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Jessica Araújo (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of English at the Community College of Rhode Island. She has her MA in Literature and MFA in Creative Writing from William Paterson University.  Her works have been published in Sad Girl Diaries Literary Magazine, Wingless Dreamer, Cathexis Northwest Press, and  Midnight & Indigo. Call More Dead Mama hasn’t rested since the shooting. But not for the same reason as me. When I close my eyes, I see his face disgorging blood on a loop, as if some sick fuck has the VCR remote and keeps rewinding so I can rewatch him spurt blood on his white tee.  Bullet casings littered my driveway, right outside my bedroom window. He could have easily sprayed my bedroom window while he stalked behind my car.  My chest tightens every time I think of it, because what if it happens again and I’m asleep? What if I’m awake? Taking deep breaths to try and relax soon turns into shallow gasps, and I feel like him, like I’m retching on the last breath of life. That’s why I can’t rest.  Mama, she just stares out the window, eyes rooted to where it all went down. “All them candles and pictures, but no one had the sense to put a cross. Calls more dead if there ain’t a cross.” As if Death loitering in the parking lot behind my house is just what I need. Mama squints like she’s trying to see clearer, keeps mumbling to herself. All that squinting she’s doing, I know she can see him. Probably counting how many of the fifty rounds actually hit him. It had sounded like fireworks. We’re used to hearing fireworks. When I heard the racket, I kept sifting through the endless stack of papers analyzing “There Will Come Soft Rains” and how mankind will be its own destruction, and nature will scarcely remember us when we’re gone. The fireworks were a happy distraction. I didn’t clock that it was raining bullets a few yards away.  Until I remembered it was almost October.  Until I looked out the window and saw a black car, headlights off, speed past the stop sign. Until I ran to the window and saw people dust themselves off as they got up off the ground.  Until I saw he was the only one who didn’t get up. “Mmm,” Mama tuts. “That poor boy was no more than nineteen.” “Kevin,” I frown. “The news said his name was Kevin.” “Shame. Look at him, standing there, face covered in blood, disbelieving he’s dead.” Mama doesn’t know I’m scared of ghosts. She could see the dead since she was little, like her mother, her mother’s mother, and the many mothers before them, and like me. I learned conjuring before I learned my ABC’s. I love working with herbs and the elements to heal, to ward, to reverse.  But certain parts of spirit work frighten me. Spirits carry burdens with no vessel to hold them. Sometimes they seep into you and lay anchor, mooring you to their energy—sometimes without permission.  I’m fine with the sporadic visits from my ancestors because they come to protect me. I’m sure they shielded me the night of the shooting. But the dead should stay on the other side. And they mostly do. The ones who tend to linger on this side are the ones who have something gruesome about them, be it their deaths or their intentions. They’re not meant to stay on this side of the veil. Staying too long risks them turning to haunt. That’s why I’m scared of ghosts. A spirit doesn’t stay, but a ghost refuses to go, and it grows more dangerous the longer they’re here.  Mama won’t budge from the window, barely moving like a sentinel on guard. “You need to seek some help, baby. You can’t swallow this and think you won’t fall to shit. I came here because you need me, but you know I can’t stay too long. Besides, some things I can’t protect you from.” “I just need to move out of here,” I groan over my fifth mug of chamomile.  “I didn’t know moving erases traumas. What you need is help.” “What I need is sleep.” They come sometime after midnight. Mama and I watch from the window—from a sliver between the shades—in the kitchen. I had turned off all the lights, hoping to invite sleep. We watch three guys smash the candles lit in vigil for Kevin. One of them is filming it all with his phone. They all laugh when one of them whips out his dick and pees on the large picture of the dead guy whose ghost phases through their unwavering bodies. Kevin roars in the leader’s face, and I feel the ripples through the window, though they feel nothing—or pretend not to. It doesn’t take a conjurer to arrive at my next thought¸  That’s Kevin’s murderer.    