Search Results

Chidima Anekwe is an emerging writer hailing from the old coastal town of Stratford, CT.  She is a recent graduate from Yale University with a B.A. in English Language & Literature and a concentration in Creative Writing. For her work, she has received support from the SAEF Grant and the DuPuy Prize, and has been nominated for a MacNelly Award for Literary Arts. She writes to explore new postcolonial poetics and Black feminist existentialisms within contemporary American girlhood, usually with a satirical bent. She has read for The Yale Review and edited for DOWN , a BIPOC-centered webzine, among others. She is currently based in CT and gaining experience in NY. Biafra Song I’m in Connecticut and weeping for a place I hadn’t known the name of until too few years ago. My parents kept Biafra like a secret love child. They cared for her but worried she’d disturb the peace in the family. She did. Now their legitimate daughter has become too angry to return home. Eziokwu, the Wikipedia articles made my eyes see red. I won’t go back to Igboland until it’s Biafra again. I want it to be Biafra again. I am a child again, closing my eyes tight during a family party I didn’t wish to attend, hoping that when I open them once more I’ll find I’ve been carried home in my feigned slumber. I am lazy. I am impotent. They are protesting again, in Kaduna and Zamfara. The news is reporting three have died. Human rights groups report a dozen have been killed. A post on my Twitter feed: 50 murdered in cold blood. I believe the Tweet and I see red again. Britain created this and they’re pleased with what they’ve done. They harvest the oil money and make us kill each other. Of course Independence was a lie. They couldn’t even let us have Biafra. But the Igbo genocide did not take my grandparents and I won’t take this fact for granted. And so I promised myself to sing the song of Biafra, out of principle. Or maybe out of spite. I can no longer tell the difference between the two. I ordered a Biafran flag off Amazon and hung it in my room. Then I hated myself for it. Jeff’s company repulses me and I don’t believe in flags now and I didn’t believe in flags when I ordered it either. Or nationalism. Or maybe nationalism is alright when it is that of a postcolonial nation. I wasn’t sure then and I’m not sure now either. I don’t think I like tribalism. I wonder if it must be the solution. I wonder if I will only ever wonder. I used to want to be an academic of some sort, so people would have to call me doctor and I wouldn’t have to go to medical school for it because I hate the sight of blood. And my parents would say ezigbo nwa and parade me around the family party and everyone would laugh and agree how educated Igbos are. I read the Chimamanda book about Biafra and there were academics that would all sit around a nicely furnished living room and eat and drink and talk politics and theorize revolution. I found myself resenting these characters. They needed to leave the house. Now I don’t want to be an academic anymore. But I haven’t left the house. I hate the sight of blood. They don’t have Igbo on Duolingo and they didn’t offer it at my college like they did Yoruba and so I’m trying to have my mother teach me twenty-odd years too late. My mother tongue. I always liked that phrase. My mother. Whose language I did not learn as a child because I wanted to be more like the people who drew the borders they knew would condemn my people to death. Make us run away to their safe havens just to be spit in the face. But I will spit out the lies spoonfed to me by that Berlin-bred project and make myself sick till it’s all out. It doesn’t take much effort. Now all I ever feel is sick. I hate the sight of blood. ### 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.

Chyann Hector is a Black Jamaican-American writer and educator based in the DMV. She has been writing ever since she could remember and wrote her first novel in a spiral notebook in the 5th grade. In her work, Chyann prioritizes the voices of Black women who are immigrants and descendants of immigrants. She also explores multi-generational relationships, mental health, and culture in her writing. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok: @chyiswriting. Black Girlhood  Pt. 1 Chalk  We etch our names into concrete. Drag the solid dust over eroded dips and melded chewing gum. Sketch boxes of portals, worlds numbered. To travel, we must learn balance. We must learn how to build foundation on a single shaky leg. If you listen close enough, you can hear the sssch sssch your rubber soles make against the edges. Blurring chalk lines of ash pink and purple. Feet never stop moving as long as the map in the ground withstands the washing away.  Pt. 2 Pom Poms  Imagine gathered confetti of sharp silver and diamond white. Little stars in our hands as we shape and stomp and chant. Hear the rustling like a gentle earthquake shaking loose the leaves on an oak tree. Nothing stands still here. We noise this field. Glitter dancing in our palms.  Pt. 3. 25-cent chips and sunflower seeds  Bells chime over our heads when we enter this place. The man behind the counter smiles in a way that doesn’t make us want to shed skin. The lot of us, dancing in between the aisles. Swiveling hips trying to match the maracas and trumpets echoing. We make a feast with $3 each. Barbecue rap chips. Salt and vinegar. Flamin hot Cheetos. Ranch sunflower seeds. Foot-long icicles. The bags go pop pop pop. Air escaping into itself. We smile through sugared teeth.  Pt. 4 Double Dutch  Some of us know how to do both. The rest of us stick to one. Arms jerking back and forth. Testing to see if we could truly ride the air. Jump jump jump . The rope kisses ground over and over and this is its own song. We listen carefully to its rhythm. It will tell us if we are too eager and not eager enough. It will snap at our flesh if we interrupt its flow. It does not con real. It does not lie in the sounds it makes. It is like life that way.  Pt. 5 Sulfur 8 and Blue Magic  We sit in between our mothers like they did with theirs before us. The tail snakes its way through our scalp. Etching. We shiver as the vines are pulled from their entanglements and the plastic goes thwack against our craniums. We listen for the rhythm. Brace ourselves for the impact of the biting down. Combing through. We know this is not all that is. Not just the pain. The blue magic comes soon after. Like a calming wave. Washing against a lava shore. All we know is peace. ### 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.

