to Issa.  It's hard to believe that you are the woman in the picture. Not because you are older, but because the young woman who smiles on a beach smiles like she knows how to let her hair down. Like she knows how to praise God, and also praise the wild animal in her. I want to step inside that photo and hold your hand. I want to watch the Atlantic Ocean sweep the sand, while I ask you questions I am not brave enough to ask you now: Who was your first kiss? How do you know when you're ready for a boyfriend? Did you ever touch yourself as if you were your own wife? Have you ever been attracted to a girl, and still been attracted to a boy?  But all you can talk about is the Qu'ran and Allah. "Ishmael say to his father,  I go willingly . Ibrahim and Ishmael love Allah so much. They go to Moriah, find a stone, then Ishmael lay down."  Tears well up in your eyes, you set your glasses on the table, and I pass you a napkin. "Ishmael tell to his father, Let me look away. Tie my hands and tie your eyes because if you look or I look, you will not be able to obey Allah. " What kinda God sends a dream demanding them to kill their child? What kinda God gives someone something then takes it away, and why would any child consent to that? If Allah told you to sacrifice me, would you? Don't answer that. For now, you drink from your pink Queen  coffee mug, smack your lips, and exclaim, "As Ibrahim raise the knife, Allah tell the angel Jibril,  Go! Go! Switch the son with this lamb! So that's why we celebrate Eid, why I woke up early this morning right after fajr , so they can kill a lamb. We celebrate to remember how Ibrahim and Ishmael obeyed God. The lamb is holy because it came from heaven." *** If an ewe has not bonded with her lamb within thirty minutes, she will reject the lamb, and if the lamb does not find another mother, it will not survive. The first shearing of a lamb produces the finest wool a lamb will ever produce, and for that reason, the most valuable.   The lamb that replaced Ishmael's body died a virgin. Virginity is a commodity that can cleanse sin, commensurate devotion, and please God. I learn that I — like you, like Ibrahim, like Ishmael— am alive to please God. Restlessness boils in my blood, but I don't let you see it.  "I'm going to an open mic at six. How you want the lamb—" You interrupt me, "You mean Inshallah! If God's willing, you go to the open mic!" You continue, "Save the liver so I can wrap it around my feet." "Mashallah."    Was your first husband gentle? Did he learn your body, kiss upon your high cheekbones as if climbing a mountain, caress your espresso back, and then make love to you as if you were one of Allah's children? Or did he bulldoze into you? Did you clench your teeth, close your eyes, and brace while your body alchemized? How did you know what to do if you waited until marriage? On your wedding night, was there blood on your sheet? When you married your first husband at 17, did you love him? Or were you just being obedient to your mother? Did you honeymoon somewhere in Dakar overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean, or did you travel to the countryside in Cyprus, where you would take me thirty years later?  Laabaan , derived from the Wolof word for purification, symbolizes a bride's purity that confirms her virginity until marriage. Our conversation about sex was to not have it. That if I did, my husband would leave me because I was unclean. Why did you assume I wanted a husband? Unchopped onions, garlic, and bell peppers await in the kitchen. I rise from the picnic table. "Penda, why you always on the go? You don't care about the Qu'ran? This poetry thing will not save you." To be born into Islam means that an Imam shaved my head, and for seven days, I did not have a name until a lamb was slaughtered. Who was I for seven days? My blood rising to my brown cheeks, a lamb's blood drained in a butcher shop. Later that evening, there will be an open mic downtown. I could read my poem, "To Be A Black Woman in America," but I will not. I will not take the Manhattan-bound 4 train; I will ride the 4 train to Woodlawn Avenue. A young boy will slobber his tongue on my face as if he were an Ewe licking a lamb. I will memorize his rough hands, how he yanks on my box braids, bites my neck, then kisses me on my forehead and sends me home in a taxi. He is nothing if not a gentleman. I will learn that men are gentlemen until they are not.  *** A male voice sings, Allahu akbar four times, signaling that it is almost time for the Asr  prayer. Before you unfurl your brown and gold prayer rug with a stitched mosque in the center, before you touch your forehead to the mat, you say, "Wherever I go, my mother was there." You tell me another story. "There was a wedding in Almandies that I really wanted to go to, but my mother said no. But I say okay, I will go anyway, and before she knows it, I will be back. So my friends and I go, and guess what? When I go to the wedding, I fall and hurt myself. My mother knew what was best for me. She never wants anything bad to happen to me. When I finish school, she pick me up. After basketball practice, she pick me up. If I go to a party, she is there, and she would yell, 'Issatou! You know, I'm only so tough on you because you have my mother's name.'" You walk to your bathroom and motion for me to step inside. You demonstrate wudhu , a cleansing ritual where you wash the right hand three times, then the left. Before you face east in the direction of Mecca, I ask you once more how I should cut up the leg of lamb.  A good leg of lamb has to marinate in lemon, garlic, Goya, ground habanero, and should be sliced vertically, this I know. To preheat the oven to 350°Fahrenheit, to grind the seasoning and insert it into the cuts, this I know.  You close the door behind you, then say, "My door lock at eight pm."  That is all the permission I need to be let out of your line of sight long enough to experiment with what it feels like to be touched in the dark. I do not yet know that I will hate you for not teaching me how to have sex. That I will blame you for all the times that boys will take advantage of me because of my naivety. In our small tunnel of a kitchen, I chop onions, peel garlic, slice up bell peppers, clean the leg of lamb with water and lemon, pat it dry with a towel, and slice deep pockets into the meat. I stuff grounded parsley, salt, pepper, and Goya, then sprinkle it all over the lamb. Hours pass by, hair sticks to my forehead, sweat sticks my shirt to my back.  From Daddy's cabinet, I steal a blue razor, hoist my leg on the side of the tub, and bring the blade to my private. To prevent razor bumps and ingrown hairs, you should shave with the grain and not against it. You should not shave right before intercourse. But you do not have to shave if you do not want to. You can wait until marriage, or you cannot. It may hurt, but it doesn't have to. You might bleed, but you need not be afraid of blood.  *** Outside, the early evening rain is five months pregnant. Swollen breasts water quickens as soft tissue gesticulates in the womb; water carries litter and is clogged in the sewer. Backache and hunger straddle my umbrella— I swipe my MetroCard at Yankee Stadium, run up the stairs, and catch the Woodlawn-bound 4 train. Red explodes like tomatoes in scorching oil. The sun kneels and stabs the sky.  ### 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.

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

Yolanda Kwadey is a Ghanaian currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction at the University of Florida. Her writing typically centers African women and race. She also enjoys genre-bending and has worked on Subtropics as an assistant editor. Prior to the MFA, Yolanda has been published twice in the Samira Bawumia Literary Prize Anthology by Ghana's former Second Lady for her creative nonfiction pieces: “Mama Doesn’t Know” and “Life Is a Baptism.” She is also a recipient of the Rebecca Elizabeth Porter Creative Writing Fellowship by the University of Florida. The Museum of Fiction “Do Ghanaians really eat eggs with everything?” I look up from my notebook and into his round face. The stubble on his jaw is scant, not as if he has recently shaved, more like he is inducing beard growth with some miracle oil. I know too many men like this, seen too many ads from Instagram pages back in Ghana. The trolley is crawling slowly into midtown Tampa, that part with the redbrick shop that screams “Cigar City” with its signage. I’m in some kind of war with my mind because I want to write about the city’s beauty, situate a character in it, let them wander about the roosters pattering up and about the city center, but I’m short of words. I think of why I escaped Gainesville for the spring break, but I can’t think of where to begin. There are the rains, and the acne’d students that swarm every part of the city like the plague of locusts in the Old Testament. There are the overwhelming courses with the underwhelming lectures, and the overthinking how to make writing interesting for anti-Humanities and entitled Engineering students with the writing capacities of a second grader. Then I look at the stranger seated ahead of me. He has twisted his body like a wrung rag so that he can look at me, so that I cannot escape his sunburnt and peeling face.  “What?” I ask. “Ghanaians and eggs, is that true?” He angles his phone towards me, and the street interviewer is paused. A Ghana flag covers most of the screen. I’m trying not to roll my eyes. I wish they would come up with a new stereotype – like we shower too many times a day, or we are too docile, or something truly egregious. The egg one is no longer funny. “I don’t know,” I say. Then the trolley stops, and I rush off to escape him. I wonder what makes him think I’m Ghanaian. I want to be angered that I may have been nationally profiled – if that even is a thing – but I remember the shirt I’m wearing, which says “Ghana, Ghana, Ghana”. I feel silly, but I convince myself that I am only distracted. Excited, too. I am disappointed that the strange man from the trolley has deboarded behind me. I move out of the way so that he can pass, but he lingers, joins me from the side as if I was inviting him for a conversation. The sun is scorching, and Tampa is bright, like a mirror reflecting light on a surface, the kind that blinds you. I’m immediately sweating on my nose bridge and my philtrum, and my forehead and my chin. I’m already looking around for a shaded place to sit, to write and plan this crazy plot. It is hard to work out the nitty-gritties of any creative writing plot when a stranger is loitering around you, harassing you with worthless knowledge of your identity. “Are you from around here? I came all the way from Macon,” he says. He expects me to know this place, but what is a Macon? I watch the hind of the yellow and white trolley disappear down the street wistfully. It is a callous joke to alight the same time as this man when the entire objective was to evade his nuisance. I recognize now that my instinct can be absolute garbage most of the time, and then I begin worrying about this ploy I’m considering. I hope I don’t have to depend on my instinct too much – the same one that encouraged me to move from Accra to a hot swamp in the middle of Florida for a degree in English. None of the other international students ever knew the point of that.  “So, you learn and teach English?” they ask. “No,” I say, “I read a lot of research and come up with theories.” “Theories about what?” “People,” I say, “Human behavior.” “Like Biology?” “No. Like social behaviors and the possible psychology behind it,” I correct. “So like Sociology and Psychology?” “No,” I sigh. “I can’t explain it.”  I suspect they believe I’m not very good at English because I can’t explain what I do in English at the English Department. I wish I can say, “English isn’t my first language” and get on with it, but not when I have left my investment job back in Ghana to come read and write in the United States. I wish I can say I’m here for creativity, for the secret craving for human creativity. They have burned away all those books, and the ones they liked too much are trapped in glass cages in museums. I want to read those and smell them. I have heard they had a distinct smell, like a wet tree bark and the smell of something else – something uncanny that ought to be smelled to understand. Grandma told us of them before she passed a few years ago. She is the last person I know who recalled what it felt like to smell and touch the human books, to traverse libraries and feel consumed by human creativity. “There is something sweet, fresh, delicious about them. And when we read, we could taste the words in our mind, and our minds stored parts we didn’t know until those parts stirred in us, and compelled us to write, write, write,” Grandma said. She caressed the air with a fist, as if she were grinding pepper with a wooden grinder in an earthenware bowl. “Why were they burned then?” I asked.  My sister was watching a cartoon movie very loudly in the living room, and it was overstimulating me from the verandah. The outside air was stale with heat, but we were safe from the scorching sun because of the awning. “There is a witchcraft to writing like that. You mix things that you know with things the world knows, and you pour time and sweat and blood and tears into the mixture, slather it on a page. That’s a covenant right there, between reader and writer, an education so subtle you have to read the very last page to realize it. I guess the world leaders didn’t like that a lot, and the businessmen were obsessed with the computers and robots doing all of it. People are more expensive than machines. More than you can imagine,” Grandma said. Grandma is the reason I read so much. I read old passages about books that no longer exist, licked to ash or shredded into pieces of incognizant letters and words. There was a museum in Accra, for the Ghanaian books that were written by human hands, but it burned down in a fire – mysteriously – and that was that. I never got to visit. There is an age limit, and it was gone by the time I was thirteen, so I have grown up with only the strange fictions written by the machines, wondering if human fiction was tamer or more mystifying. The Macon man has given up on the conversation, but he has to let me know. “You know, I just wanted to chat,” he is saying, “there’s no need to be so rude.” I want to ask him to define rude, to search its meaning on the internet and write a four-page analysis on why this interaction is rude. His face is still red and puffy, and some of the skin on his arm is peeling off. His nose is long, as if it is reaching out for me, hooked as if it is threatening to attack me. “Females like you end up lonely and sad. I suppose you’re one of those who believe in the articles about women being happier single, but I know a lot of single women, and they’re very sad,” he tells me. I can tell he is vexed, but I know it’s not out of empathy for the sad,   single women he knows. “You would think exotic birds would be more willing, right? You know, in Ghana, cats are not very likable because they’re too witchy,” I say. He flinches, too surprised to hear me speak again to notice my humor. I’m disappointed. I want him to know that I like my neighbors’ cats, and that I pspsps  my way down the streets when I’m not running late for a university lecture. He shakes his head and walks away, possibly thinking of old slurs for me, maybe something about eggs now that he knows that joke. I stuff my notebook inside my long, brown bag, shove it against the sanitizer bottle, the many cards – state, student, insurance, Florida Education Association, library, credit, debit – and the pale pink handkerchief. My phone lights up with a text from my mother, a long message wishing me happy birthday. I suspect there’s a prayer in there, blessings in Jesus’ name, questions about dating at twenty-seven, and how is school? I ignore it and let my phone show me the way to the museum. Tampa’s Museum of Fiction is one of the few left in the United States, and my digital map says it’s a ten-minute walk away from me. I’m excited. And nervous. I walk down sidewalks, wind around tall glass buildings, breathe under the shade of the skyscrapers and the trees that interrupt the sidewalks. There are people everywhere and pet owners walking the creatures they