The news reported no leads as no one wanted to testify. The neighbors murmured how his brother, who had stormed onto the scene too late for Kevin, and was said to be the real target, would seek “street justice.” But a week later, here the killer is laughing it up with his boys like getting away with murder is the world’s funniest joke. And maybe it is. After all, what is a life worth? He tries to shove them all away from his makeshift memorial. His rage thrums in my chest. Fortunately, he is too recently dead to turn vengeful. We can see it, though, Mama and I, how he wants to be the death of that guy and the losers applauding him. He will turn to haunt if he doesn’t move on.  Choking back sobs of impotence, I wipe my eyes and crouch down by the refrigerator, wanting to scream but scared that the killer might hear. That I might be next. My face is flushed with a million tingles that feel like spiders scurrying across my cheeks. The walls start closing in on me, and suddenly there isn’t enough air in the world for my lungs as I try to gulp enough oxygen to stay afloat, but all I keep thinking is that I might be next, might be next, will be next. “Don’t be silly,” Mama sighs, as if reading my mind. “You don’t even know that guy. Why would he hurt you?” Because he can. He already has my peace in a vice grip and doesn’t even know it. Imagine how he’d act if he knew. He’d piss on my pain for sport. Counting to ten, I focus on the kitchen table, on the vase of wilting roses in dirty water, taking deep inhales and slow exhales in between numbers. Inhale peace, exhale worry. I am safe, I am safe. I am safe.  When I reach ten, my breathing steadies enough for fear to take a backseat to the wave of anger rippling through my body. My upper lip curls as a snarl escapes from behind my gritted teeth. My tongue feels dry and heavy in my mouth, parched with a new thirst. For blood. “Mina,” Mama cautions. “Don’t.” “I need to end this, Mama,” I roar, tired of her just standing there. “You saw the same as me. Kevin’s going to turn vengeful as soon as he’s strong enough. I can end this right now.” What I don’t say is that I don’t blame Kevin for wanting revenge. That bastard stole his life. He shot into a packed park and didn’t care if he hit anyone else. Now he comes back and taunts the living by defacing the dead. Now I want him dead too. “Don’t you go turning vengeful now. You’re still alive. You’d be more dangerous than any old ghost.” “I know,” I smirk, knowing that I am powerful enough to bring a killer to his knees, to bring justice to a ghost. Invigorated by the current of rage, I pop into my bedroom to grab what I know will quench my new thirst. A conjurer has many tools, and I learned to use them all. After collecting what I need into a sling bag, I grab a ski mask and a hoodie from my closet.  “You’ll only fuel him with this, Mina. And you’ll hurt yourself. I can’t guarantee I can help you if you go down this road.” Ignoring her, I disable the security system and crouch out of the side door to the driveway. I slink down behind my car, just like witnesses say the killer did, and watch them. They are passing a blunt between them while Kevin crackles like an old TV. His ghost has grown. His wavelength is like a strong radio signal, and I am tuned all the way in.  I mix a few ingredients—knotted string, High John, and hemlock— into a small cloth bag, whisper a brief incantation, and fling it over my car to the basketball court. I’m right behind the bag, knowing they won’t have a breath to react after the pouch detonates. One of them notices me and reaches for something in his pants, but a silent flash goes off and they are all swept across broken glass and stomped bouquets to the same spot where I watched a cop give Kevin CPR until the ambulance arrived, until he died before it came. “What the fuck?” the murderer exclaims. The others are probably questioning if it is the high, if their blunt was laced, because they look confused, lost. “You murderer!” I hiss, my voice sounding deep, guttural, not my own.  “Who the hell are you? How are you doing this?” He struggles against invisible bonds, but it is futile. Until I release the spell, they can’t move. And they won’t be able to when I release it either.  Like a flower girl at the world’s saddest wedding, I scatter petals of wolf’s bane around us, uttering an incantation to conjure a cloak of invisibility. Even if they squinted hard in our direction, no one would see us, and not even a bat would hear us. “Now, we can have some fun,” I leer. “You ready, Kevin?” He looks at me, confusion spreading across his blood-stained face. I squeeze my eyes together to shut out the memory of him spurting blood and choking on air as he died. “Y-you can see me?” “Better than see you,” I wink, my voice still gruff. “I can help you.” “Yo, who are you talking to?” someone says from the ground.  “Help me what?” Kevin continues, ignoring the grumblings of the others. He approaches slowly, cautiously, his wavelength piercing my skin as he does. “Get revenge,” my lips stay parted as I hiss the words, my tongue firmly rooting to the roof of my mouth. The words are titillating, exciting me for what’s to come next.  Kevin’s ghost flickers brighter as he mirrors my sneer. He gets so close I could wipe the blood from his ashen cheeks if he were still flesh. The current of anger gets stronger, exciting and nauseating like sailing through a hurricane. He reaches for my hand, unable to touch me, but oh, I can feel him. I can feel  him. I can feel him. He lays anchor in me, and I see it all, a game of dice, a livestream from the park, the sound of fireworks, realizing it isn’t fireworks, a pinch in the shoulder, another in the chest, another—I break the connection. I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know. I want to let go. I want to… I bowl over and vomit bile that smells like chamomile and regret. What am I doing?  I look back at the guys on the floor, at Kevin who is now hovering over them. I can’t focus. I’ve never channeled the dead, always avoiding mediumship out of fear a ghost would lay hold of me and never leave. Now, Kevin’s rage has latched onto my own, overpowered my own, and has made it foreign, has made my body attempt to eject anything that steals my control. The nausea of fighting possession is too much for me.  “Let’s kill them all,” he says in a grating voice not unlike mine. “Right where he killed me.” Pointing his fingers like a gun, he mock-shoots each guy in turn, but it’s my chest that jolts. Clutching my knees, I bend over and vomit again. This isn’t the way. My body keeps trying to unmoor itself from the weight of Kevin’s energy. I cannot be his vessel.  “Revenge ain’t justice, baby,” Mama’s voice echoes throughout the dome. I look up, relieved that she’s here, come to make me right, but she is focused on Kevin. “Who are you?” He whirls on Mama. “You can see me too?” “I can,” Mama nods, approaching him slowly. “And I can tell you that killing them won’t help you find peace. “I had peace until this asshole came and took it from me,” he says, kicking right through the torso of his killer. But the guy flinches, as if he felt something. Latching onto me has made Kevin stronger. “I shouldn’t be dead!”  “You shouldn’t,” I say, fighting a renewed wave of nausea. “It’s not fair what happened to you. It’s not fair he keeps getting to go around and do more hateful things.” “But,” I continue when I see him clench his fists, his eyes stirring the rage in me once more. I swallow it and continue, “Killing them here would tie them to this place, just like you’re tied to it. And if you stay here and we add them to the mix, horrible things might happen to more innocent people. There’ll be more dead here, more people dying, and some of them might even be your own family.” He softens a bit when I mention his family, easing my nausea a bit, and mutters, “But he can’t get away with this.” “And he won’t. I said I can help you, and I will, but you need to move on. You’ll get justice, I promise.” His ghost dims, the frequency weak enough for me to break it with a quick incantation. Our connection severs, and I gasp for air, lungs heaving as if recovering from almost drowning. My body feels untethered until I focus on a shard of glass on the ground. Inhale peace, exhale worry. I am safe, I am safe. I am safe.   Mama takes the chance to reach for Kevin’s hand. Flinching at first, then dropping into her embrace, Kevin cries into her shoulder, and I want to run and join them, to lose this past week in a hug. Mama calms him so easily, but I know she won’t always be here to ease our hurts. Sighing, I remind myself I can’t fall apart again. Spirit work takes resolve. Living takes resolve. I cast a sleep spell over the three losers on the floor. I’ll deal with them later. “I’ll be right back,” I say as I jog back to my apartment. The dead-end street is dead silent at this hour, and for the first time in a week, it isn’t disquieting. I dart to my room and lift my mattress, leaning it against the wall so I can yank two loose slats from my bed frame. They’re far enough from each other that they won’t disrupt my sleep, if I can ever reclaim it. As I pull at the pieces of wood, I wonder if a mattress can slow a bullet. Each strike of the hammer sounds like a gunshot, startling me each time it hits the nail, even though it’s me doing it. Tears burn in my eyes as I hammer harder than I should, not caring if I hit my hand. When I finish hammering the