Erica Frederick is a queer, Haitian American writer from Orlando, Florida currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in fiction from Syracuse University and writes about being big in all the ways there are to be big—in body, in spirit, in Blackness, in Florida suburbia. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Tin House, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, VIDA, Lambda Literary, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation. She is well at work on her first novel, Fight in the Night. Banana Trees / Sunflower Seeds I’d seen her after Baby Bio at the Barnes & Noble Starbucks, you know, that’s where the baddies be, contemplating cake pops. She was brown-skinned and big-haired, everything pierced, everywhere a tattoo, tall and skinny as the devil’s trident and I got that stomach clutch, like: I gotta pee. And she looked at me and I’m a coward, so I studied someone’s strawberry refresher, but she was still locking eyes with me when I looked up so I turned, stumbled into Young Adult. She was in my peripherals, started circling me in Science Fiction so I just let her catch me and she said, “I know how this sounds, but see, I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful, so kinky-curly, so damn thick, Jesus have mercy.”  I said, “Sierra. Saint-Fleur.”  She said, “Betty, Jean Baptiste. And on top of it all, you’re Haitian too?” I nodded. I said, “Kiss me.”  She said, “Fuck me.”  I sat next to her, nervous, on the city bus, got took to her apartment and she did, I did. On a boxspringless mattress next to stacks of used and yellowed books under all her trinkets and twinkle lights. She laid next to me, naked and heavy-breathed and said, “I might could like you, but you’re gonna have to learn to fuck me better.” And me, anxious always, flop sweat, stomach always doing some goddamn thing, I said, “I should’ve said this, but I’ve never fucked anybody.” She put a hand on my shoulder, forehead on mine, breathed her breath into my nostrils and since then, she’s never stopped touching me soft.  Back home after the bus, I culled peas and plinked them into a cast pot while Mummy curled four fingers of one hand into the handle of a milk-jug-made-watering-can and held the other to her muumuu’d midsection. We were in the makings of a meal for us and for the spirits, so they could gift us everything we’d wished for, like for me final exam answers and for her our slumlord dead and buried. Mummy smiled, gap-toothed, into the ceiling, rolled her hips to konpa. I bit my teeth ’cause I couldn’t tell her that I knew then exactly what  gouyad  and grinding was all about. She poured water into the base of her banana tree, planted straight from the seed into one of the blue plastic barrels she usually used to steal my shit to send to Haiti. She picked yesterday’s offering up off the altar cloth that laid at the base, brushed the dirt off the shoulders of an unopened Barbancourt, then got back to bragging about how beautiful she’d been back in the day.  “Hey hey!” she shouted into the beat. “You know, I’m the reason every man is in search of a Jacmelienne, cherie , they’ve been searching for me since 1983.”  I smirked, plinked peas, said, “But your man left you?”  She lifted her arms and hands way up like she was praising the Lord and not le monde . She said, “He left you, cherie , not me. Because you came out bald and blinding light skinned.” I sucked my teeth, popped her with a pea. She opened her eyes finally, leaned in to cup my face, she said, “But now, you’ve been blessed to look just like your Mummy.” Her thumb was wet and wrinkled. “And your man will be in search of you soon.”  Betty and I started doing shit like going on walks and sitting forever on park benches. She’d graze her fingers over my arm hair or my inner thigh and I would go nuts at the chills she made in me. She started talking like, “Can you believe that once we were strangers?” And I’d twist, tilt, say, “I think I’d like to never stop knowing you.” She said, “I like how you’re looking to eat up life, even though you’re nervous.” I said, “I like how big you do it, belligerent, baby you’re a supernova.” “You’re corny.” “Isn’t that how I got you?”  She said, “Sometimes, I feel afraid, like I’m going to lose you. Like I’ll do it wrong, do too much, I’ll fuck it up, I won’t know how to love you right, and you’ll leave me.” “Sometimes, me too.” I said, “What if I can’t be enough for you, don’t have enough to give? What if my loving is too tiny, too tepid for you to feel?”  “Kiss me.”  “Fuck me.”  I got better, got good, gave her orgasms, learned to stop loving lightly, because she needed pressure. That’s how come it came to be that Madame Claude and Claude himself seen me and her at the Magic Mall. Because we’re Black and romantic, they seen me buying her bamboo earrings, gold plated, said Betty  on the inside of the hoops. They seen her get me a nameplate necklace for me to never take off, wear always, it said Sierra . And by the time Claude and Madame Claude see me pull Betty in by the mid-rise belt loop, kiss her nape, call her baby—I’d seen them too.  