have adopted to fulfill a deep mental and emotional need that they themselves cannot reach. A few bare-chested men in flimsy shorts jog past me. Two years of experiencing this phenomenon and I’m still left flustered – should this be legal when there are still complaints about women in crop tops at the gym? I think I shouldn’t really care; I’ve only been to the gym once and when my biceps burned from flexing them with weights, I never returned. I don’t intend to. I’m sweating all over when I arrive at the museum. It is a strange building, pink bricks with many pointed roofs that gleam in the cruel sun. There’s a courtyard brimming with deliberately cultivated grass, and begonias and zinnias. The air here feels cooler. I inhale deeply with hope that I’ll smell the things people have described; stick my tongue out and close my eyes, hoping to taste what Grandma has promised. I don’t feel twenty-seven at all – maybe twenty-six and a half years old. Nothing inside me feels different. Nothing has changed. I’m still a Ghanaian immigrant, still as dark as the soot of a burned book, still of an average height, still wondering what I should be doing with my life. I have all these years ahead of me, but what for? There is a short queue at the museum entrance, but I can see inside. The floors are tiled a dirty white, but they glisten under the bright white lights on the tall ceilings. When a person in the queue disappears farther inside, they seem to shrink in size, swallowed by the sudden change in the ceiling height. The walls of the reception area are pristine but yellow, and I notice that as I move with the queue. Golden letters – Museum of Fiction – are burned into the wall behind the receptionist, who is scanning tickets and selling them. “I’m so sorry, the AI system is down,” she says, scrunching her forehead so that patrons believe she’s sorry about the situation. She’s in her late forties. I don’t think she’s very sorry about the situation. I imagine she’s a bit happy to finally be used, to prove that she’s capable of steering patrons the right way without complex algorithms and codes. The wall on the other side is scattered with unrecognizable names – single names only – like O’Connor , and Hawthorne , like Achebe , and Poe . I recognize the name Shakespeare  because of all the academic literature concerning him in my department. I know excerpts from pieces he wrote that have been destroyed. I found them both thrilling and underwhelming, and I was strangely certain that there is more and better out there, to read, to enjoy, to stir up words within me to write. I tap on the notebook in my bag. I am determined to write – if only I could read something in there and have my mind fed with the witchcraft of human creative writing…. “Ticket, please,” the receptionist says. Now that I’m towering over her, I can see the copper mustache above her lip. The bright lighting exposes the hairs on her face, the splotches of hyperpigmentation on her forehead and cheeks. “Now purchasing,” I say. I grab at the cards in my bag until the credit card comes out. The ticket is $45, but I pretend the number is meaningless, convince myself a fed mind is equal to a fed stomach. Then I walk into the giant hall and wait to feel myself shrink under the tall ceilings, but I stay the same. The ceiling and its chandeliers dangle far up over me, gloomier, unwilling to share the proximity with me. People, exiguous, linger in couples and small groups, trudging in and out of the five rooms.  The glass cases begin in the long hallway, and the first of them has a QR code. It connects me to a self-guided tour that begins with a woeful adagio. The voice is nasal and pitchy in a way that sounds bored, and when the guiding voice breathes – which it does many times – I think I feel my auricles warm up. It welcomes me to the Museum, warns me to only look and not touch because “longing oft leads to a downfall.” I am not inclined to obey, but I wonder about security guards, probe for hidden cameras. I feel watched even without seeing any cameras, and maybe it is those yellow hanging chandeliers from far above. I try to shake it off, blame it on paranoia, convince the little thief in me that the only downfall that awaits me is unbridled creativity that pours from page to page and beguiles rebellious readers. I have read of revolutions, and aren’t the leaders listed in history books ordinary troublemakers that broke a rule or law? I think of Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first prime minister, think of him slumped in a prison, drowning in the stench of his own urine and feces. Any confidence I have – if there was any – wavers. I hate the smell of urine and feces. The voice, flat and pinched, tells me about the long hallway first, about the stained glass on each end of the museum shaped like a leaflet, and how significant it is. I stare down one end, look at the orange-blue-pink glass, but it’s merely a rectangle – its symbolism is arbitrary. I wonder if this is a clever attempt to induce the patron’s imagination, maybe a wisdom that evades me, so I stare longer. Then I squint, tilt my head this way and that way. Eventually, I must accept that I have wasted my five minutes on this. I let the voice drone on but refuse to align my tour with its instruction in order to embolden the rebel inside. “The case numbered four has – deep breath – some of the earliest and most memorable gothic – deep breath – horrors.” But I am looking at the bookcase tagged as 11. To Kill A Mockingbird. I wonder why anyone would kill a mockingbird or imagine one and think to themselves to write all about it. Crime and Punishment . My heart delays a beat, my fingertips tingle, and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being watched. The hairs on my neck are upright, but I bend, and my face is inches away from the glass case. The adagio is playing mournfully in my ears again, and I’m taking a deep breath, aggressive and expectant, hoping to catch a whiff of wet bark and a special something. The air smells like nothing.  I keep walking, rubbing the side of my bag against which the notebook leans on the inside. I’m thinking what could happen if I could just see inside a book, any book. The self-guided tour noise is over. There are five large rooms – for Romances and Other Fantasy, for Crime, Horror & True, for Mystery, and two for Literary Fictions. The large Literary Fictions room is for westerners, and the smaller one – only eight feet wide – has three books from every other continent. The plaque above Things Fall Apart says, “For Diversity’s Sake”, and I understand that there’s no point in pretending when the media no longer exists. I take out my notebook and write words, something to remind me to search old papers and journals for diversity of creative thought – from when artificial intelligence didn’t have a monopoly over creative writing.  Each room looks the same, books minted in glass with dark, hard covers that reveal nothing. I repeat the rooms over and over again, hoping something will change, willing the $45 to mean something. By my sixth loop, I’m crying, and my lips are quivering, but I’m not sad. There’s anger and hunger, and my stomach rumbles as if to amuse whoever’s watching. I repeat my lap a seventh time and strike my notebook for every time there’s a man’s name, and an eighth time for every non-western name – exercises to make the ticket price worth it. The people I started with are mostly gone, vanishing into the reception area, never to re-enter, wallowing in their own version of disappointment, I suppose. The glass casings are too thick to break, and when I loiter in the Romance & Other Fantasy room, I reach out a hand, touch a case. There is no one around, the watching chandeliers are only in the hallway, and my hand is on a case. I pretend there is a transfer of creative energy, like heat transfers between bodies of differing temperature, that this woman – Margaret Atwood – is making a special covenant with me.  “Hey, no touching!” It’s a grim-faced man drowning in a navy blue uniform. He swats away my hand, yells at me, calls me a grimy, rule-breaking hooligan – a thug. When I apologize, he notices my accent and mutters something crude about the immigrants. Then he walks me out, out of the room, out of the hallway, and out of the reception. I wonder if he’ll ask for my photo to staple to a board of criminals, but when I turn, he’s gone.  I sigh and stare into the begonias, wipe my tears although they have dried into my skin. I glance back and consider returning tomorrow, this time, measure the thickness of the glass cages, this time, come prepared with knowledge of stealth glass demolition methods. I think of Margaret Atwood and her glass case, wonder who she was and what she wrote. I may never know. Then I look at my phone screen. My mother’s birthday text is still there. All this life ahead of me, but what for?  I wonder, all the way back to Gainesville, me and my empty notebook. ### 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, retreats, and more. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers .

Kendra Allen is a multi-genre award-winning author from Dallas, Texas, whose debut novel Like The People Do  is forthcoming in 2026. Kendra Allen was born and raised in Dallas, TX. She's the author of memoir  Fruit Punch , poetry collection  The Collection Plate , and essay collection  When You Learn the Alphabet , which won the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction in 2018. You can find some of her other works on, or in,  Oxford American, High Times, Repeller, Southwest Review, The Paris Review, The Rumpus , and more. Her debut novel Like The People Do  is forthcoming in 2026. BABY POWDER Winter here is mostly a mix of every other season. It’s spring; then sometimes, it all falls down. Way more ice than snow. Lots and lots of rain. It’s prolly why Daddy don’t leave with no clothes. When the day can start with a frozen windowsill, and end with ya back sweating out a bullet, it makes it hard to connect to any particular feeling, let alone if you need to wear a coat or not. If it was summertime, I think Mama might’ve cared more about the changes, cause summer got purpose, and consequence. It’s the only season where everything is seemingly the same kind of hot. People perspiring. Dogs digging and panting into the dirt. Brain fog overthrowing all of our structures. Popsicles melting. Those were the times Mama needed Daddy around to fix the A/C or something. Jumpstart the car. Pull up the weeds. Because she didn’t like to sweat. So when I got off the school bus and saw Daddy sitting in his truck with the engine running—although heat is what I was waiting to feel, the only thing that came was, bout time.  “I’m out.” he said.  “Ok.” I answered, “Whatchu want me to tell Mama?” “Nothing.” Daddy pressed into the steering wheel with one hand and pounded it with the other, “I want you to stay out of it Minnow, aight?” I shifted the straps on my backpack from one shoulder to the other, because these people make moderate sense to me. I mumbled I will I meant I guess I’ll see you later, then “Lock the door behind you.” “Ok.” “I’ll call you later.” “Ok.”  “Why you ain’t got no coat on?” “Can I have my phone back?” I asked.  “Nah. I bought you some food though, it’s on the counter.” “Ok.” “Love you.” he held his closed fist outta the window and I pushed my knuckles into his. When he grabbed my wrist, my palm opened and hung there. I looked at our hands and he looked at my forehead, and when Daddy said he was sorry for all this, I jerked my elbow back but he wouldn’t let go. He kissed my hand, and that was weird because I knew he’d done it before, but that was when I was little, so it made me uncomfortable now. I didn’t show it, or say it though. Instead, I asked if I could leave my backpack in his truck. He looked uncomfortable then, too, but it was a Friday, so I did it anyway. I tied the straps together, took out my school badge and slid it under the passenger seat. When I went inside, I washed my hands, then stood by the door eating and peeking out the bottom of the blinds. Daddy sat in the driveway for forty-three minutes, marinating—then, he shifted into reverse, and pulled off.  That same day the temperature dropped down to thirty odd degrees and by evening, it was ice all over the roads so Mama got stranded at work.  “Don’t worry bout me. I can stay with a friend.” she told me, “I know somebody who live close by.” “How long?” I put the house phone on speaker, “You think school gone get cancelled?”  “Just until the roads clear. And let’s hope not.” she laughed, “But if the power go out, you know what to do.” “Can I order food?” “Ion care whatchu do Mimi, just stay ya ass inside and don’t let nobody in my house.”  “ and don’t let nobody in my house,” I mimicked. It was my favorite pastime; pretending to be her. I boiled pots of water, the way she would. One for eggs—so I could make tuna fish the way she does; with a couple slices of fresh jalapeno. & the other pot, I keep it going to pour water over the pipes the way Daddy taught me to. When he took my phone, I’d skipped so much school that I was close to being expelled, but even now, I still might have to repeat the tenth grade. Mama say she proud of me for how long I stayed undetected; how it shows I got a big brain and some critical thinking skills, but Daddy say I done lost my damn mind and he gone help me find it. Unfortunately, everything around here gets hid in the same spots; and I was bored, so I found it; in the back room in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet right under the ashtray he hides his weed in. It was a pair of old sandals to the left and an extra-large sandwich bag filled with enough letters to break the seal’s lining in the middle. I poured all the letters out because there was nothing like the reveal of what you already know, and what I always envied: Mama not the type to hide. She packages and places things in your face, so you can’t see them. Like: if Daddy had happened to stumble upon twenty letters addressed to the mother of his child, she knows he wouldn’t explore the situation no further. The love he’d want to preserve would encourage him to stay away from it. Because Mama won’t lie. I sat on the floor and lined the letters up across the carpet by name, but when I saw they were all from the same person—somebody named Midday—I lined them up by date. I read from old to new and took notes inside of a book cover.  Midday addresses Mama as: Sweetness My love Baby  Lani (mostly)  Things Midday be doing: Dirty mackin’  Speaking in code Not being discreet  Begging Asking to pay Mama’s ‘lectric bill  cause you got a fire in ya When I finished my first round of annotations, I came to the conclusion that Midday—at best—must be old enough to be somebody’s Granddaddy. At worst, Midday and his letter writing must be the reason Daddy say he done messing round with Mama and her mess. There was some other man who loved her, too, and he ended every letter the same way: Come back to me, Lani. At first, that made my skin crawl, reading that, cause Mama had said only my daddy and her daddy ever called her Lani, but the more I read, I started feeling independent. Free. Like wind. Midday was acting like he learned how to write for her or something; all his thoughts too spiraled with longing for him to feel any shame. And it was something about that I respected—in anyone—to a certain extent. It also made me laugh, too—his whimsical nature—cause Mama don’t like that. She’ll say quick fast and in a hurry: “Get to the end Mimi, before I forget.” But Midday say: Lani, my love, do you remember when… or I miss you and the time we… and  if you leave him...  round letter fourteen, I understood him to not only mean Daddy, but some other people too, cause Midday kept letting it be known how much it hurts, for him to know Mama be out galivanting with people he know. He kept mentioning Tony and Cass, and somebody called Sample. But I knew Tony. He was married, and Mama said he can’t read, so I didn’t know why Midday was making him such a threat. But I never heard of Sample. I learned he liked to play a lotta pool, talk a lotta shit, and hold on tightly to Mama’s hand. I wondered if Sample was the reason Daddy moved out or if Sample was just the finest man in the world, cause that’s the way Midday was talking bout him; getting angrier and angrier by the letter. Defeated, he said, cause Mama belong[ed] to somebody else ; which made me think maybe Midday didn’t know nothing bout Mama at all. She always told me don’t ever confuse the love and respect men have for a woman tied to a man as respect or love for women. “Remember that !” she’d say, “If you don’t remember nothing else!”  