last nail, I notice the angle of one slat is a little crooked, but a cross is a cross. I fill my sling bag with florida water, rue, ammonia, coffee grounds, a lighter, and a white seven-day candle. The cross is longer than me, but not heavy, so I manage to place it in the crook of my armpit. Back at the basketball court, Mama is holding Kevin’s hands, consoling him in a way she can no longer console me. Whatever she is doing is working. His ghost no longer flickers like an old television. Actually, he’s gaining some of his old color back, with blood smeared across a ruddy brown face. He’s more spirit than ghost now. But he still has to go. The longer he stays among the living, the greater the chance his spirit will get too far gone to be saved.  I take the florida water and sprinkle it on the cross and in a circle around us. Speaking prayer and liberation over the area, I sweep shards of glass and candle wax aside with my sneaker and stand the cross against the fence, positioning it so it won’t fall over, bending over to slap the ground in front of it three times to call on Spirit and my guides. Once I feel myself drop in, connecting to the spiritual energy on the other side, I am separated from the anger and panic of the past week, my tether to Kevin completely severed. I am just a blade of grass swaying in the breeze.  Rubbing rue and coffee grounds together, I call on the most high and my spiritual team to allow me to work in the name of all that is good, to free all the dead holding on to this place past their time, to cleanse this space of any residue of evil here. I sprinkle the rue and coffee mixture in the four directions, followed by three drops of ammonia. After lighting the candle, I hold it above my head, turning as I present it north, east, south, and west. Then, I kneel, eyes closed and palms to the sky, and continue praying as my body continues humming with spiritual energy. A white light grows around Mama and Kevin when I finish my prayer.  Hesitant at first, Kevin takes Mama’s proffered hand and lets her guide him into the veil. He looks back at me, nodding as he dissolves into the brilliance of the beyond. “You find your peace too now. I’m more comfortable protecting you from the other side, so don’t make me come back,” she admonishes with a smile as she fades into light. Body still swaying, I rise from the ground and fight the urge to reach for Mama, knowing it’s futile to try and touch her one last time, so I place my hands over my heart and nod. Breathing deeply as I ground myself, I rub my hands and neck with florida water and walk back to the house. I inhale deeply, feeling more peace than I have in weeks. And more resolve. Back in my apartment, I call the police and report the vandalization of the memorial and how I heard them bragging about killing Kevin.  “They’re still there,” I say to dispatch, which is true—I didn’t undo their bonds. I don’t release the dome of invisibility until I hear the sirens, and I don’t release the binding spell until I see the cops through my kitchen window, struggling to lift them off the ground. Relief manifests itself in the form of tears streaming down my face, and I cry until, for the first time in a week, I collapse onto my bed and finally rest.  ### 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.

Deanna Whitlow is the founder of Same Faces Collective . She completed her MFA in Fiction at Columbia College Chicago. Pushcart-nominated, her stories and essays have been published by Raging Opossum Press, Allium Journal , Black Fox Literary, Identity Theory, Mulberry Literary,  and others. The Laundress And the work can be beautiful sometimes. I think this as I sip coffee in the darkness of dawn. I believe this in the same tentative, wanting way I believe in God. I look at my hands. I have scrubbed and wrung and ironed so much that my hands are my winter shade all year round. The skin between my index and middle finger could pass the paper bag test. My palms itch. There must be money on the way. Yes, the work is beautiful. I make things clean. Like a pastor. Or a rushing stream. I have even reconciled its endlessness because I am still catching up on my mother’s and her mother’s and her mother’s mother’s old burdens. The ritual of it is a little like prayer so sometimes, the work itself is God. And God is beautiful. So the work is beautiful. I smile. The work is beautiful, so I wake earlier then I need. Before the children and the sun and the radio evangelists. I fill my cup, drink slowly, and pretend I am the sort of woman who gets to wonder what else there is to do when the coffee is finished. ### 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.