I rush to lip-kiss Betty goodbye and swipe a box of the almost-sweet carrot cake that Mummy craves but doesn’t ever buy herself, pray to the patron saint of city buses to make it home quick because I know those two will call her to snitch on me like it’s their day job, like I’m not grown, like … okay I still live with my mom but I’m a degree-seeking  daughter. But when I key open the pastel pink door, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, papers fanned out on top of it: she’s making up numbers for her taxes, home phone pressed to her ear. I slide the cake onto the table and duck into the living room to tap into the other line like it’s the early aughts. I hear Claude and Madame Claude suck their teeth like it’s a ritual required before talking shit, start with, Pitit: We seen your daughter with some slut, she was nose pierced and ankleted, she’s a lesbian .  Mummy, who used to take care and take her time to give me a zig zag part down the middle, braided my hair and put the boul gogo  at the base, my mom, who Haitian-remedied me through juvenile fucking arthritis, who fed me fried eggs and coffee sweet but strong as liquor—she listens to her sister and her sister’s cheating-ass, dusty-ass man say that dick won’t ever be enough for girls like me. I hear Mummy not say shit, not defend me when they say it’d be best to let in a gang to, one after the other, fuck me, force me. That’s the only way I’d ever be satisfied. She only sighs when they say that maybe men wouldn’t be enough. A pack of horses ought to do it for the madivine .  After they click off, I make sure she sees my silhouette in the kitchen doorway.  I say, “So?” She sucks her teeth, she never looks up. “I don’t know what would cause someone to say something so sick.”  “They’re sick,” I say, a bubble in my throat, “but it’s true.”  Her barely-there eyebrows meet in the middle. Jeez, you can almost see her beating heart come up through her bird chest and into the blue veins of her neck. But she is great at knowing nothing so disappointing could ever happen to her. She says, “Remove your lips from that lie.”  “It is true,” I say, “I’ve been gay.” And I have been, sweet since the babysitter, Beatrice. She’d ring the doorbell and I’d act a damn fool, be writhing when I saw her, the origin of the gotta pee feeling. She was busty and nice to me. She wore her hair relaxed and her face dimpled and once I asked: How do I know this is real life? She squinted, looked at me nearly to neckbreak. She said: Don’t ever stop asking questions like that.  Mummy says, “Are you trying to ruin my life?”  “What?” She stares only at the banana tree. She’s forever said I’d better show it some respect—it’d been growing since before I was, more hers than mine. She says, “We can get rid of this. I swear it to you, cherie , this spirit can leave your body.”  She looks at me, everywhere, the nose ring, the nameplate, the anklet. She puts her palms to her cheeks, like she sees now: all the gay signs were there. I shrug, I say, bleary-eyed, “I don’t want this spirit to leave me.”  She says, “Then I won’t have any part in it. In this, in you.” I creakily nod. I turn, a whirlwind into my room. I get on the ground, feel old rice grains and kinky hairballs in my kneecaps, head fog, ears plugged, a siren. I shove clothes, unwashed, into my pink and dirty old Barbie duffel bag. I pass my mom, both of us stone-faced, on my way to the bathroom. I steal the toilet paper because I bought it, steal her dusting powder forged in Haiti because I used to flour myself in it because I used to want to smell her everywhere. I rush back into the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets, orbiting the table. I catch side glimpses of her, slumped, face seems set to drip off her skull. I plop the duffel onto the table and take back the cake, crush the flimsy plastic container into the cartoon carrot drawn in icing, shove it on top of my tennis shoes and zip it away. I stand, waiting to catch her eyes just once, once more. I muss up all her documents, send them fluttering onto the carpet. She only takes a breath, pushes herself from the table, and turns to thumb a sun-spotted leaf of her banana tree. By the time I get to Betty’s I realize I’m breathing again, heavy and hot and a heartbeat. In the doorway, Betty puts one lanky arm over my shoulder, she’s warm. She’s got a blunt between her ringed fingers and holds it to my lips. I shut my eyes. I breathe in. She kisses me before I can blow out the smoke.  I wake up to her big spoon and her arm feels heavy on my waist. I lift it and drop it off me. She wriggles and wakes, lets out her little morning moan, rubs a big toe over my ankles. I shift to lie on my back. She puts her arm around me, again.  “How do you feel?” she asks. I look at her a little, her eyes big and her eyebrows bigger. I look up at the ceiling lamp: a teardrop on a chain, gray with dust.  I close one eye, worm an arm out from under hers to pinch the picture of the lamp out from my sight. “Just like that,” I say.  Betty’s clutching fistfuls of comforter and I’m hands full of thighs, face to face with her labia, where I’ve grown to love to be. “Is everything okay?” she whispers, craning her neck down to catch a peek of the crown of my head.  I muffle, “Mm-hm.” But when I bring my head back down it’s like pushing together the south poles of magnets. I try to inch forward but still spring back. I stare into her clit, I spiral, I … I can’t lick it, I can’t, I can’t, can’t like it. “Hey.” She crawls her fingernails in between my box braids, into my scalp. “Come up here.”  I climb up over her spindly limbs to lay beside her, look into her adorned face.  “Let’s buy a house and have a bunch of kids, name them all Betty and Sierra Jr.,” she says.  “Plant sunflower seeds in the backyard and then get married in it,” I say. “Where should we honeymoon?” “Haiti, the motherland, have a threesome with La Sirenn.”  “Do you think it’ll be the same,” I croak, “you know, without a mother, and everything?” She grabs my hands to interlace in hers, kisses each of my fingers, “You were born of Ayiti, cherie , nothing can steal you from her.” I walk, big headphones on, to pick Betty up from her work study job at the financial aid office, sure to avoid the super senior, this Sisqó dupe, lurking by the arches of the fountain, squawking at women who pass him by. Sure as sin, he’s there, so I turn up the konpa, watch him rub his hands together, holler at me mute-mouthed. I’m a yard away from him when, and when, when when my shoulder pivots, like it’s the core of the earth marionetting me. And just like that, I’m walking back the way I came, the music in my ears dwindles down to dead.  He says, “See, baby, you too pretty not to be noticing me.” I try again to push, fight back against this pull of gravity, but I pivot once again until I’m faced with him. North and south poles, south and north, north and south. His eyes are yellow and mine are hot.  I hear, “Sierra!,” in the distance, turn to see Betty trotting toward me. She starts with a smile, big teeth, big heart, but drops it when she catches sight of me, takes a single sideways look at the Sisqó stunt double.  “You good?” She grabs my hips, I’m hers, she says, “This is my girl.”  He throws his hands up. “My fault,” he says, “you know, I actually got respect for the LGBTs.” He steps back. A bubble bursts, a breath of air.  I open my eyes to Betty frowning at them. “It’s just not coming out right,” she says, furrowed brows and pursed lips. I raise the mirrored pallet to my eyelids, the rainbows I’d requested for the pride parade came out all overcast, smudged. I give up and get the makeup remover while Betty lights a bowl. I’d stopped the stuff, hoping I could cure this—the everything.  I got my license and myself deeper into student loan debt, so I drive us in my brand-new-used Honda Civic down the freeway, to the beach, Betty snoozing against the window, sunshades down. I can almost smell the SPF and the six-foot dolls in drag—no, no. And no, no, no, and no, no. I cut the steering wheel, the steering wheel cuts me, a U-turn into traffic. Betty jerks awake to tire screeches, all of the freeway honking, horns, horns, horns, cursing me, cars cutting and running from mine like a zipper.  Betty grips the glove compartment. “Sierra, what the fuck? What the fuck ?” But she turns to me, my wide eyes and white knuckles. She takes her two fingers, her short acrylics, her rose tattoos, to my wrists. “Please, please, turn around.” “I can’t,” I cry out, “I’m not, I can’t, I’m not in control.”  “Okay,” she says, “okay.” She rubs my shoulder, she cuts the wheel this time, puts us at least over the median and back into the flow of traffic.  “I don’t know where I’m going,” I say in shuddered breaths, phlegm and tears. “It’s all wrong. I think, I think, I’ve been repelled .”  “By what?” she whispers, maybe neither of us wanting to say it too loud.  “Being gay,” I whisper back. As soon as I put words to it, I know where we’re headed.  I show up at the pastel pink door, ask Betty to wait in the car because this is my business to unburden. I tap at the door with the baseball bat I keep in the trunk. And there is Mummy, bright and thin-skinned. I burst in, I ask, “Where is it?” “Thank God, you’ve come back to me.”  I wield the bat like a wand. Point it at my mom, coax her away from me as I step further into the home that once was so much home . “Show it to me! Show me the fucking token you used to make it so that you wouldn’t have a daughter like me anymore.” Mummy clutches her muumuu, says, “Sierra, this isn’t you speaking right now.” “You’re right, this isn’t me. It’s whatever you put on me.” I swing at the pre-owned China cabinet. The glass and the fake-ass China shatter. “How could you?” I ask. She ogles me, always stoic. I gesture the bat to the banana tree. “You can wish what you want me to do. You can pray to whichever of your whack-ass spirits to control my body. Try to pull me from pussy, push me to all the men you want. But you can’t change me.” I let her come close to me. Her pigeon arms. She unsticks the braids from my glistening forehead. “It’s okay, cherie.  That is enough. This will work, will let me love you.” I sniffle.  I heel-turn to the banana tree, the peeling trunk, the fenestrated fronds, and start to smash it to bits.  “No!” she screams, “no.” But the plates are too broken, liquor too spilt, everything between us is too wide, the insides of the tree too white. Then I see it peeking up from the soil. A 3D crystal photo I had etched for her for Mother’s Day: me on one side, morphed into her on the other. It’s bound in cotton yarn. I drop it on the floor. I raise my bat.  — In the car, right in my old parking lot, I sit on top of Betty. I put my hands up her shirt, she puts her hands on my waist.  “I’m gonna start my own altar,” I say, “summon lesbian spirits and shit.”  She smirks, says, “What are you going to put on it?” I think. I say, “Sunflower seeds.” “Fuck me.” “Kiss me.” ### 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.