I got up from the floor to go find pants and socks and a hat; and as I thawed the pipes, I wondered if Mama was at Sample’s house right now, pretending to need his help or being too prideful to accept it. When the ice melted and she returned home, she stood in my doorway with her heels in her hands. When she asked had I heard from Daddy, I told her no, and when she asked where he at, I told her he left. She said ok. But it wasn’t about being ok. It was about information. When I told her I read the letters, she asked if I had any questions and when I said no, we just kinda sat there gazing at different walls.  “You can keep ‘em,” she told me, “if you want.” “I don’t want.” “You might. For when you get older.” she yawned, “I wish I knew one real thing about my mama.” “I know a lot of real things about you, Mama.” “Yea, but, it’s never enough.” “Are you in love with Midday?” “Girl, don’t make me laugh. Midday ain’t nobody.” “What about Sample?” “Sample is a nice man. You should meet him.” “Cause you in love with him?” “Being in love don’t matter with men, Mimi. Plus, I only ever been in love with you.” “That’s kinda sad.” “I’m very happy.”  & I believed her.  The next time I saw Daddy, it took convincing; and on the way to school—when he told me I could have my phone back under one condition—that I don’t give Mama his new number—he couldn’t convince me. I understood the circumstances, but it didn’t make no sense to me how someone who shares a child can get to make the choice to not speak, so I unbuckled myself and climbed in the backseat. “You getting older now,” he looked at me in the rearview, “things are changing, and I think you old enough to not need a middle man. You can speak for yourself, can’t you? That ain’t never been a problem before.” Those were his words. His phrasing. The prompt. & although I hadn’t seen him in days, that felt like all he was doing—talking, to fill in the gaps to where my questions would be. He rambled on about change and growth and the state of our family structure and I listened, but when he was done—and I asked if he decided to leave because Mama like to have her options, or was it because he was embarrassed that other people now knew about Mama having options—he told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and didn’t reopen his mouth. I looked outta the window. I felt away, and reconsidered. Repositioned. And that angered me; how angry I was beginning to feel towards him. I didn’t have to look at him to know what he was doing in my peripheral. I knew his hand was on his face, pulling, at his beard. I knew the sigh he had let out would be his last big breath until I got out. And I knew he thought my question was me picking a side.  When I slept over, the place felt familiar; like I had been there before. After I showered, I sat on the couch and Daddy told me his friend Ronny used to stay there.  “The one be cheating in spades?” I asked. “The one and only.”  I liked the apartment. It had one bedroom and one bathroom, and one door, but Daddy had redecorated the place with black and red and a vulgar disposition. He needed help. He was sinking into the seat; just sitting there, like a stump. I got his keys and ran downstairs to get my backpack. I had lotion inside. When I sat back down, I started to feel sorry about not being able to feel sorry, so I grabbed one of his hands. I think the gesture surprised him—or jolted him back to life—because he flinched as if I was a stranger and it made me rethink my own touch, even as I proceeded. His palm skin was soft, but the covering was as cracked as a map. I rubbed the lotion into my hand first, before kneading his. There was no reason to be so ashy. I figured it was from his mechanical work, but most likely, it was from bogarting the remote. He always held on to it too tightly. Over the years, I learned how to wait it out; would lay across the bottom of they bed looking back every once in a while to see if he’d doze off—because the next step was a snore—and a snore is when I could pounce and change the channel. But most times, when I looked back, all I’d see was Mama with her leg wrapped around Daddy’s waist. He’d be tracing her thigh with his other hand, and she’d always have her head right in his armpit, so she could fall asleep first.  “I’m sorry I made ya Daddy feel bad,” Mama say when I tell her, “I really am. But, I think this is for the best; the decisions we made.”  “Can I go stay with him for a lil while?” I asked. I leaned against her doorway and watched her head turn from Sample’s shoulder. He had his fingers on her thigh—not tracing like Daddy did—but squeezing. I wanted to frame the image for them both, because I thought Mama looked really pretty, laying there. She felt wilder, and Sample stayed quiet when it came to my Daddy, so I liked him a lot. “You sure?” she sat up, almost frowning.  “I’m sure.” I said, “Just for a lil while. You got somebody. Daddy just got me.”  “Minnow, that’s not yo responsibility. You wanna save people,” she said, “iono where you get that from, but you messing witcha own feelings and saving folk ain’t no way for no girl to start living her life. You not gone ever stop. And you gone be bitter when you never get thanked for it.” “It’s just so I can see him more Mama, dang.” “I guess that’s ok,” Mama got up out the bed, to hug me, “But make sure it’s only a lil while.”  At my new home, I kept thinking about what was quietly being said about my life. That for the rest of it—when I am a woman—and they are them—the only thing I’ll have is what I got—an offer. A helping hand. Not a romance for the ages, but for an overly-extended moment. I saw my parents as a success story, but over dinner—when Daddy asked how Mama was doing—I saw it as a step in the wrong direction. I reached for the sake between us, and when he didn’t knock my hand away, I poured myself some, and swallowed. “You know Mama;” I answered, “she always aight.” Daddy rippled his fingers on the table and made a slight beat. The whites of his eyes were always mineral-like and red ever since. Glassy. I didn’t know what to do, but I was tired of him acting so helpless and alone when I gave up my room and hadn’t missed a day of school for us to be together.  “Daddy, you still love Mama after all this?” I asked, “Like, still wanna be with her love.” He shrugged his shoulders. He was insane, and I didn’t know what to do, but I was starting not to care about nobody’s pain. When I went to see Mama that weekend, Sample was sitting on the arm of the love seat eating corn nuts and talking long, and I was dozing off on his story, until he got to the point. “I know it’s crazy how all this happened,” he told me, “But I love ya Mama. I always loved ya Mama. Been waiting on her forever. And I woulda kept on waiting, too. But now that the waiting ova wit, I just wanted you to know, lil Minnow, that I love you, too.” I threw my neck back to look up at Mama, who was looking down at me. She was greasing my scalp, and we both looked over at Sample, before looking back at each other, and laughed so loud all Sample could do was join in laughing, too. He threw corn nuts at us and held in his smile, but I knew he was feeling good. Important. When I turned to ash Mama’s cigarette, I caught him staring at her, and when he caught me staring at him, he winked at me. “What they call you Sample for?” I asked.  “When I was a lil boy...” “Everything ain’t happened when you was a lil boy, fool.” Mama was still laughing, “Just finna create the story on the spot.”  “You can call me Sutton.” he said, “That’s my name. But only you.” “What Samp tryna say Mimi,” Mama said, “is we think we gone go head and get married.”  They both stared at my scalp, and I’m sure I said something agreeable back, but I don’t remember. I just turned my face to Mama’s knee, so she could get my edges good. Mama and Sutton wore all black to the courthouse, and when they both forgot to write down some vows, I knew it was a sign they would do really well together, and for a really long time. That felt true to me, but it was a definite for Daddy. When I waved them away to their weekend honeymoon, I drove Daddy’s truck directly to the park around the corner like he told me to. He said he’d meet me there, cause we needed to talk. I figured if not about the wedding, then about getting my permit, but when he showed up, he wanted to talk about the future.  “Whatchu think about moving?” he had brought supplies to paint with, and a blanket. He looked put together that day, like he had places to be. “Move?” “Yea… maybe Shreveport or uh, uh… Mississippi. Maybe even uh, Corpus… Lubbock... if you wanna stay in Texas.”  “If I wanna stay in Texas?” “You can start over at a new school, I can start—” “We don’t got no people in none of them places.”  “I know that, Mimi.” “What about Mama?”  I asked, only because everything about us is about Mama. Daddy didn’t answer, but he look disappointed by the question; like he didn’t get what I wasn’t getting—that he could no longer care about Mama. He asked for his keys back, and started packing up the paint supplies. The mini canvas’. The brushes. The tubes of dollar store watercolors. He poured our rainbow water outta the Styrofoam cups and into the grass and was acting like he wasn’t the one who packed up and left.  “I don’t wanna leave Mama.” I stood to my feet and wiped an orange stain onto my black dress with the yellow flowers all over it.  “So stay.”  “Whatchu mad at me for?”  “I’m not mad at you.” he said, “Why would I be mad at you?” “Cause you always acting like you mad at me.” I said, “Every time I try to talk to you, you acting like you mad at me.” I said I don’t wanna move I said I like living with you I said But I don’t wanna move “I’m sorry about today and all the stuff she did, but you just gotta get over it. Wait until I’m eighteen or sum. Iono. But we not moving.” I stood there, but he didn’t respond. He reached out his arm for the keys. I hesitated. Gripped them tight, but decided to put them behind my back. As Daddy continued to tidy up the earth around us, he asked me to at least unlock the door so he could put the stuff inside, and I knew then—no matter what happened—what was said—by fall, he would be gone. So I kicked my painting into the water, and threw the bottles and the blanket. The only sound was my limbs whipping through the air. He stood there and stared—waiting for me to finish—so I threw the keys in the water, too. And when Daddy tried to hug me, I knew for sure he would really leave me here, no matter what I did. Even as he said he would never leave me. Even when he said I’m always welcome. Even when he said he wants me to come—it didn’t matter, because all I heard, and all he meant, was: “I gotta do what I gotta do.” THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Kendra Allen and Jae Nichelle on June 30th, 2025. Thank you so much for sharing “Baby Powder.” It’s such a compassionate portrait of a defining moment for the people in Minnow’s family. Where did you begin when conceptualizing this story? Ahhhhh!! Thank ya’ll so much for giving it a home. I feel like to some extent, mother/daughter dynamics are always showing up in my work, naturally, but with Lani and Minnow, I was fascinated by what it feels like to have a mother you’re in somewhat awe of; rather romantically or admirably, Minnow has a soft spot for the woman she believes her mother to be and she respects the character of her mother due to the truth-telling that takes place between them. Lani’s ability to accept the reality of her decisions endears Minnow to her more, and I wanted to build a story out of that acceptance, and I wanted a write a child who didn’t shy away from pressing into the fabric of her family’s current dysfunctions.  Agency and choice are huge themes in the story. Lani likes to “have her options.” Minnow’s father chooses to leave, and Minnow has to decide if she’s leaving or staying. How did you navigate Minnow’s complex agency as a dependent teen, yet one seemingly given a lot of freedom? Was this challenging? It was definitely challenging because freedom doesn’t exist for any child. I knew this was a reality that would have to almost slap Minnow across the face—this realization that even if she thinks she’s making the calls—choices have—and will continue to be—made for her, even when she’s caretaking. I think it was important to show how even if we see the power Minnow can wield as a middle man—at the end of the day— that power can only ever look like freedom on Minnow. Parents can make her optionless whenever they feel like it. Eventually, I wanted to move Minnow away from the narratives and backstories she sometimes creates on the spot as a way to cope with all the abrupt changes of her homelife and have her easy-goingness—her adaptability— to not come to a halt, but to boil completely over. To have the reader see her as who she should’ve always had the chance to be—a kid; and that took me years to figure out, that she had to become one when it was seemingly too late. I knew once that veil was broken, Minnow’s needs would be different, and because of this, she wouldn’t get the response she deserved due to her parents seeing her—burdening her—as someone who knows better instead of them having to do better.  In 2023, you  mentioned in an interview  that “Childhood, memory, patriarchy, (In)fidelity, death, mental health, water, and hands” are recurring and important themes in your work. And indeed, some of those show up in “Baby Powder.” Are there any other themes that have crept up into your writing recently? Ancestry, ambition, redemption. Grief been a big one for about two years now. Maybe repression, and how it informs desire. The elasticity of intimacy. Lots and lots of yearning. Tenderness, too. Those last three have caught me way off guard. It’s been tripping me out, how quickly they’ve shown up and how much they fight to stay and how much I want them to lead, now.  You are the author of an essay collection, a poetry collection, and a memoir. Not to mention your forthcoming fiction projects! Do you view these works as separate entities or have they all informed one another? Everything I’ve ever written was informed by the last thing I wrote. Ain’t no fresh, untouched ideas over here! I’ve learned each new thing is—in some way—is tryna answer, discover, or describe something better than it did in the last essay I failed to be fulfilled by. That maybe the medium of the new thing has to change, or the genre has to shift, and that very real thing needs to turn into a made-up thing. A poem. Whatever. But within that, there’s always a flow, there’s always a circulation. It’s never about not having something to write about more than it’s about equipping yourself with information, so you can have the curiosity and stamina for what needs to be explored once a thing is “done.” Because it’s never done, and none of it stays separate for me for long. It all goes back to those themes—those things are endless .  What has been the most unexpected event in your literary and publishing journey thus far? Writing fiction, for sure .   Every day it’s like, Girl, what is you doing, and why is you doing it ? You previously wrote a music column for Southwest Review, so I have to ask: what’s on repeat on your playlist these days? Ahhh! Ok, Destin Conrad for like two straight years, but on the daily, “Jumpin’.” It’s the best song I’ve heard in a minute. I can’t even express how good it is. Listen to it with headphones! Besides that, “Vibes Don’t Lie” by Leon Thomas, “Sudden Desire” by Hayley Williams, and “Come Home To God” by Amaarae. Mind you, I think every single one of these songs is perfect. What’s a personal landmark in Texas you wish more people knew about? Southern Skates How can people support you these days? By reading more books by Black women, and talking to people about them.  Name another Black woman writer people should know.  Jameka Williams! American Sex Tape still be on my mind. Also, Sasha Debevec-McKenney debut collection Joy Is My Middle Name will be out in August! Both books everyone needs.  ### 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.