Bards Anthology , When the River Speaks , Voices de la Luna , Voices Along the River , and has been featured on Best of Button Poetry . She has featured at a number of local venues and is the 2024/2025 Poetry Grand Slam Champion of San Antonio

Leslie T. Grover is an award-winning writer, scholar, and activist. Her novella,  The Benefits of Eating White Folks, marked her entrance into historical fiction, following her work in academic and nonfiction writing. A southern Black writer, her short stories have appeared in Waxing and Waning Literary Journal , Testimony , and as the winning entry in Owl Hollow Press’ The Takeback Anthology . In 2024, she won Amazon Kindle Vella’s Grand Prize for her short story, “Little Girl.” She is managing editor for PushBlack, a media organization dedicated to uplifting Black history through storytelling. Leslie currently lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Pennies June 10, 1966 Dearest Deborah, Mama mad she had to bring me all the way home and wait for me to change my clothes. Daddy say she may as well go on and take me back now since it’s gone take a while for the men to get the bags ready. Then by the time we get back, we can do what we came to do and all go home. Miss Melba say Mama never should of trusted me to get dressed by myself anyway and out of all days, why she choose this  one to let me run wild and almost mess things up for everybody?  “I’m yo best friend,” she say to Mama right in front of me like I wadn’t even there, “and I’m gone always tell you the truth even when you don’t want to hear it. Truth is that girl ain’t right and you know she ain’t right. You got to watch her close.” She cut her eyes at me like I didn’t understand what she was saying. But I did understand, and I didn’t need no watching. When they said we was doing important business, I put on my going-to-town clothes, same as Mama and Daddy do when they go to the bank to handle important business.  I was glad when Mama, Daddy, and Miss Melba went on ahead of me. And sister, I did my best to do right. I did just like they do, everything I know to do. I did just like I do when Mama standing right there in case I forget. I even did like she say and put on my good draws. You how she always say, “Wear your good draws when you go out so in case something bad happen, the folks won’t be scared to touch you.”  Important business means we dress up. But when I got there they was wearing work clothes. Maybe they the ones ain’t right because they can’t make up they minds. Seems to me they should be mad at they own selves, saying business but look like work. When Mama get mad, she press her lips together, close her eyes, and breathe in. “Lord have mercy on yo child,” she say, clasping in her hands like she finna pray. Then come the tears, but she don’t let them stream down her face like she do when she catch the Holy Ghost. She wipe ‘em fast and stay quiet a long time.  You know how she do. It’s already enough crying round here, anyway, especially at church. All the women been wailing and fanning since the New Year and saying Lord Hammercy and don’t none of them have the Holy Ghost. It’s because seem like every month the white folks go crazy. They done hung somebody from a tree on the court square. Beat somebody in a ditch off the main road. Shot somebody over by the county park. Anything to try to scare us. It’s already five dead since January.  It’s the summer now, and Uncle Asa make number six. Mama been quiet, all full up with tears that don’t fall, ever since they found Uncle Asa all beat up and laid out in the ditch beside the big Welcome to Our Friendly Town sign.  That was two weeks ago.  “It’s too much,” she say to Miss Melba. “They didn’t have to do him like that. He ain’t do nothing but try to vote and we all  got the right to do that. It’s the law. And we citizens. Even President LBJ hisself signed the law that say they can’t do nothing to keep us from voting.” She press her lips together again. Now our whole family got to scrape together enough money to get the body from the county and get Uncle Asa buried. And I know Mama ain’t said nothing, but we got to pay an extra fee. The sheriff say Uncle Asa officially died on public property. He say it take public taxes to clean up the mess.  “Y’all Nigras don’t want to work for free,” he say, looking like he bout to bust out laughing, “So why should my deputies and the county workers?”  The longer we take to pay, the more we owe. Daddy say it just ain’t right to kill a man for exercising his rights. Say if Uncle Asa fought in the war against the Nazis, and it was just fine for him to get his knee blowed out, then why he can’t limp on that same knee to get his self to the voting booth?” Daddy balled up his fist and banged it on the dinner table. “The devil is a lie and that sheriff giving him work if he think we gone sit around, watch white folks hang us, chop us up, and then pay for them to clean up they mess,” he say. “My brother always stood for what was right. He never woulda stood for this monkeyshine.” But Daddy don’t press his lips and get quiet like Mama do when he mad.  His face turn red, and the veins in his neck poke out like the fat brown worms we catch catfish with. And he keep saying it everywhere he go, too, not just at dinner. At his lodge meeting. Up town at the Big Store. Downtown at the feed store. When he and Mama play spades with Miss Melba and her male friend from over in Mound Bayou. “We paid those poll taxes together. We learned those law questions for the test together,”  He say at the church meeting last week. “These white folks around here eating us alive and either we gone stand up or get rolled over. How many more bodies we got to see before we make a move against this foolishness?” Folks clapped and said amen.  