Savannah Balmir is a Caribbean-American writer from Mount Vernon, New York. She studied English at Howard University and earned an MFA at the University of Kentucky where she won the 2024 UK Fiction Award. Savannah was named a 2023 Emerging Scholar by the Haitian Studies Association, and she has received fellowships and residencies from Kimbilio, Oxbelly, and The Albers Foundation. Her short story “Night Riding,” published in Pinch Journal , was longlisted for the 2024 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean American Writer’s Prize. Savannah’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Castle in Our Skins , Kweli , Pree , The Seventh Wave Magazine , and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories. At the End of Every Apocalypse is a New Apocalypse  The Greater Mercy Episcopal church yard is full of squealing and laughter, and the occasional territorial conflict. English is the lingua franca of this place and has become the currency of arguments. Yusuf and Damian quarrel about who can be goalie. They boot the same four words back and forth (Am Goalie! No, Me!) Meanwhile, the older boys patch a hopeless soccer ball with duct tape. Yusuf and Damian don’t realize that they could both be goalie, if one of them just walked to the other side of the yard.  On the concrete edge of the playground, Joy and Grace have a shared desire for one translucent hula hoop, the kind with swishing liquid and purple glitter inside. Joy calls out that she wants the hoop, but Grace gets to it first, steps into it like an invisible skirt and sticks her tongue out at Joy. Grace sets the hoop in motion, relishing in the tinkling swishhh  of every revolution. Joy’s envy gets the best of her. With one sharp jab she knocks the spinning hoop down. It falls and catches Grace’s soft sneakered ankle. Lucy, a seventeen-year-old in a yellow Greater Mercy T-Shirt, intervenes. She confiscates the hula hoop, sits the two girls out on a picnic bench.  “You guys shouldn’t fight,” Lucy reminds them. “You’re from the same place.” Joy and Grace roll their eyes, thinking how dumb Lucy is to not know the difference. The only thing they have in common is the river Zaire. The difference is de Brazza and Leopold. Jupiter and Mars.  The girls one picnic table over trade tales of their past selves, though none of them is older than fourteen. Orlendy clips plastic butterflies onto Hindou’s hijab. Asmahan uses the tip of a pencil to trace sections in Fabiola’s head. Aissatou says she has two older sisters who used to do her hair.  “What are their names?” says Heben, whose large eyes glitter under the sheen of her wide forehead pulled tight by skinny Habesha braids.  “I can’t remember,” says Aissatou.  “You can’t remember your own sisters’ names?” says Heben. Aissatou’s mouth parts and then stiches back tightly. Her eyes blunt with incomplete memory; her gaze sinks to her lap, to the red henna flowers in her palms.  Aissatou is not the only one. The entire group is caught on the question. They search their own memories for names.  “Yes, if they’re back home,” says Asmahan, nodding with the lifted eyebrows of an elder. Her long fingers pause in Fabiola’s thick hair. “If they’re back home, and you haven’t seen them, sometimes it happens. You can forget.” The girls breathe. They nod their heads too. They are learning to sift through their losses.  Nadia, who looks like a young Alek Wek, retrieves her phone from her hoodie pocket, and scrolls through her feed. The music playing from the phone lifts the general mood a bit. Heben rises to show them all her rendition of the bacardi, and then Joy gets up to join her. They skip their feet and treble their hips to the ting ting ting  of A-Star’s latest amapiano hit.  “That’s not how you do it!” says Grace, delighting in Joy’s stiff back and awkward footwork.  “Let’s look for one that teaches the steps,” Nadia says. The girls huddle together, and Nadia keeps scrolling.  In the next video, there is a body without legs. Eyes lacquered open. A skull crushed and weeping. Dust. Dust like a lace veil over curling hair, along the fan of a baby’s eyelashes. Blood like black sap, crusting on blued skin.  Silently, they watch the apocalypse. Each of them has already lived through one of their own.  In seconds, the death is gone, replaced by the tutorial Nadia had been looking for. Nobody says anything, and so they forget. They get up and dance. They record themselves and after a dozen takes, post their coordinated steps online. In a few months, when new children arrive freshly salvaged from their apocalypse, the girls will learn their names. They will invite them to the picnic table. They will brush their hair and henna their hands. They will remember, and they will forget, and they will survive.  ### 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.