Tianna Bratcher (they/she) is a Black, queer, genderfluid poet. They are a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, a fellow of Tin House, Open Mouth, The Watering Hole, and Griot's Well. A 2020 semi-finalist for the Miss Sarah Fellowship and a finalist for the 2022 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Their work has been published in  POETRY, Muzzle Magazine , Shade Literary Arts , Stellium Lit Magazine , Ink Well , December Magazine , and elsewhere. Tianna is an alum of Randolph College’s  MFA in Creative Writing program. They are a big sister and aspiring movie critic who is infatuated with vampire media, the lives of trees, and collage-making. Left Eye calls me after the breakup I knew what I’d find in the ash. Gut the wolf, girl. Drag his name across the coals. Don’t you think we owe every mother before us? We were born to bruised women. Vengeance is an heirloom. Show him what hell is how wrath swallows bones spits them into flames. Char his name with the temper of your voice. Girl, speak up. Be vibrant in your rage. Be guided by the passion of surviving Listen, they give us the tools to kill ourselves and take issue when we survive. Who you think poured the gasoline? Gave me the matches? Yeah I started the fire. I mean the man who hit me still calls me crazy even after my death. Maybe I am what he says ### 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.

Angela Jackson is an award-winning poet, novelist, and playwright who has published three chapbooks, four volumes of poetry, and served as the fifth Poet Laureate of Illinois. Born in Greenville, Mississippi, and raised on Chicago's South Side, Angela Jackson was educated at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Her most recent accomplishments include: her appointment as the fifth Poet Laureate of Illinois, the 2022 Black Excellence Lifetime Achievement Award from the Black Ensemble Theater, and a Poetry Foundation 2022 Ruth Lilly Lifetime Achievement award for poetry. Jackson’s most recent publication is a collection of poems,  More Than Meat and Raiment , which came out in 2023.  Her other collections of poetry include Voo Doo/Love Magic  (1974); Dark Legs and Silk Kisses: The Beatitudes of the Spinners  (1993) which was awarded the Carl Sandburg Award and the Chicago Sun-Times/Friends of Literature Book of the Year Award; And All These Roads Be Luminous: Poems Selected and New  (1998), nominated for the National Book Award, and It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time  (2015) that was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, the Pen/Open Book Award, finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and a finalist for the Milt Kessler Poetry Prize. She received a Pushcart Prize and an American Book Award for Solo in the Boxcar Third Floor E  (1985). Jackson has also written several plays, including Witness!  (1978), Shango Diaspora: An African American Myth of Womanhood and Love (1980), and Comfort Stew (2019). Her first novel, Where I Must Go (2009), won the American Book Award. Its highly anticipated sequel, Roads, Where There Are No Roads  (2017), won the 2018 John Gardner Fiction prize. She is also the author of the significant biography A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun: The Life and Legacy of Gwendolyn Brooks. She has received the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America, TriQuarterly’s Daniel Curley Award, Illinois Center for the Book Heritage Award, Chicago Literary Hall of Fame Fuller Award, Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent from Chicago State University, the Academy of American Poets Prize, and grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. She was a twenty-year member of the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC) Writers Workshop, succeeding the late Hoyt W. Fuller as its Chair. Her poetry and fiction have been published in many journals and anthologies. For Our People        Homage to Margaret Walker, "For My People" (1942) for our people everywhere singing their gospels and their rap, their blues, R&B, and their jazz, their soul and their neo soul, all great Black music, scuffling, scrimping, struggling to get by, for our people working as wage slaves, in collars blue, white, and pink, doing the best they can with what they have, hoping it will not be taken away with a pink slip, a sudden slip from a parapet, on cement into disability or welfare, or not, hustling to keep from being crushed on the unemployment line for our people for the way of years sipping summer from a tall glass of ice water, buttermilk and cornbread out of a mayonnaise jar, years testing watermelon, cutting s plug of sweetness, knocking on the round or oblong to listen to the taste, for the excellence of young boys running like they stole something but only owing themselves and the strength in their legs and girls who could keep up before breast held them back for our people and red Kool-Aid days, for smothered chicken and our cries smothered in a world that did not adore us, but ignored us or worse and ran us back on the other side of the viaduct where we belonged, not in the wild world we could conquer or excel in, given the gates opening and tools for redress for our people everywhere growing gardens on vacant lots, training roses and black-eyed susans and perennials in front yards, raking leaves and shoveling snow, scooping doo and picking up litter, washing and ironing out the wrinkles of everyday existence for our people running with nowhere to go, watching television and movies looking for ourselves, searching books and the nooks and crannies of history for a glimpse of what was waylaid, and what is to be, in barbershops and beauty parlors and ice cream parlors and the stone faces in funeral parlors, picking up children  from school from daycare, taking them to football, soccer, baseball, tennis, basketball, volleyball, having a ball at family reunions on Saturday nights for our people who came in chains tortured over turbulent waves, broken hearted, and broken tongued, and broken magic, broken bloodlines, strangled and whipped, distraught and driven to the edge of the mind and beyond for our people leaping to the sea, feeding sharks and myths and cautionary tales, surviving the journey to reach auction blocks a prurient pedestal for deposed queens, and chieftains, villagers humiliated, abused, raped, and riddled with misery into exquisite survivals, changing vocabulary and clothes, changing into sleek panthers and superheroes, making the world safe for demonstrations of protest and affection, all beauty and love, scapegoated, pilloried, denied the excellence we bring for our people grasping for gadgets and genuflecting to electric celebrity, worshipping trinkets and noisome symbols that blink and itch the eyes, gaming and gambling and laughing to keep from crying, and crying laughing, cracking up and falling out, drinking suicide, spilling milk and blood, gunned down under lampposts, in playgrounds, bloodied in drive-bys, in alleys, in living rooms, in bed sleeping for our people bludgeoned by police and each other, killed by presumptuous watchers, taxed for Black and driving while Black, shot in the back, falsely convicted, sentenced to dwell alone, and want to be redeemed, incarcerated in stone, tracked in department stores, harassed, stalked in malls, and all the places people spend and sell, our people selling loose squares, oils, socks and peanuts  on the corners of our desperate longing, for hair, for nails, for body graffiti for our people in the casinos, scheming in pennies from heaven with one-armed pirates, dreaming in die and cards and  dealers, dreaming numbers and playing them till they hit, for our people drowning in spirits, burning throats and pockets losing it all, spoiling livers, lungs, and kidneys, hearts with too much, each of us addicted to drugs of fashion, to ancient hurt, choosing crabs in a barrel or lifting as we climb, each one teach one for our people who do not belong to me but to all of us for we belong to each other, must hold each other in heart and mind for our people in the citadels of learning and the one-room schoolhouse, in the storefronts of funeral-parlor fans and the cathedrals of painted windows and arched ceilings that lend toward sky for our people in the baptismal pool, in white robes on the edge of the river, for our people, chanting and praying and hoping for a sweeter brew to sip and savor let a new earth arise let justice pour like trembling rain and mercy prevail as plentiful fields let our strength be matched by vulnerable honesty of heart may resilience be our guide, for we will stumble and then will rise more able having fallen, more beautiful having met each other along the way as we lifted each other up, hero-people who go out of their way for love, and stay on the way of goodness let our people be the people who remember and believe that love is all our portions all our currencies and all are one, each of us injured or exalted, betrayer or  betrayed, muted and declamatory, all one, each of us all of us, each private star beloved in the universe, each of us creature of burdens and singing angel merged as one, alive and moving upward holding on and lifting this earth, our house, precious and precarious, and God be our witness between this gravity and this grace, hold tight and fly Copyright © 2022 by Northwestern University. Published 2022 by TriQuarterly Books / Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved. THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Angela Jackson and Jae Nichelle on June 24, 2025. Thank you so much for sharing “For Our People” with us. What led you to expand the conversation that Margaret Walker started? How did you decide where to end? Margaret Walker was my Afro-American Literature professor at Northwestern. I was enraptured when she read “For My People” in class. It moved me, so I knew I would write something in response to it. Over forty years later, I wrote “For Our People.” My mother had recently died and I searched around inside myself for something to fill that big hole that her vacancy had left. I had to speak to something large. The largest thing I knew and loved was our people. I believed the Sixties had answered Walker’s “martial songs”. I had come to recognize from Cornell West that love is an active force and I wanted to add that to the conversation. And I wanted to open up the conversation to our planetary responsibility. And I had to end on hope, where I must live and end. Faith and love and hope. Your poetry has spanned decades, from Voo Doo/Love Magic in 1974 to More Than Meat and Raiment in 2022. How has your relationship with language, form, and purpose evolved over this time? I have always paid attention to the shape of my poems. How form and content intertwine. I find a poem to be an organic thing. It's an expression of its expression. It was in my most recent book, More Than Meat and Raiment , that I experimented with formal poetry. I wrote sonnets, villanelles (It took me ten years.), haiku, and sestina. I don’t know if I will continue in this vein. It depends on how I feel and how the poem speaks to me. Right now, I am interested in the Blues. We’ll see how the Blues plays out in the next book. How did you approach your role as the fifth Poet Laureate of Illinois, and what was your favorite achievement during your tenure? I saw myself as a servant of poetry for The People, and an inspiration. I modeled myself after Gwendolyn Brooks, the third Poet Laureate and first Black woman to serve as Poet Laureate of the great state of Illinois. I would nurture poetry in young people and people who were ignored. I have several favorite achievements. Like Ms. Brooks, I liked to give poetry prizes, but mine were of large sums as they were underwritten by people who supported me and had financial resources to show it.  My whole tenure as Poet Laureate was underwritten by the Community. The McKeevers and Madhbutis contributed to a stellar reading of women poets organized by Laura Kenton. The poets were Ana Castillo, Allison Joseph, Kelly Norman Ellis, Parneshia Jones, Imani Elizabeth Jackson, and me at Saint Benedict the African Church. That Faith Community was the source of my Laureateship funding beyond the state. It led to my fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and my project through it was Ambassadors of Poetry, younger talented poets who conducted residencies of two – five days throughout the state. Most significantly, I gave individual awards:  Dr. William Lawson and Mrs. Rosemary Lawson underwrote a $1,000 prize for undergraduate and graduate students. Dr. Cynthia Henderson and Mr. Prentiss Jackson underwrote a $1,000 prize for senior citizens over 70 years old. And Mr. George E. Jackson underwrote a $1,000 prize for high school seniors for a Woman of Admiration. I served as the final judge of these prizes, as well as the final judge of the Emerging Writers Contest sponsored by the State Librarian/Secretary of State. Your work—across poetry, fiction, and drama—often centers Black womanhood, myth, and spiritual inheritance. What draws you to these themes? I think it was the September 1968 poetry issue of Negro Digest that the classic poem “I Am a Black Woman” by Mari Evans graced the cover. That poem moved me as an announcement of my own identity. An awareness of our Black womanhood was common among young Black women. On college campuses, it was usual to see panels on “The Role of the Black Woman in the Revolution.” As a matter of fact, I wrote a series of vignettes with that title that was scheduled to appear in Black World Magazine in April 1976. But Black World was canceled that month, and my contribution to the early days of Black feminism went unrecorded. In Make/n My Music , a poem written in 1969 but not published until 1974, I talk about the transition from being a colored girl to a Black woman. In July 1968, I washed my hair and my Cousin Willie Mae sculpted it into an Afro never to see a straightening comb again and never to be relaxed. I have never abandoned my Black womanhood to try to please or appease anyone else. And I never will.  I always find something to explore in the experience of Black womanhood, for as someone once said, “When America catches a cold, Black America catches the flu.’ In addition, we have a rich legacy of creativity and the gift of laughter.  We sure need these attributes. I had a race consciousness in childhood,  but it was in my undergraduate years at Northwestern that I developed an interest in African mythology. In the Africana section of the NU library, I read about Shango and Obatala and other orisha. In 1977, at FESTAC 77 in Lagos, Nigeria, I began a series of poems about an African deity who would be Shango. This series ran the course of three years. In 1980, I transformed the poems into my play Shango Diaspora: An African-American Myth of Womanhood and Love. My sister Betty Jean and producer Woodie King had encouraged me to make that step into playwriting. In my latest book, More Than Meat and Raiment , I explored Hausa mythology. I used to read The City Where Men Are Mended to my summer high school students.  Wish Bone Wish is the story of two mothers and their kinds of love and the results of each. Love is the current that runs through my themes of Black womanhood, myth, and spiritual inheritance. I grew up on a street of churches. Next door was the Missionary Baptist Church, which I visited with my Baptist best friend Bunny. We had friends who belonged to the Pentecostal church a few doors down. We danced outside the open doors of the Sanctified church. But most of all, my family was devoutly Catholic. Our church was on the corner. But more than that, we were Christians. To be a follower of Christ is to be committed to love and social justice. My identity, interest in African myth, and spiritual inheritance are all rooted in love, the power of love. A love for all humankind, a recognition of the sacredness of each person, a faith in God, and my history has taught me the hope of something better. In a 2012 interview , you said your advice to young writers is “Don’t try to become a writer unless you have to. The most important things are to write and read and write and read and live and love and just try to tell the truth.” Why did you  have  to become a writer? As Robert Hayden wrote, “Know that love has chosen you.” I had no choice. I was chosen. I wanted to be a writer when I was ten. I was attracted to poetry the first time I read a poem in first grade. I wanted to be a writer like Jo in Little Women . But I wandered away after Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun . Then I wanted to be a doctor, and people approved. Chemistry and calculus cured me of that misconception. All I was compelled to do was write in my felt notebook and read Black poetry and other poetry. I went to OBAC, and the NU library had a poetry room where I cloistered myself for hours. There and Africana. My roommate, Roella Henderson, encouraged me to show my poems to Hoyt W. Fuller, editor of Negro Digest , soon to be Black World. He invited me to OBAC, where I might be judged by my peers. He considered Carolyn Rodgers, Don L. Lee, Johari Amini, and others my peers. OAC was a critical environment, but it was clear they had a mission. You often reference that much of your early work was shaped in the OBAC Writers Workshop. What influence did that community have on your artistic development and your worldview? I was shaped by the Organization of Black American Culture Writers Workshop’s goals and philosophy of creating work to, for, and from Black people in a critical environment in search of a Black Aesthetic. If you could make any activity an Olympic sport, what would you get a gold medal in? I would give Simone Biles a run for her money in grace, balance, and intricacy. How can people support you right now? People can buy my books and ask book clubs to feature my work. Ask me to do readings over Zoom. Support me for fellowships and awards. Name another Black woman writer people should know. People should know the young poet Imani Elizabeth Jackson. She has already been awarded the C.D. Wright Award, and she has published in Poetry . Her upcoming volume is Flag . Yes, she is my niece. Tara Betts has been around a while. Check her out in Break the Habit , and Refuse to Disappear . ### 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.