Daddy, Mama, and all who got a dead family member got together and decided to stand up. That’s why we was all down at the county courthouse in the early morning hours before they open, waiting on the sheriff’s office to let us in.  “We gone show them we mean business,” Mama say. We all know the sheriff and those men in the long white masks are the ones killing any Negro who try to vote. The white folks say it’s wrong for us to vote, regardless of the law. Say that federal law don’t apply if local law don’t agree. And anyway, the sheriff say when he come up to the church a few days after LBJ sign the law, ain’t nobody gone enforce it, so we may as well work together. Can’t we find a way for everybody to get along? Nobody clap or say amen. The whole church just look at the sheriff until he clear his throat. He finally leave, slinking like an old chicken snake to the back door. “I know y’all don’t want to hear it,” he put on his hat. “But I’m just trying to see that the right thing is done. And we right about this, hard as it is for Nigras here to face. Don’t y’all want to do right by God?”  But if the white folks so right about everything, then why they cover their faces when they out tryna scare us? The sheriff ‘nem act like they shame or something. If it wadn’t right why they kill us about it? Ain’t that wrong? Why not try us in court and drag us through the law process? Or why not leave it to God if he on they side? Why come none of the white folks can tell us where in the Bible it say Negro folks can’t vote?   I may not know school books, but I know the Bible do talk about love, justice, and treating thy neighbor as thyself. It say thou shalt not kill, too. Mama say a lie don’t care who tell it, and that all them folks is lying about God. But I think the truth don’t care who tell it either. Truth is Uncle Asa body still there on the cooling slab at the county in the back of the jail, and the sheriff and the other men under those masks put him there. If we want to get Uncle Asa from up at the county, we got to pay $10, plus the cost of digging a grave in the church graveyard, plus that clean up fee. That’s close to $25 if we pay on time. If we don’t, we gone end up owing even more. When Daddy ask why more, the sheriff say the family owe an inconvenience fee. But the county ain’t the ones being inconvenienced. We is. Every time somebody get killed by the sheriff and his men, the church pay half and the family pay half. But with so many dead now, the church had to collect at least $250 to bury all them dead Negro bodies properly.  It take almost a year to earn an extra $25, especially when the prices at the feed store keep going up. Miss Melba say eventually all of us working around here will earn that land we farming on.  But I think she wrong. Truth is, every time we pay things off, the prices go up, and we still owe the white folks. Or they say we ain’t picked the right weight of cotton. I ain’t say much to Miss Melba, Mama, or Daddy, but seem to me them farmers tricking us back into working they fields for free, except this time they don’t call us slaves to our face.  Maybe I ain’t right in the head, but I know all about cotton because I used to help Daddy pick it. I can look at a whole field and tell how much every piece gone weigh when it all go to the gin at the end of the day.  I ain’t never been wrong. Not once. So when they say we ain’t picked enough to cover costs, I know that ain’t right. I tell Daddy that and he look at me funny. So now I don’t say nothing. The sheriff say some of us high-falutin' Nigras like Uncle Asa too ornery to see that it’s easier to let things stay the same. We should just keep paying the poll taxes or not vote at all. “That poll tax ain’t but $2.00,” he say to Daddy at the Big Store one day. “Over the last few years, all the Nigras that done got killed in the county come to at least $1500 in total. So if you can’t figure out the difference between $1500 and $2, that just proves you too gullible and misinformed to vote. The white folks here is good God-fearing christians and trying to do right by y’all. Ain’t we done always took care of you? Ask Asa that.”  When Daddy shake his head and walk off, the sheriff holler behind him, “All we gotta do is trust God and things will be all right! When y’all stop we all stop!” Uncle Asa ain’t never stop, though. So the sheriff ‘nem stopped him themselves. And they still trying to stop us even though Uncle Asa dead. The sheriff say somebody gotta pay what’s owed for them bodies or they gone have to start taking land or cutting down on the food they order for us to eat during the cold months when farming don’t pay. But them farmers don’t even pay for it since the government gives them surplus food direct. They supposed to give us that as part of our payment for working the land. And last year they ain’t gave us none of what we earned. But white folks can do mess that.  We can’t. The Greens and the Johnsons took they people’s bodies and left.  They put them in the ground and headed right up to Chicago. No funeral. Nothing. They say they ain’t paying a thing, no matter what the sheriff say. Say if the county want the extra fees, then let them come to Chicago and take it out they hands directly.   Now it’s Krafts, Grants, Boatwrights, and us left to pay up because we ain’t going nowhere. Daddy say to let them others go up north if they want to, but we ain’t eating cheese and we ain’t running neither.   “All the scared Negroes run north,” he say to Mama. When I showed up this morning, there was way more people there than just our few families. The congregations of all the Negro Baptist churches from the next county over came to stand with us. All the AMEs came, too. Then came the ones that don’t even go to church. Even the lady who sell Miss Melba her love perfume and burn hair to make folks sick was there.  Some brought extra money.  Anyway, the day before Daddy and some of the men went to banks down in Jackson and got all that money turned into pennies. I ain’t never seen that much money in my life, but it was so many pennies, the men had to bring they trucks to help carry it. They stayed up all night putting pennies in cotton sacks.  That’s how we gone pay it all for everybody, $2800 in pennies including them clean up fees. “Today we gone dump them pennies on the front desk in the sheriff’s office and tell him to count it his self,” Daddy say to the crowd. “That’s what the law say. So since the county all about business, the business of killing us over our rights is gone get harder and harder to carry out. So all who going with us, let’s line up and get ready. Kraft, Grant, and Boatwright families come to the front with us.” Don’t that sound like business to you? So why they got on working clothes and making me change out my clothes? I was gone ask Mama on the way back home, but Mama don’t listen to nothing I say, especially when Miss Melba get to chirping in her ear.  Mrs. Kraft and Mrs. Boatwright both old church mothers, and they can’t walk, so Daddy send for the young men to bring them in chairs from the lodge. At first he tell Mama just let me stay and wear my good clothes because it don’t matter what I got on long as I can carry pennies. But Mama gave him a look and then he say by the time the young men get back, me and Mama need to be back, too. Mama say she gone to check Miss Melba’s stove and make sure it’s off and see if the old tom cat got out the house. I better be ready in my right clothes when she get back. Not in my good dress but in the same overalls I chop cotton in. She say I bet not move til she get back, either.  Soon as I got in, I changed real quick. I been sitting here for a long time writing to you.  I want to go to Miss Melba’s and catch Mama, but I’m gone wait like she said to. I don’t want no more trouble. She might make me stay back. Them pennies ain’t gone carry they selves to the courthouse. I shole want to help. Take care and don’t forget about us while you up there at Valley State. I ain’t that smart, but you is, and I am real happy you learning how to be a good teacher.  Maybe you can come home and help me get better with school books. And just maybe by the time you come home, them county folks’ll be through counting our pennies. Love your big sister, Berenice ### 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.

Her poetry collection In Case You Get This (2023) was published by Finishing Line Press.

Additional honors include being named Muse of African American Poetry for the City of Alameda and premiering It’s “She Works Hard for the Money” Friday which means closeted frat boys and triple tips.

Elisha Mykelti conjures poetry that honors sight. She received the 2023 Emily Morrison Poetry Prize, and her work has appeared in Berkeley Poetry Review Elisha is pursuing an MFA in poetry at Virginia Tech, where she is working on her manuscript, “TWOHEAD

justified my needs with what other couples did, namely the ones who morphed into conjoined twins from Friday

You stayed late on the Friday and found her desk in the open plan office.

Nimalah Baaith-Ducharme’s work has appeared at Poets.org (where she won the Harold Taylor Prize in 2019), Nighthawk Literature, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Of Rootwork, was a finalist in the 2025 Alta California Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Gunpowder Press and judged by Raina J. León. She has received support from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' Conference and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, earned her MFA from Emerson College, and is currently a PhD candidate at Texas Tech University. Fried Chicken Prison the name of your Thanksgiving sentence, to be held consecutively for the duration of our lives serving legs, wings, and thighs butter and oils again making the underlying rhythm by which we conduct our year cooking with butter even after Paula Deen was deemed racist cause we been doin’ this— When am I gonna get my show? Who don’t use butter? sizzling underneath the conversation of fried chicken prison // we’re fat on the best food fat, like phat, like Baby Phat, like beautiful fat thighs, stomach and chunky behind like bragging about your empty plate fat as you move for seconds // During that time and every other time, I ate memories of white rice and fried egg— Girls with long hair fighting at the bus stop— Cocoa Puffs squirming with wings and legs— Oops babies and ghetto twins— Corned beef and spam— Now you cook with white wine and prosciutto and we think charcuterie is a meal and you resent breakfast for dinner because you can’t show us how far you’ve moved from your mother yelling at her boyfriend to stop calling dinner poor people food and now we’re fat on the best food waiting for you to ask what’s for dinner knowing you’re going to cook whatever you want anyway ### Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Her work has been featured in Palette Poetry , Southeast Review , Muzzle Magazine , Rhino Poetry, and

Winner of the 53rd New Millennium Award for Poetry and The Florida Review 2024   Editors' Award in Poetry Track One (Kick, Push III) featuring Lupe Fiasco Any body, everybody watchin’ us here—two Black kids