Tie’s work appears or is upcoming in Lucky Jefferson , Querencia Press , Midway Journal , Shō Poetry

and he often falls asleep and snores to the Addams Family Values , Candyman , and Tank Girl , but not Friday

(she/her) is the author of Nocturne in Joy (2023), winner of the 2024 Julia Ward Howe Book Prize in poetry

With a feature film, three shorts and a UCLA MFA in film producing, Mildred is shopping two pilots: i-CLASS It’s Friday. This is Louisiana. LICIA They’re poisoned. EARLENE I took out the ones that were bad. We’ve made our own little shoal here every Friday since I got back.

Joi’ C. Weathers is an award-winning marketer turned writer and third-generation Chicago South Sider with over 14 years of experience leading creative campaigns for global brands like Microsoft and Meta. She’s been recognized with a Cannes Lion, multiple regional Emmys, Golden Trumpet Awards from the Publicity Club of Chicago (PCC), and ADC and AICP honors. She excels at blending cultural storytelling with business success, but her true passion lies in prose. Currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Temple University, Joi’ amplifies Black voices and celebrates the African Diaspora through her work. A 2025 Project Completion Grant recipient, she is currently finalizing her manuscript for her debut novel, which centers around themes of identity, community, autonomy, and the power of self-acceptance. In addition, she will join the 2025 ‘Black Philadelphia’ symposium as a panelist, hosted by The Library Company of Philadelphia, 1838 Black Metropolis, and UPenn, where she will discuss reclaiming the narrative of Black women. She is the host of the award-winning Obsidian Collection podcast while maintaining her brand Joi Has Questions , dedicated to sharing Black History. Through storytelling and advocacy, Joi’ continues to celebrate the Black Diaspora in all she does. Learn more about Joi’ on her website iamjoicweathers.com and follow her on social media: @Joihasquestions. Redd Ain’t Never Been Just A Color There was never a woman like Ms. Redd. A goddess who required no finery to prove her divinity, she simply was. In human form, she was a woman of high morals, said, “ Mister ”  and “ Ma’am ”  if you were an elder, and shushed her gals if they were talking too loose. One glare was all it took. “Stop talking all crazy like you don’t see these babies walking by us.” Sure enough, the conversation ceased until they were out of earshot and then they’d cut up again. The only time she faltered in her propriety was if she’d drank too much, for even Gods could not always be perfect. She rarely fought. “Fighting was for heathens,” I had once heard her say. And Redd, by no means, was a heathen.  Every day waking no earlier than Noon she surveyed the land and those whom she lorded over. She had a simple routine for meeting people, standing on the East side of the block across the street from the newspaper stand, lazily taking in her days. I’d sometimes catch glances of her when my mother wasn’t hissing at me to not look at her.  “Hope, turn your head. I don’t want you looking at that naked heifer with her tail hanging all out.”  That only made me want to look more at the impossibility of Ms. Redd containing her curves in a cutoff tee and tight Daisy Duke shorts. Ironically, she never wore the color she was named after. She harnessed its power from the depths of her being. It was amazing to see how she drew attention.  Never one to make the first move, if someone whistled at her, she’d look around as if to say, “Who, me?” Then, without uttering a word, she would return to intensely concentrating on whatever mundane task she was attending to. Even though she and her potential friend knew it was a game, this part of the chase had to be abided by. There was decorum to be upheld. It was to be clear that she was the wanted one, even though she had peeped her John from a mile away. She dangled her innocence before her victims, tricking them, literally, into believing they were in charge when they never truly were. The pursuant would become more enthusiastic, panting, “Come on now, baby. Why you  out here being so mean to me?” “Heyyyyyy suga,” she’d purr. “If you want to speak to me, call me Ms. Redd. I ain’t one of these lil’ hoes out here.” Whether she was talking to a man or woman, they would quickly correct themselves to keep in her good graces, “Well, excuse me, Ms. Redd… say how bout’ we go for a ride?” She would stare for a second, probably to do a temperature check and assess if they could turn into a dangerous situation. She never bothered to ask if they were a cop or not. What for? Some of her best clients were police officers, and at the end of the day, the clientele was the clientele. Once she garnered that they wouldn’t test her prowess with her switchblade, she’d meander up to their car real slow-like.  “Well now if you want to ride with Ms. Redd, then a ride you gon’ get.”  