Tiezst “Tie” Taylor is a Disabled Black femme who is non-binary trans. They are a radical educator, artist-activist, poet, and storyteller. They have earned degrees in education (B.A. in the individualized major of Teaching for Social Justice, New York University & M.S.Ed in Elementary Education, University of Pennsylvania), and are a proponent of disability justice and abolitionist frameworks. Their work explores their experiences in surviving: Disability and severe mental illness; intergenerational trauma and poverty; and intersecting forms of oppression. They use their art and research to educate, heal, nurture, radicalize, and catalyze change for all marginalized peoples. Tiezst is an Emerge 2025 Fellow with San Francisco State University’s Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability, where they are working on an essay for publication on the criminalization of mental illness as it intersects with Black woman / femme identity. They were a Spring 2024 Brooklyn Poets Fellow and a past awardee of the NYSCA/NYFA Artists with Disabilities Grant. Tie’s work appears or is upcoming in Lucky Jefferson , Querencia Press , Midway Journal , Shō Poetry Journal , and ANMLY . Follow Tiezst on Instagram @tiezst. High John [A Duplex] After Jericho Brown & Zora Neale Hurston We get few chances to escape this machine, Each generation of my kin bound. Each generation bound to food stamps. Grandfather a pimp, me a whore– we hustle. American hustle is our hoodoo, In dream realms I try to outpace struggle. I fight to pay rent even in my dreams, Penniless, I cannot afford peace. When peace has a price, life costs too much, Stability is too rich for my blood. My blood is rich with pestilent resilience: We blood rich // We blood rich // We prevail! When systems fail us, we invent our own– ### 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.

Ashlee Haze is a Telly Award-winning poet, librettist, and spoken word artist from Atlanta by way of Chicago. Her work has been featured in Poetry Magazine and numerous local publications. She is the host of Moderne Renaissance, an educational and cultural podcast for modern thinkers. Her sophomore book, SMOKE , was released in April of 2020, with a second edition published in May 2023. She has partnered with the Atlanta Opera for their 96-hour Opera Festival as a librettist for two consecutive years (2024-2025). Ashlee holds a B.A. in Philosophy from Georgia State University and spends her time innovating ways to tell the stories not often told. Sing One We Know - A Love Story after “Sparks” by Coldplay “Oh, b*tch! His name sounds like a character from a book!” My sister screeches as I tell her about the man who would unravel me and make light work of the process. A black architect named [redacted] ain’t something a girl from Chicago could even dream of, and there he was, with skin the color of sunburnt magnolia leaves and eyes I could make a home of. I’d read all the self-help books by the time he slid into my dm’s. I knew that after a woman leaves a toxic man, the universe eventually sends love. Do not assume it will stay forever. That is a novice mistake . Our first date occurred under serendipitous circumstances- a rare Friday when I was not on tour and he didn’t have the kids. I flew to Baltimore and he’d made the drive to meet me after the Friday DC traffic finally let up. After verifying that neither of us was catfishing the other and acknowledging the butterflies we kept tucked behind our teeth, we acted like we’d known each other for years. I don’t know if we fell into each other’s rhythm so easily because he’d been married before or because I spent my life (sub?)consciously rehearsing to be a wife. I do know that it felt right at the time. We had dinner and spent the night watching Insecure  and fighting sleep like it owed us money. The next morning, as we were headed to brunch he threw on his “we were here before Columbus” t-shirt along with his HBCU track jacket and I thought to myself this man may just well ruin me- and I may just well consent to the ruining. I remember exactly what he ordered for brunch- the brisket Benedict special and kale juice. I remember the songs he played on the way back to DC from Baltimore, as I sat, both fascinated with the technology of his Tesla and bent on not letting him think I was impressed. In hindsight, I regret the times I admitted to being impressed. I know now, though, that it was not my honesty to blame, but his cruelty. I wish more women understood that. I remember the movie we were late to and him falling asleep halfway through. I remember him waking only long enough to grab my hand, and how I swore the earth moved beneath my feet. I remember the drive downtown and the tour of his workspace. I remember him telling me the story of the time he was racially profiled in the local Walmart. I remember him holding my hand as we walked to my favorite bakery- a journey he’d make 3 times and never complain about. Even when there was no street parking and he would have to circle the block because the line was long. I remember us stuffing the cupcakes in our mouths as we rushed to get to the portrait museum before my flight. The kiss near the Michelle Obama portrait. The moment he insisted on taking a photo of me, the ride to the airport. Bracing myself to say goodbye. Our second date was more perfect than the last. He’d used a little clout from his government job to get us a top-floor room at the MGM Grand. He reluctantly valet-parked the Tesla and paid for the overpriced food at the casino. We people-watched and played roulette until we exhausted the money we were willing to lose. The next morning, he watched sports and did a little work while I packed and snuck off to take a toke of my vaporizer. We went to another movie and he fell asleep halfway through (this is a pattern). Then we co-worked at a bookstore until it was time for me to go back to the airport. He made me listen to New Orleans-based rappers all the way to DCA. I would have been hard-pressed to think of a better heaven than this. I recall the details so vividly because, of all the things I remember, I don’t recall him showing any signs of being cavalier or cold. That’s the part I think has been hardest for me to grasp. It’s not that I missed some signs - there truly weren’t any. On our third date, he made the trip from DC to Atlanta, having delayed his trip a day due to work, but still managed to arrive in time to celebrate his birthday with me. The winter hadn’t settled into Atlanta by then, but the rain seemed like it wouldn’t cease. I had a hole in the sunroof of my old Benz, and the poor man had to ride with his hood on. For a long time, I thought to myself, maybe that’s why he left . I later sold the car just to be sure. We ate at one of my favorite little black cafes where the brothas serve your pancakes and grits with a little Earth, Wind, and Fire. While we waited, he picked up a notebook. “Draw me a beach house,” I said. And right there, in a rainy cafe window, he sketched me a 2-balcony beach house a poet could write worlds in. Two of the young waiters looked on in awe, and I knew he was a man I could retire in a beach house with. Then, as if scripted, a woman in the corner approached the table, apologized for interrupting, and said how much she loved my work. The ground moved again for sure this time. The rest of the weekend went much like the others. A movie- only this time he managed to stay awake. Lunch and lounging around in the rainy afternoon. He made me watch a Chappelle comedy that night. I try not to hold that against him. Our last date, if you could call it that, was New Year’s Eve. He didn’t make plans, but I wanted to be close in case he did. Another mistake . I met him at work and we drove to look at a property he was interested in developing. The agent was late, which gave us more time to listen to our favorite Luther Vandross songs. While we were touring the site, my white manager sent me a passive-aggressive text with the intention of pulling me into her misery. I remember my blood boiling because I was being stressed by a manager at a $10.00/hr job while touring a property with my architect boyfriend. I’d be back to reality, soon enough. Why couldn’t she just let me have New Year’s? I’d lived in his world before- a world where your good government job afforded you luxury and brunch in the wealthy black parts of town. By the time we met, I had traded it for the uncertainty of art income and a simple life that sometimes included being underpaid at a part-time job with a white manager who’s all too eager to remind you who’s in charge. We ate at a suburban pasta place on the way back to DC and parted ways because it was his night to keep the kids. I rang in New Year’s without those eyes. That hurt more than I have ever cared to admit. Shortly after that, the good morning texts stopped. The nudge in the afternoon didn’t elicit a reply. Sending him an article on the weekly hot topic didn't make me any more visible. I tried to reason my way through it. I thought perhaps it was work. Or the distance. Maybe it was the hole in the sunroof. Or the part-time job. Or my weight. Or the age difference. Or the fact that I didn’t have kids. Or his mother’s illness. Perhaps he’d wooed another woman with that skin and decided he liked her better. Then, after a while, rage took the place of optimism and self-pity. Finally, I learned to accept the brutal truth. That he wasn’t being the man he said he was. He didn’t want to be that for me, and there was nothing I could do about it . His absence was intentional, the same way his presence had been. He simply didn’t want me anymore and couldn’t be bothered to say it. Nothing can adequately prepare you for the moment when someone you decide to love leaves without saying goodbye. Isn’t that what love is about, though? The risk of devastation? At some point, he apologized. I don’t know if it was because of guilt or convenience. Perhaps he was the first of us to need grace, and it will make sense when it’s my turn to get in line for a helping. What I know for sure is that this type of withdrawal can make you crazy. It can make you think you deserved it, or maybe you dreamed the whole relationship up. Maybe I am terrified that if I don’t document the collision, there will be no proof that we were there- that there were sparks, even if you can’t tell just by looking at the debris. These days, we are friends in the truest sense of the word. To be fair, he’s been present longer than he was gone, and that means something. Together, we are opening the gift of a new beginning. I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t wonder what would have happened if he’d chosen me (that thought is a lot more fleeting now that the wound has healed). I am grateful for the time we had and for knowing that when the time comes, I want my beach house to have two balconies. ### 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, retreats, and more. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Soni Brown writes from the complicated spaces between countries, between family members who should love each other, between the person you were and who you're becoming. Raised in Jamaica and now splitting her time between Colorado and Montego Bay, she tackles the messy realities of identity, belonging, and family dynamics with unflinching honesty. She is querying her memoir about caring for a mother who abandoned her during childhood while asking brutal questions. What do we owe parents who discarded us? How do you heal from someone who can't even remember the harm they caused? An excerpt of the memoir will be included in an anthology of essays about adult child/parent estrangement, provisionally entitled  No Contact,  to be published by Catapult Publishing in 2026 and edited by Jenny Bartoy. Soni is a staff writer for Colorado State University Pueblo and a comic-memoir educator with Brink Literacy Project. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and earned fellowships from Tin House Summer Writing Workshop and Mendocino Writing Conference, plus a scholarship to PREE Writing Studio. Her essays and articles have found homes in places like Cosmopolitan , The Believer , Desert Companion , Sisters from AARP,   The New York Daily News , F(r)iction , and Africa is a Country . She wrote the screenplay for the documentary  Across the Tracks; A Las Vegas Westside Story. Her essay about leaving the United States for Jamaica after George Floyd's murder received notable mention in Best American Essays 2023 . She founded and facilitates the Papine Writing Collective, an online, do-it-yourself creative writing studio and community for emerging and mid-career writers from the Caribbean and its diaspora.  Haunted Paradise In Jamaica, we build shrines to our oppressors and call them tourist attractions. This thought occurred to me two years ago. I was driving from my home in town, passing the all-inclusive resorts that dot the highways of Montego Bay, on assignment for a travel magazine. I park outside the gate of Greenwood Great House. There’s a painted sign instructing visitors to “ring for service.” The ghosts of the past still demand we announce ourselves before entering.  A small woman appears to let me in, telling me “Mr. Bob busy but come.” I follow her down the winding path toward what was once a shrine to colonial power. To the left lies a fallow, fading garden where a carriage house peeks in and out of view. We emerge into what is situationally the backyard. Now it serves as the official entrance to this preserved piece of our painful history. What strikes me immediately is how ordinary this “Great House” feels—a structure that modern Montego Bay mansions easily rival in size and grandeur.  As I linger near the entrance, I notice a young family browsing the gift shop. I strike up a conversation with the wife hoping to get some pithy quote for my article. It’s a travel guide meant to attract Google's algorithm. My editor suggested a word-soup title: “Top Ten Reasons to Tour Jamaica's Plantation Homes Like a Native.” It's all kinds of wrong but I need a check. Living in Jamaica with North American tastes means constant compromise between my politics and my money.  The wife's expression mirrors my own internal struggle: curiosity about our past, anxiety about confronting it, and the desperate hope that somehow these preserved plantation homes might offer us resolution rather than just another sanitized narrative that erases our ancestors' suffering.  But resolution requires remembrance, and Jamaica has yet to build a single, significant memorial to the horrors that happened here. At least not on this side of the tourism corridor. Yet, here I am, part of the problem, preparing to write glossy copy that will bring more tourists to play golf and get served by people in colonial costumes. Greenwood’s owner, Bob Betton, is a Black. He returned to Jamaica after years working as a postman in the U.K. He greets our small tour group and explains how he acquired the property through serendipity. He got lost while driving one day and was mistaken for a taxi driver by Greenwood’s white owner. Bob gave him a lift to the house as an unexpected bond formed between them. Later, when the owner needed money, he offered to sell the property to Bob.   “When I bought this place in the seventies,” Bob tells me, “The white people renting the carriage houses out back accused me of being ‘a neyga man who wanted to punish them for slavery.’” It was a time of profound transition. Jamaica's socialist government had produced white flight. Families fled for Miami, fearing the country would follow Cuba's path to communism. Their exodus created space for Black political power. “All I wanted,” Bob says, gesturing at the polished woodwork, “was to turn this into a proper museum.” I nod, understanding what lay behind his words. This place, this “Great House,” represents both accomplishment and atrocity. A contradiction seen in its cut limestones quarried in England and shipped to the island.  As our tour begins, I notice how the young guide's narrative carefully navigates around the darker aspects of the plantation's past. We hear extensively about the Barrett-Brownings who lived here, their famous poet relative Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the European furniture painstakingly preserved in each room. When we reach the top floor, the guide proudly points out the spectacular view of the Caymanas Trench and remarks on how clearly you can see the curvature of the earth from this vantage point. Throughout the tour, slavery is mentioned only in passing—a footnote to the grander story of European achievement. When I ask direct questions about the enslaved people who made this house function, the guide shifts uncomfortably before sharing the plantation's most treasured myth. During the Christmas Rebellion of 1831, Greenwood was spared from burning because the owner was “a benevolent Master,” allowing his slaves to practice religion and learn to read. The story settles over our group like a thin blanket over a corpse. It technically covers the ugliness but does nothing to disguise its presence. *** Outside in the garden, I find myself wanting to feel satisfied with this nice version of history. The Christmas Rebellion—or Baptist War as some colonists called it—was one of the largest slave uprisings in the Caribbean. But what the tour and history books fail to mention is how women were instrumental in its organization, lighting fires across the island as signals for the rebellion to begin. The narrative centers men like Sam Sharpe while erasing figures like the unnamed woman who was the first person hanged for the uprising. According to records I've studied, her last words declared she acted so her children could be free. Where is her memorial? Where is the place that honors her sacrifice? I think about American plantations and their recent reckonings with the past—albeit imperfect ones. I remember the controversy when actors Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds held their wedding at Boone Hall Plantation in South Carolina, celebrating their love in a place where hundreds had suffered and died in bondage. The backlash forced a public conversation about the ethics of using sites of historical trauma as picturesque backdrops for contemporary pleasure. Yet here in Jamaica, where most citizens are descendants of the enslaved, this conversation seems perpetually deferred. Instead, we adopted a slogan meant to attract corporations and foreign investors as our national ethos: “Out of Many; One People.” A comforting motto that erases centuries of exploitation with five simple words. I knew what this really meant—there is no distinguishing among the people who carries the legacy of enslaver and enslaved. We are all Jamaicans now. We had supposedly reconciled. Never mind the economic disparities that persist along color lines. Never mind that the descendants of the plantation owners still own the hills while the descendants of the enslaved clean their pools. This convenient mythology allows us to sidestep the uncomfortable work of confronting our history, replacing genuine reckoning with a marketable fiction that serves tourism brochures better than it serves justice. We've transformed plantations into tourist attractions where visitors can fall in love with the tropical vegetation and parrot our statement for casual indifference, “No problem, mon.” How long does a place remain hallowed because something horrific happened there? What does it mean when the descendants of the victims must serve as guides, smiling and recounting a history that erases their own ancestors' suffering? The past is not past. The dead are not dead. *** Years ago, when I worked as a flight attendant, I would greet tourists bound for Jamaica's golf resorts and all-inclusive getaways. Many of these paradise vacations were built on former plantations. Their names still proudly announce their heritage: Rose Hall Estate, Tryall Estate, Good Hope Estate. With a professional smile, I'd say, “Welcome aboard,” while silently thinking, “I hope my ancestors haunt you and you lose every damn bag and golf ball, maybe a limb.” The thought was petty, perhaps, but it was the only resistance I could offer to the ongoing commodification of my country's pain. Now I live in Montego Bay with my white husband and biracial daughters, and the contradictions of Jamaican society press in from all sides. The gated community near my children's school has become the social epicenter of our lives for playdates, birthday parties, and sleepovers. They all unfold behind those security checkpoints. There, I must show ID and submit to having my trunk searched a little too carefully. The guards are Black like me and seem to relish putting me in my place. Or perhaps that is the guilt I feel knowing that it is my kind that does this kind of work. The residents behind the gates are predominantly white or super light-skinned, their surnames appearing on company buildings and street signs throughout Montego Bay. Walking beside my husband through these spaces, I find myself deliberately leaving inches between us, embarrassed to hold his hand in public. My fingers twitch with the desire for connection but remain firmly at my side. I know why. I've fallen into the age-old trap that from the outside looks like self-hatred or, worse, the pan-Africanist who preaches Black love while partnered with a white man. I've researched the family I visit behind the Montego Bay gates, seeking to understand if they were among those who received compensation when slavery was abolished. Not the enslaved, mind you, but the enslavers, paid for their “loss of property.” I find some relief when I discover certain families arrived after emancipation, but the dynamics remain unchanged. I am still the Black woman dropping off her light-skinned children to play with white Jamaican children, a scene that has likely played out countless times on this very property over centuries. My illusion of equality shatters one evening at a "Paint and Sip" party hosted in one of these homes. A white European woman, whose accent betrays her rural origins but who has found unexpected status as an auteur in our color-conscious society, asks where I'm from. “Kencot in Kingston,” I reply. Without hesitation, she responds, “My maid is from Kencot.” In that moment, I understand that no matter how educated I am, no matter how “well-spoken” or professionally successful, to some, I will always be categorized alongside domestic workers. This is not because there's anything wrong with such honest work, but because in her mind, that is what Black Jamaican women are: helpers, servants, nannies, laborers who toil in the sun because as one Jamaican white woman told me, our black skin is better suited for work in the heat. The European with the maid from Kencot made her money in entertainment, appearing in music videos for reggae artists who need to fake foreign scenes. What fascinates me is how her whiteness alone grants her access to capital and social currency that would be unattainable otherwise. Her mannerisms—loud, brash, occasionally crude—would typically earn disapproval from Jamaicans if displayed by one of our own. Yet her pale skin functions as both shield and skeleton key, unlocking doors that remain firmly shut to locals despite generations of belonging. I recognize this dynamic because I live its mirror image: Jamaica-born but only welcomed into certain elite circles because I arrive on my white husband's arm. At these events, I become simultaneously hyper-visible and invisible—a Black curiosity granted temporary passage into spaces built on exclusion.  *** The next plantation on my journalistic tour is Bellefield Great House, home to the Kerr-Jarrett family for seven generations. Located in Granville, on the western outskirts of Montego Bay, the property manager proudly tells me that at one time, everything visible from the house to the sea belonged to the Kerr-Jarretts. Unlike the more ornate Greenwood, Bellefield has a utilitarian quality that supports what a member of the Jamaica Historical Society once told me. This structure was likely not the main Great House but rather housing for the head overseer, built close to the canefields and sugar mill for the convenience of management. The property manager is a woman about my age. She serves as my tour guide. I ask her directly, “What's it like to work at a place where people who looked like you and me suffered?” She pauses, considering her words carefully because she too needs a check. “More than likely somebody in my family worked here as a slave,” she admits. “When I was offered this job, I didn’t want it. But good work outside of call centers or hotels is hard to find in Montego Bay.” The call centers she mentions are themselves a creation of the Kerr-Jarrett family. They’ve introduced technological parks where multinational corporations can outsource their customer service operations to Jamaica's desperate workforce of high school and college graduates. The hotels, too, function as modern-day plantations with their six-day workweeks and below-industry wages. As we walk through the rooms, the property manager reveals darker aspects of life at Bellefield. “For the longest while, the family thought they were being poisoned by the slaves. They had a food taster,” she tells me. When family members died mysteriously, enslaved people were probably tortured and murdered in retribution. “It turns out the family was eating and drinking from lead plates and utensils,” she adds. I wondered aloud how many people paid for that mistake. At the sugar mill, a stone structure now picturesque with lichen and age is operating as a restaurant and bar. The menu is American food for a Jamaican palate. My host points to where the grinding mechanism once stood. “There was always a big slave whose job was to have a sharp machete ready,” she says. “For cutting sugar cane that got caught in the mill?” I ask. “No,” she replies quietly. “It was for anyone whose arm got stuck in the gears. It was faster to cut their arm off than to stop the ox walking in circles turning the gears.” I feel bile rise in my throat. A coldness washes over me. The violence of the past is suddenly visceral and immediate. This practical horror, the economy of amputation over production delays, captures the dehumanization of slavery more powerfully than any exhibit I've ever seen. *** Days later, I met my friend Angela for a tour of Rose Hall, perhaps Jamaica's most famous Great House. The owner of Greenwood had described it as owned by a foreign investment company that had “built a fairy tale” around Annie Palmer, the former enslaver said to have practiced Obeah to kill her husbands before taking enslaved men as lovers. “There,” he had said dismissively, “is the Disneyfication of our history.” Rose Hall allows visitors to tour the house and then relax with cocktails in what was once the dungeon area. The original bars are still visible but now part of the decor of a gift shop and bar. This transformation from site of torture to site of leisure epitomizes the problem: Jamaica is selling its trauma rather than memorializing it. “It doesn't have to be this way,” I tell Angela as we walk the grounds. “In Martinique, there's the Mémorial de l'Anse Caffard which overlooks the Atlantic Ocean.”  I explain that the large, Easter Island-like statues memorialize the area where ships arrived with kidnapped Africans. It’s also the site of an 1830 shipwreck where 300 Africans died while the 6 white crewmembers were the only ones saved. I recall meeting the artist at the memorial when I lived there. I told her I was overcome with emotion, crying openly while a white woman casually watched her dog relieve itself near the cliffs.  I stopped talking as I relived the memory. I gazed toward the supposed grave of Annie Palmer, thinking about what real remembrance looks like, when Angela interrupts my reverie with unexpected irony, “You know l'Anse Caffard literally translates to ‘Cove of Cockroaches.’” Even genuine attempts at memorialization carry their own contradictions. These illogicalities continue as we return to the house, where our Rose Hall guide—a woman about 25—speaks with what we locally call a “twang.” It's an affected accent that approximates American English, developed specifically for the tourism industry. The twang is both a tool and a symptom, allowing Jamaican workers to seem more familiar to American tourists while simultaneously erasing another aspect of authentic Jamaican identity. Even our language must be sacrificed on the altar of foreign comfort. We move through rooms where Annie Palmer allegedly poisoned husbands and tortured slaves, but our guide's focus drifts elsewhere. She points out the imported drapery, the fine China patterns, the exact thread count of period-appropriate bedsheets, and how often the paneled walls must be treated to prevent mold in the tropical climate. Outside the window, I notice workers setting up white folding chairs on the manicured lawn. “For a wedding later today,” the guide explains with a practiced smile. “We host plenty-plenty every year and in October, our haunted tours are quite popular. We have actors dressed as ghosts and Annie Palmer herself.” I hold back a sigh. As a young girl in Jamaican schools, I thought of Annie Palmer as something of a feminist icon—a woman who seized power in a patriarchal world, albeit through murder and manipulation. Now, I see how this “White Witch” nonsense transforms structural oppression into the actions of one particularly evil individual. It allows visitors to condemn her exceptional cruelty while avoiding confrontation with the everyday cruelty that was the foundation of colonial Jamaica. Not a single marker indicates where her murdered husbands might be buried, let alone the countless enslaved people who died working these lands. The guide proudly shares how much work goes into preserving the lawns—the irrigation system, the imported fertilizers, the daily maintenance. I think about the cost of keeping this grass green versus the cost of creating a meaningful memorial. Days later, I had a lengthy conversation with the owner’s wife of Good Hope Estate in the neighboring parish. We talked a lot about mental health before she made a careful distinction. The property belongs to her husband's family, though she lives and works there. Good Hope was purchased and restored to be a place of healing and health, she tells me. People book the Great House and the counting house to hold retreats. Psilocybin therapy and yoga where people can address past trauma were particularly popular and something she highly recommends. Above all, she says, they are a working farm providing jobs and economic mobility to many workers who live in the countryside. I remembered reading that of the approximately 7,000 Great Houses that once dominated Jamaica's landscape, only about 30 remain in decent condition. “Jamaicans need therapy, healing,” she says with conviction. “We carry generational trauma.” I nod, wondering if this could be part of our reparations package from the UK—access to mental health services to process centuries of colonial violence. Then I remember the price tag: thousands of US dollars for psilocybin therapy or even a night at a yoga healing retreat. Beyond the reach of ordinary Jamaicans. Reading my thoughts, she adds that she researched whether her family-owned slaves and concluded that the best she could do was become a “job provider.” This seems to be the moral solution. This economic framing transforms historical accountability into a transactional relationship that preserves her position of privilege while claiming to address centuries of wrongs. It echoes what I read about a prominent artist from the same milieu. It’s a benevolent identity that requires no genuine redistribution of power or wealth. You can almost set your watch to the eventuality that someone will mention a Black ancestor typically deployed to dilute responsibility for inherited privilege. This selective genealogical emphasis is common among Caribbean elites. They claim kinship with the oppressed while maintaining the economic structures their slaveholding ancestors established. Privilege constantly reinvents itself. I say nothing to dispute her rationale. She is a nice woman and I need her connections and patronage if I’m to get freelancing work on the island. *** Driving back along Gloucester Avenue, what I grew up knowing as the “Hip Strip” later renamed to honor reggae superstar Jimmy Cliff, I consider how Jamaica struggles to reconcile its past with its present. Tourism is our economic lifeblood, yet it often requires that we perform versions of ourselves we think tourists find pleasant, versions that don't demand uncomfortable reckonings with history. I think of Germany's concentration camps, preserved as sites of somber reflection and education. I think of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, which confronts America's history of racial terror lynchings. These places say: here, something terrible happened. Here, we must remember. Where is Jamaica's place of remembrance? Where can we, as a nation, confront the psychic wounds that continue to shape our society? Social ills that range from our persistent colorism to our economic dependence on foreign visitors? How can we move forward without acknowledging where we've been? I navigate through Montego Bay traffic. I pass resorts, private schools, and gated communities built atop former British garrisons. I wonder what it would mean to create a space that honors not just the resistance of figures like Sam Sharpe but also the daily resistance of those who survived—those who maintained their humanity in a system designed to strip it away, those who preserved African traditions in secret, those who passed down stories and songs that would eventually become the foundation of Jamaican culture. Perhaps what we need is not just a museum but a national conversation about how slavery's legacy continues to shape our island. Not to assign blame but to understand ourselves more fully. Until then, we remain haunted, moving through spaces marked by unacknowledged ghosts, telling incomplete stories, and wondering why the past still feels so painfully present. ### 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, retreats, and more. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Courtney Conrad is a Jamaican poet. Her debut pamphlet I Am Evidence, is published by Bloodaxe Books. She’s won the Eric Gregory Award, Michael Marks Award, Bridport Prize Young Writers Award and Mslexia Women’s Pamphlet Prize. Shortlisted for The White Review Poet's Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize, the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition, the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award’s Poetry Prize, the Bridport Poetry Prize, the Derby Poetry Festival Poetry Prize and the Poetry Wales Pamphlet competition. Her poems have appeared in Callaloo, Prairie Schooner, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Poetry Review, Magma Poetry, Propel Magazine, Poetry Wales, The White Review, Stand Magazine, The Indianapolis Review, Bath Magg, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Anthropocene Poetry Journal, Lumiere Review and The Adriatic Magazine . Her work has been anthologised by Anamot Press, Bridport Prize, Re.creation, Peekash Press, Bad Betty Press and Flipped Eye Press. She is currently a Cave Canem fellow and an alumna of The London Library Emerging Writers Programme, Malika's Poetry Kitchen, Barbican Young Poets, Obsidian Foundation Fellow, Griots Well Collective, Poet in the City Producers Programme, Out-Spoken Press Emerging Poets Development Scheme and Roundhouse Poetry Collective. She has performed at Glastonbury Festival, The U.S. Embassy, Brainchild Festival and UKYA City Takeover. She has been commissioned by the Museum of London, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Fuel Theatre, Apples and Snakes, Victoria & Albert Museum, Guildhall, Tate Britain, The African Centre, BBC 1Xtra, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Birth Rites Collection, Tommy’s, The Sidings, John's Hopkins University, The University of Warwick, Weclome Trust and Spread the Word. Job 1:1-2:10 It’s unfortunate how pain reaches the innocent, the way cupped hands find bald heads to slap. I imagine Job bald and Satan’s hand in formation. Job’s children and livestock, all dead; friends, health, properties, all gone. Armoured loyalty proclaims the Lord gives and takes away; still, his name is to be praised . Mama too, hopes in the Lord. Plants her last into the offering basket, faithfully waiting to reap a harvest of blessings. I would pray for Judas’ resurrection to pickpocket on our behalf, but my faith is decrepit. Mama says nuh worry, God always shows up on time . While we wait for recompense, our landlord’s calculator and outstretched palm arrive first. Mama’s hand runs through her hair. Stress gives her enough strands for a wig. Satan stands behind her at the ready. ### 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, retreats, and more. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Jā. R. Macki is the author of Linus Baby (Pie Face Child Press, 2023). Her writing and visual art have appeared in midnight & indigo , The Spectacle , Skink Beat Review , RipRap46 , and forthcoming from Brown Sugar Lit . She is from Chicago and holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He and I after Natalia Ginzburg for Jasminum When the samaras parachute from the branches, I take spring walks to the good parks with my father. He picks up the winged ends from the ground and turns them into helicopters with his bare hands to amuse then shows me how. In summer, when Chicago is at its best, he takes me to 7-Eleven for suicide Slurpees. He takes me to Toys R Us on his paydays for whatever I want. I want white Barbie dolls. I want the Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle. I want the moist rubber squish of neon green Gak. In winter months, he can grease a small child’s face with Vaseline better than most mamas. He does not speak any language other than English. And I speak and understand a decent amount of French. He navigates Chicago streets well; I do not navigate the city’s streets well without GPS. He travels to new cities. I travel to new cities. I do not know if he moves about those cities like a thoughtless butterfly because I do not travel with him to cities. I learned he has traveled to cities in other people’s armchair conversations about him. He likes crossword puzzles, Montblanc pens, and music, especially music. I like music, crossword puzzles don’t mean much to me, and I like the glide of a Zebra F-301 on canary yellow legal paper. He likes James Brown. I like Michael Jackson. Surprise! I learned that, besides having a passion for basketball, he also likes bowling and is good at it. I do not bowl often, but I’ve known strikes. I love and understand one thing in the world, and that is feelings. He likes the Mister Shop, and I will go with him willingly with curiosity and admiration to the North Riverside Mall through the second-floor entrance right next to the Sears and down the escalator to watch him try on Mauri’s. He has a distinguished sense of style. He adorns himself with jewelry and keeps his nails clean. His attire is that of a man you’d want to sweep you off your feet, while my style is inspired by his through the lens of a woman we both love. He buys underwear and socks at Burlington. And I follow him to the gun and jewelry stores, a pawn shop. He is well-dressed, even in casual clothes. Right hand to God. And I am dressed well enough most days, but will wear a faded, oil-stained Misfits t-shirt to run errands. He is not shy. He is quiet. His quietness does not make him standoffish. He’s laid back. Kool as his cigarettes. And I am quiet until my observations are complete. He likes precision and order. He washes his car and cleans the vents and crevices with Q-tips. He is meticulous. And I find order in the chaos I create. He loves from a distance.                                                                He teaches me how.  And I am loved  becomes a problem I want to solve. He orders a combination beef from Portillo’s, dipped with sweet and hot peppers, fries, and a strawberry shake. I order a jumbo chili cheese dog or a grilled chicken sandwich on croissant with extra mayo and American cheese, fries, and chocolate malt. I fill the paper cups with ketchup for him. Then we squeeze across the red vinyl booth seats. He orders Hi-C orange no matter what his McDonald’s order is. And I order Hi-C orange and remember him. He does not have brothers, but he ensured I had a secret one. He is tall, and I am short. He is funny, and I am told I’m funny too, though I am often in disbelief. He is charming, chivalrous, and women give him attention. I am charming and chivalrous, and women give me attention. He has a name spelled with two capital “M’s.” I have a name spelled with two capital “M’s.” He has a small two-bedroom house in his name, 35 miles away, I never lived in. I had a home in my mother’s name I lived in all the time. He doesn’t like to talk on the phone when he’s home, but I can call him at work. He writes me letters like he lives out of state. And I write him back. He tells me my penmanship has improved. In exchange for being born, I get to be the reason why he’s not home when he’s not home, even though he’s not with me.  He inspects luxury items for their authenticity. He turns his palms into scales that weigh gold. He stretches his toes down the scaled throats of crocodiles, gators, and snakes. He rubs the tanned skins, discerning the suppleness beneath his fingertips before inhaling the mild, slightly sweet, earthy smell of a natural good. Like a spirit conjured at a séance, He tells me he got married through my mother’s voice across the kitchen table, and I find it curious his sudden preoccupation with knockoffs. He is missed before death because he died when I was eight, and I buried him when I was thirty-three. He is missed before death, and I am the one who does the missing, always. He makes promises a tight knot, then loosens them like party balloons ascending into the deep blue sky of my soul. He picks a bouquet of forget-me-nots, and every petal is stuck on he loves me. He knows how to change a tire roadside. And I am stranded roadside for things he did not teach me. He played baseball in his youth and was good. I played basketball in my youth and wasn’t. When I take interest in his sports acumen, he tells me I know nothing.  He has an incredible number of tools because he doesn’t believe in paying someone else to do what he can do for himself. He sews a patch of himself into a new family. And my needs turn into ghosts that don’t haunt him. He leaves his blood unfinished. And I have drafts on him that are unfinished, too.  At the show, he likes to sit wherever I want to. We do not go with others, and he often falls asleep and snores to the Addams Family Values , Candyman , and Tank Girl , but not Friday After Next .          He tells me I know nothing (about him), but this is not true. I am curious about a few, a very few things, namely, the amount of writing about him it will take to patch a hole. He is handsome, especially when he smiles with teeth, which he rarely does. He is the type of handsome that will make a funeral director seek an immediate manicure in anticipation of seeing him again. Everything I do is done laboriously, with great difficulty and uncertainty, like my relationship with him. If I want to finish anything important, I procrastinate because I cling to a mountain of inadequacy I scale every time I advance a step on my intended path. The goodness is a menacing giant reaching down the beanstalk. “Congratulations” is a phantom. He doesn’t understand his impact, and He and I are on season 33.          He tells me had he died first, I  wouldn’t be so sad. And I  feel guilty when I think he’s right. He is handy. And I am not. He finds time for minor repairs on my mother’s home. He patches some piece of our relationship that lifts and falls from an unfinished wall down to the concrete basement floor. He is reactive when I tell the woman he shares his life with about the importance of my phone calls. The authority in his voice is ineffective, a foreign language I don’t understand. And I regret calling him. He doesn’t know how to type, though I taught him to text. But I do not receive his texts often. I don’t know how to use a gun, and he does. If I suggest that he take me to the gun range, he scoffs at the idea and says I’m too sensitive, though I’ve witnessed him at Thanksgiving saying that every woman should have a gun; I am not a woman to him. He is a doorman. When I want to elevate who he is at work, I say he’s a concierge. I see him as a successful man. When I fail at things, I remember he’s not. He tells me he loves me. And I am suspicious of I love you . He is prideful and will decline lunch invitations if I’m paying. Some of his pride sticks to me and creates a barrier between me and those left to love me. He doesn’t cry. He maintains that if a man has to cry, he better not do it in front of his woman. He insists the man must go somewhere else. Take a walk to cry. And I cry whenever my heart is moved. I cry openly and without shame. I cry loudly on benches in front of beautiful fountains. I cry until I cannot breathe through my nose. I cry until my voice sounds like it’s stuck in a bag of water. My sensitivity is a consciousness he sees as a blind spot. When I cry around him, he tries to stop it immediately. I used to think he couldn’t stand to witness my tears, but now I wonder who taught him to banish/outlaw/suppress them if every cigarette smoked was an unshed tear.  