Then they’d be off. When she returned, magically there was not a hair out of place, nor a yank of her skirt that had to be rearranged, and her tomato lipstick was just as bright as it was before. She emerged just as perfect as she’d gone. She wasn’t a heathen, indeed. Ms. Redd represented a wildness I didn’t see within my mother. She represented follow-through. My mom always seemed to apologize for her rage, as if it was attached to failing to be her higher self, and it was exhausting. She came off like a damp rag over a fire, her own fire; she’d light it, then panic at what could happen, so she’d quickly suffocate it before it ever became an untamable blaze. With Ms. Redd, there was an acceptance that she could be as destructive as she was wonderful. Even when she apologized for cursing, it never came out as a plea, it was as simple as one plus one, she was wrong, she was sorry, but that was the end of it. I didn’t know how to express to my mother that I saw she was struggling, that whatever she was trying to keep from me was in plain view, and I wondered if I told her that I saw the unhappiness she tried so hard to shield if I’d be in trouble.  I had a feeling that daughters weren’t supposed to tell their mothers, “I know you’re a fraud.” The only reason I was aware was because I was hiding my sorrow, too. My mother would be my future self if I hid for too long. Ms. Redd wasn’t an everyday experience as she had multiple blocks to claim. So seeing her on Prairie Avenue was a special treat. In her line of work, there was no management to report to, no boss who took a cut like a tax collector. She was her very own Kingmaker. She was like a sharp inhalation when it was thirty below.  In my world women around me molded themselves into the life they’d been given, whether they were good little Christian wives, or if they were yelling down the block after some “No accounting ass nigga, who don’t take care of his kids.”  They all rang the same boring bell. Not Ms. Redd, though. Even on one random summer day when I saw her get arrested for slicing my neighbor’s face for not fairly splitting the cost of their favorite malt liquor, she held her head up high, like she ain’t have a care in the world. I didn’t see her again until Mr. Lee’s peonies were blooming the following summer. She carried on as if time had waited for her, and to an extent it had. No one had customer service like her, so the patrons she had lost due to her jail stint eagerly returned. She’d chide them saying, “So what this I hear about you cheating on Ms. Redd? I have a mind to charge you double, just caz’ you forgot about me. You then hurt my feelings. You know you my favorite.”   Of course, her Johns would swear up and down that they had done no such thing, and how could anyone forget about her? How she was the best, what in the world did she think made them drive so far into this neighborhood other than her? She accepted their worship, their apologies, and their money, and continued with her life. That’s what was so magnetic about Ms. Redd, the fact that you could never bring her down when she already claimed what the mirror showed her. She was a whore like water was wet, yet she made sure everyone knew she was worthy of respect. She found a way to command it and did it in a way that other women could not. I never saw Ms. Redd chase after no man and never saw her fight over the love from either. I never saw her make herself small so a man could feel big. Never saw her make pot roast when she had a taste for ribs, never saw her fish for compliments for the very meal she had conceded her own taste buds for. From the crown of her fanned-out beehive to the crimson-colored toes that matched her nails, Ms. Redd was someone to aspire after. Yet, none of the women of my block did. Partly because some of her Johns were actually their men. Since these women were in no position to lash out at them for their misdeeds, they lashed at Redd, because their accountability had to go somewhere. What was the point of confronting a man you knew you weren’t going to leave to begin with? So they laid their shame at her feet. How could their husbands resist when she paraded around the neighborhood like that? What choice did they have to fight her evil ways? In the blink of an eye, these fully-grown able-bodied men became no more than misguided babes, not willing participants. Yet, none of the women ever dared to confront Redd. They might have cut their eyes at her, but it was always once her back was to them. No woman I knew was that crazy, for she would have cut them to smithereens, literally. When it came to my home, the most I ever heard from my mother was a sharp click of her teeth whenever she saw Ms. Redd, but I attributed her disgust more so because of how short her shorts always were. Nothing in the slightest gave me the inclination that my mother had a personal reason to not like her. Her distaste for Ms. Redd was purely out of feminine solidarity. For all the trouble my parents gave one another, infidelity never was an issue I saw them face, and to be honest it is the one situation I think would have fully consumed my mother to a wildfire. Yet, it never stopped my mother from taking part in the bash fest that sprang forth every time Ms. Redd walked by. Not even pruning her tulips could keep her from listening in. “Y’all heard that fight the other night Tisha was having with her man Ronell?” Ms. Lee  would start.   “How could we not, she was throwing all his clothes off the balcony,” Gloria would  chime in. “Well, you know it’s because of you-know-who.” “When ain’t that heifer breaking up someone’s family.” Then as if on cue they’d all look down at me and gasp as they realized they had said too much in front of me. “Hope go upstairs and refill this water pitcher.” “Mommy, but the hose is right–” “Girl I said go upstairs,” My mom cut me off.  Everyone knew I had to go upstairs to get out of “grown folks’ business,”  but it annoyed me to no end that they spoke so harshly of Ms. Redd. From where I stood, she was nice. She always smiled when she saw me and said, “Hey now” when I told her how many A’s I got on my report card. Her encouragement was no different than anyone else’s, even if it did come with a few fewer articles of clothing. Even though I was only twelve, there was something about Ms. Redd that I wanted to be like. It had nothing to do with attention. My encounter with Jason had killed any desire I had to want to be seen by anyone. It was Redd’s power. It was her ability not to care. I wanted that for myself. I wanted my shoulders to be straight like hers. I didn’t want to walk, I wanted to saunter. Those had been my thoughts as I hung my head over the porch one afternoon. It was too hot to play outside and my parents were elsewhere in our apartment. So, I took one of the rare moments to enjoy our balcony alone. I had watched Redd walk past, my eyes following her all the way to the Judah Brothers grocery store. I imagined she would buy her usual Colt 45 and a new pack of Newports. It was then I settled on the one thing that I could do as an homage to her. The next time I had a hair appointment at Yehia’s, I was going to ask the nail tech Ms. Candice to paint my nails red. I had saved up enough money for one bottle of OPI nail polish, and there was a beauty supply store right next to the salon. I felt settled with my decision, even excited at the prospect that it would shock my parents. I was acting more like Ms. Redd already. A few weeks later as I sat in my beautician’s chair, I put my plan in motion. I had already secured the nail polish as Ms. Francela had allowed me to go next door to buy some butterfly clips I wanted to put in my hair. I added the polish to my purchase and calmly walked back into the salon. I knew my parents had promised we were going to dinner that night, so I figured I would have time to persuade them, should they object to my polish choice. Come hell or high water I was going to look like Ms. Redd if it killed me. Time was on my side that day as the nail tech, Ms. Candice, was able to squeeze me in.  She pressed me for confirmation that it was okay to paint my nails that color, and my voice didn’t falter when I responded, “It’s okay my parents won’t mind.” Her slow and deliberate moments told me she didn’t believe me, but she did it anyway.  When she was done, I looked down at my hands with happiness. There was something on my body for me to love again. I was beside myself. *** “Have you lost your mind?” my parents said in unison once my hands emerged from my lap. Nuzzled in a booth in the restaurant, I faced a firing squad of judgment. “Now you know better than to have that lady put red nail polish on your hands. Who you  out here trying to look like some floozy?” “What even possessed Candice to do it is my question,” my daddy was beside himself.  Well, if I was being honest, I was trying to be like one floozy, in particular. My mom seemed genuinely shocked that she even had to bring this error to my attention. My daddy’s eyes were the size of saucers as if he had caught me kissing a boy behind the shed. Their faces seemed to say,  How do you not just know what this means? But I didn’t know their fears. All I knew was the freedom I felt. I wanted something that reminded me of Ms. Redd, of her mightiness. The way she dared to judge the world right back for having the audacity to outcast her in the first place. For some odd reason, I found myself holding back tears, to envision a swab of acetone-doused cotton balls in my hands, would be killing something else within myself. I had already died the day Jason had stripped me of my innocence. I refused to die again. The car ride home was a quiet one but my rage towards my parents' seeming hypocrisy radiated off me like the sun’s rays. I was too proud to plead with them to let me keep my nails as it went without saying that the polish was gone the minute we got upstairs. They stood over me as I wiped any trace of wildness from my body. I saw them nod as I finished on my very last nail, satisfied that I was once again their perfect and obedient daughter. What they didn’t have was the bottle. In their crusade, it hadn’t even crossed their minds that the nail polish was in my possession. So, from that night, and for more days than I could count afterward, I would paint my right pinky nail, as a reminder of who I could be. Even though I had to wipe off the polish before it set, I would still see remnants in my cuticle bed, and it gave me a trill. No, I never spoke to Ms. Redd on the regular, and more times than not it seemed that she didn’t even know I existed and that was the way it was supposed to be. She was sure of her divinity, whereas I had no clue mine could even exist. Yet, the embers I saw growing from the spot of color on my one nail waited patiently for me to blow on them so that one day I would be a fire that wasn’t too scared to burn. ### 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.

received her MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts and fellowships from Callaloo, the Poetry She has also been featured on Button Poetry’s YouTube platform and has performed at the likes of Spotify Her debut chapbook is forthcoming from Button Poetry in April 2024.

She is the author of the poetry collection, when the signals come home  (Switchback Books), and the chapbook Her work has appeared in Breadcrumbs, Frontier, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, the Southampton Review and She is the winner of the 2017 James Hearst Poetry Prize and the 2020 Gatewood Prize. 1: poet discusses