He doesn’t cry, but he took the opportunity at my mother’s funeral. And I sat there beside him, stunned by the state of branches. In the splintered memory of my childhood, it is morning, and he is still in his towel, curly black hairs scattered across his chest, brushing his teeth at the bathroom sink behind a thin curtain of shower steam vanishing through the doorway, scenting the hall of our large one-bedroom apartment with the masculine and high end scent of Photo by Karl Lagerfeld. He likes Barq’s root beer with sausage and cheese pizza from Home Run Inn on 31st Street. He likes a fresh Chicago mix and good cigars. He adorns his ears with diamond studs clear as water. The greatest thing he ever achieved was this hole to the left of my sternum where I keep his eight-year-old daughter. He does not help her get over how she hesitates before doing anything, or her love for him. And so, more than ever, I feel. But behind my smile, I am quieting a rage. at post burial GoFundMes and an unmarked grave  3287 days and counting. Every time I walk this cemetery on the occasion of death I hope to see the mark of your final resting place but there is none and I wonder if you ever Existed He can be silly and fun to be around. He has a hearty laugh that gets stuck in his throat and sounds like air released from a balloon for half a sec before it fills the room. When he’s around, I forget my feelings before and ask him no questions about time, though I burn for ancient answers. He has a heart tattoo on his arm with his daughter’s name inked across its ribbon. He keeps her kindergarten graduation picture in his locker at work for more than 25 years. He is proud of someone he made. I think. He takes her to Lincoln Park Zoo and the Museum of Science and Industry, but she likes the museum the best. She asks him to take her to the coal miner’s exhibit because she likes the rush and rumble of the metal elevator ride in the dark. She learns the important role of canaries in mines and how they warned of toxic gas. [...] ### 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, retreats, and more. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Deesha Philyaw is the award-winning author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies . Deesha Philyaw ’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies , won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. Deesha is a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a Baldwin for the Arts Fellow, a United States Artists Fellow, and co-host of two podcasts, Ursa Short Fiction (with Dawnie Walton) and Reckon True Stories (with Kiese Laymon). She is currently at work developing TV shows based on her short fiction. Deesha’s debut novel, The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman , is forthcoming from Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, in 2026. Snap “Birds taught a lot of men how to become caring men.” – William “Speedy” Boykins “You can have success.” – Paul Gomez Despite his absence and his negligence, or perhaps because of them, my earliest memory is of my father. We are at the house where I live with my mother and my grandmother. This is the only time I remember him being inside our house in the eighteen years I lived there. In this memory, I’m a toddler, not yet potty trained. I know this because my mother has called my father to come and force me to sit on the potty.  My father arrives, and he is angry and threatens to spank me. I don’t want him to spank me or to be angry with me. I want him to love me. Somehow, I already understand that his love is tenuous. So I sit on the potty. When he begins to leave, I notice that wrestling (the fake kind) is on TV. I recall seeing my father, grandfather, and uncles watching wrestling during the occasional weekends I spend at my grandparents’ house, the house where my father lives with his parents and siblings — or rather, the place where he gets his mail and changes his clothes once or twice a week. Because I know my father likes wrestling, I try to point out that wrestling is on the TV: to get in his good graces, to put the whole potty thing behind us. But either I don’t have the words to tell him, or he’s ignoring me. I am not yet toilet-trained, but already I’m trying to figure out how to make my father stay. In 1971, when 22-year-old Cornell Norwood was forming the Black Country Roller Club for Black male pigeon fanciers , I was born to my 18-year-old mother and 20-year-old father, Donald, who everybody called Snap though I never knew why. Did they call him “Snap” because he was a short, scrawny man, “not bigger than a minute,” as some old folks would say while snapping their fingers? Or was it because you could snap your fingers and he was gone that quickly from wherever he had been just before — a woman’s life, or a child’s? I said a long time ago that I was done writing about my father. That I had said all that I wanted or needed to say about him. But lately, he’s been showing up in my essays, showing up in places he has no business being. He did that twenty years ago when I was almost-30, trying to track me down when I was back in my hometown for a visit. I thought of all the lies, of all the times I’d waited on the front porch for him to show up, pick me up, give me lunch money, and he didn’t, after saying he would.  You want to follow me around when I’m 30, but you couldn’t show up for me when I was 3? Or 13? I told him to back off. There’s so much I don’t know about my father, and the little I do know has caused me more grief than happiness.  What I do know: Snap was a ladies’ man. But my (half) sister T and I could never understand the appeal of him. Once we were old and cynical enough to joke about his neglect, we’d wonder what our mothers had been smoking to make them think Snap was a catch; after all, crack hadn’t yet seized our community in the early 70s when we were born. My stepmother (Snap married in middle age) once offered a clue, oversharing with me in a horrible moment of grief-filled TMI, which, however uncomfortable, was fitting: I always felt my father belonged to women, to the streets, to the bar, to everything and everyone except me. In his carnal world, there was no place for a child. How did my father define success? I never knew his aspirations, or if he had any. I never heard him complain about racism or White folks. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t; I never heard him say much of anything about the world beyond women, Champale, and his beloved Saturday morning wrestling. But perhaps he saw potential for success in me. He must’ve bragged on my good grades to the White bosses at the luggage manufacturing company where he worked for more than twenty years because on the occasions he took me to his job, these jowly, red-faced White men would say things to me like, “You’re the smart one. Spell a big word for me!” Dance, lil monkey, dance. Years later, I learned that my father’s Black and Brown co-workers, the line workers who made the luggage, had considered him an Uncle Tom. He held a supervisory role, a layer of management between them and the White bosses. Neither the line workers nor the bosses respected my father, although the bosses did bail him out for a time. They gave him advances on his paychecks, believing his lie that he was a single father raising four daughters whose mothers were all drug addicts. They also believed the lie that he was paying for me to go to Yale, a lie bolstered by a bumper sticker he bought for his minivan when he, my uncle, and my mother drove to New Haven to move me into my dorm: My Daughter and My Dollars Go to Yale , it read. In the course of my four undergraduate years, my father gave me fifty dollars, once. I think of my father’s multiple car repossessions (including the minivan and a car he “bought” for me) and how he never lived under a roof that didn’t belong to my grandparents or a woman, and I wonder what kind of father he could have been if he’d been successful at something. Or if he could’ve practiced caring on some birds. Or had space to be creative and feel in control, part of a community. Maybe then he would’ve taken me to the zoo, which is where my mother believed he took me when he did keep his word and pick me up on the weekends. She casually mentioned this zoo thing when I was in my 20s, and I laughed an unkind laugh and told her she had to be kidding, that there was nothing about my father that said, Take my kid to the zoo. His unkempt appearance and unreliability aligned more with the bars and women’s homes he took me to. My mother’s delusions about my father had roots in the wounds left by her own father’s absence. She never asked me where Snap took me; she needed to believe in a version of him that didn’t hurt me. Chuck Hatcher, Cornell Norwood’s pigeon protégée, credits the birds with being “solace, meditative, almost a spiritual aspect to inner peace, because the Black man has so much to deal with…” Did my father ever know peace? Was he troubled by his life as a Black man in this country, or by his failures as a father? I used to wonder, as a kid, if he ever missed me, if he ever felt sad or guilty about disappointing me more than he kept his word. I wondered if he felt bad about missing so much of my life and my (half) sisters’ lives. I wondered if his many lies weighed on his conscience. I wondered why his mother’s God didn’t “convict his heart,” a phrase I’d heard in church. I wondered if my father thought of me on my birthday or at Christmas, even though he didn’t give me gifts, even though I still gave him gifts at my mother’s insistence. I wondered if he ever considered apologizing. Brought together by my mother’s terminal cancer, my father and I had six good Sundays before he died unexpectedly of a massive stroke at age 54, a few months after my mom passed away. On those six Sundays, so much was left unsaid. My father left me with far more questions than answers. More than fifteen years after his death, the questions remain but the focus has changed. I wonder less now about how my father thought of himself as my father, and more about how he thought of himself as a man who lived, it seemed, without tenderness. If he thought of himself that way at all. I don’t have to wonder if he could miss what he never had. I already know that much to be true. ©2021 Pipe Wrench Magazine. First published in Pipe Wrench. THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Deesha Philyaw and Jae Nichelle on May 5th, 2025. “Snap” is such a moving and intimate piece. As an accomplished essayist and storyteller, do you feel any difference in your relationship with how your nonfiction lives in the world versus your fiction work? I feel freer, bolder in my fiction. And once my stories are in the world, they no longer belong just to me. Readers engage with my fiction in all sorts of ways, and I’m continually surprised and appreciative to hear how they connect with the stories. By contrast, my willingness to be open and revelatory in my personal essays has unfolded very gradually over many years. I’m concerned with self-protection as well as protecting others I care about. Once those essays are out in the world, I feel a bit exposed and less comfortable engaging directly with readers about them. It’s easier to talk with strangers about my short stories, their themes and origins, and my process than about aspects of my personal life and history. But I don’t really stress too much about it because my essays have a lower profile in the world than my fiction.   In the essay, you write that you’d told yourself you were done writing about your father. Is there anything currently that you feel “done” writing about? I think I really am done now writing about my father in my nonfiction. I can’t think of anything else I’m ready to swear off writing about. That said, aspects of my father and of our relationship will probably continue to show up in my fiction.  It’s interesting that this idea of “success” comes up in “Snap,” as you spoke of success in an interview with Literary Mama  where you said, “I am succeeding when my heart is in good shape.” What’s keeping your heart in good shape these days? Traveling with my partner, going to therapy, spending time with my daughters and with my friends, and reading some really stellar poetry collections, including Boy, Maybe  by W.J. Lofton and The Book of Alice  by Diamond Forde (forthcoming). What’s your favorite way to spend a day off? Sleeping in, eating brunch foods I don’t have to cook, curling up on the couch with books to read purely for pleasure.  The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, your debut novel, is coming out in 2026! Can you share a bit about how this story initially took shape?  This book has been a long time coming and has had several incarnations. I started writing it in 2007 with a main character who was then named Rebecca, a former megachurch pastor’s wife, aka first lady. In that earliest draft, she was recently divorced and struggling to co-parent with the pastor (who was 15 years her senior), while starting to date again. That was kind of my life at the time; my ex wasn’t a pastor, but I was newly divorced and dating. An early reader gave me some advice that ultimately changed the whole trajectory of the novel, for the better. I’d written a chapter or two, which she’d read, and she said they were cool but she really wanted to see the inside of Rebecca’s marriage to the pastor, before it ended. So I re-oriented the novel such that it opened with Rebecca unhappily married. And I realized when I returned to that draft that I’d skipped ahead to Rebecca’s divorce probably because I didn’t want to revisit my own unhappy marriage. And thus began the process of separating myself from the character, allowing her to be herself, and not me, allowing her choices and tastes and values to differ from mine. The biggest change was that the character went from secretly hating her role as first lady (as I would) to fully relishing it at the outset of the novel. That change opened up a whole world of fun possibilities, enabling me to give Scharisse (fka Rebecca) more depth and to give her story as a whole higher stakes, as her marriage and her life as a whole begin to unravel. You co-host two incredible podcasts. What’s a moment with a recent podcast guest that has stuck with you? Destiny O. Birdsong was our guest on Ursa Short Fiction, and we were discussing a short story of hers that included content related to sex work and queer sex. The story was published online and then taken down by the publisher less than 24 hours later for dubious reasons that basically boiled down to poorly disguised censorship. When it happened, Destiny says, “I had this overwhelming feeling that felt very familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it, and it wasn’t until a few days later that I realized that that feeling was slut shaming. And there’s something about being slut shamed, like it lives in my bones. It’s like muscle memory.” And that made me think about how powerful shame is, and how deeply rooted it can live in us if we were raised to be ashamed of our bodies, our desires, or even our insistence on liberation and rejection of binaries. Rooting out that shame––calling it by its name as Destiny did––requires vigilance, sometimes daily. On the subject of podcasts, what’s a non-literary topic that you could talk about for hours if someone let you? It’s a tie between 1) how the horrible manosphere/misogynistic podcast industrial complex makes dating damn-near impossible, and 2) the new Black soap opera, Beyond the Gates . I am obsessed with that show! How can people support you right now?  By pre-ordering or buying (depending on the timing) That's How They Get You: An Unruly Anthology of Black American Humor  edited by the Pittsburgh homie Damon Young. I have a story in it, “Group Chat,” that’s hilarious, if I do say so myself. Name another Black woman writer people should know.  I can’t name just one! There’s Annell López, author of the remarkable debut short story collection I’ll Give You a Reason . Jamila Minnicks’ fantastic debut novel of historical fiction, Moonrise Over New Jessup , is essential reading. The inimitable Mahogany L. Browne’s latest is a beautiful and timely YA novel, A Bird in the Air Means We Can Still Breathe . My West Virginia University Press-mate, Megan Howell, has written a jaw-dropper of a story collection, Softie . And I’m looking forward to Cleyvis Natera’s stunning sophomore novel The Grand Paloma Resort . ### 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.