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Tanya Shirley is a Jamaican poet, Cave Canem Fellow, and the author of two poetry collections; She Who Sleeps with Bones  and The Merchant of Feathers . photo by Peter Ferguson Studio Tanya Shirley has published two poetry collections with Peepal Tree Press in the UK: She Who Sleeps with Bones  and The Merchant of Feathers . Her work has been featured on BBC World Service, BBC Front Row, Scottish Poetry Library,  www.poetryarchive.org ,  and translated into Spanish and Polish. She received an MFA from the University of Maryland and has been a tertiary-level educator for over twenty years. She is the recipient of a Silver Musgrave Medal from the Institute of Jamaica for her outstanding contribution in the field of Literature. She is also a proud Cave Canem Fellow.   Marriage     It is to be broken. It is to be   torn open.    Wendell Berry     After that year when you were sick  then I was sick then we were sick together,  we had to learn again the landscape  of our pleasure,  how to watch water tiding over our bodies  and think of thirst instead of damage  to a bandage, how to stir need into fire  without worry of fever.  We who had grown accustomed to catheters  and the long arm of monitors had to learn again  the appendages of lust: fingers, tongues, the surprise  of toes, how to lock eyes as we lay flesh folding  into flesh and not see a tunnel leading to death,  how to sit in the quiet of just us   without the crutch of the hospital’s TV   coughing out the news. We had to be enough  mouth to mouth, making a new life of yes, yes,   there, there, just like that  and trust   our pressing   deeper into each other   was knocking on the muscular door   of memory,   how before the wounded year  we welcomed the rhythm of hurt   and heal.   Still, My Body   So many doctors have been inside   the experiment of my body.  Tonsil-less, appendix-less, uterus-less,  I am less than I was  but still, I am living in the fullness   of a promise to myself.    Scar tissue hardens over the memory   of the doctor who, as I was going under   for the two for the price of one  endoscopy and colonoscopy,   said to the interns circling like crows   We probably won’t find anything    but too much fat .  Too much fat is every doctor’s first missile  and it always hits the target   of my heart,   an organ real and symbolic.     I imagine a heartless  body   that’s how I get the courage  to laugh and grab my belly   then painstakingly walk every doctor,  in crisp lines of English   through the muscular needs  of my still   breathing body.    The Days of our Years     She's reached her threescore years and ten  and suddenly she's begun to die  if not in her bones, in her mind,  spreading the dining room table  with the obituary pages, circling  photos of people she knew in her wrinkle-  free years and people she spoke to only  last week in the supermarket while  separating avocados from ripe and may   never ripe even in a dark cupboard  like dreams she's had to give up on.  This month four of her former colleagues  died, all younger than her, and she remembers  the factory fumes, the death-smelling sweet  of undiluted disinfectant bubbling up  in giant blue drums and she wonders  how long she can stave off cancer,  the seemingly inevitable disease  of those who had no choice but to work  where their application was accepted.  There's a section in her closet called funeral  attire: long-sleeved, knee-length dresses,  black, black and white and a fistful of floral  patterns for the ones that say bright colors  where they want the congregation to smile  and clap though there's a mother or child  who cries so loudly the family carries them  outside for a taste of fresh air and even there  their wailing sounds over the sermon  and the festive mood falls down a notch,  until the repast where the liquor line snakes  out the hall and the unaccustomed are the first  to get drunk on the idea they could be next.  Stories abound about what the dead did wrong  or the doctors failed to detect and everyone   goes in for a medical in the days to come,  like my nana who's scanned her whole body  and only found a loss of bone density.  You would think she'd be happy but no,  her mind and body are now in sync  both speeding to total annihilation, so   her house must be in order: folders full  of instructions, bank statements, insurance  policies and when you sit for Sunday dinner,  dead faces staring at you from the folded  newspaper in the corner, she says enjoy  the meal, this could be the last time you taste  my cooking and the roast chicken gets stuck  in your throat and you cough and cough  until you cry.        Self-Portrait as a Catastrophizer      I am holding my heart  in the passenger seat  as you maneuver the city   streets.     A taxi throws itself   in front of us and you swerve   into a bus. Despite my poems  and good deeds, I'm nameless  on the midday news.     At the traffic lights,   you point to a lady standing  on the sidewalk with a batty  as big as a front room   which reminds me...    Did I blow out the candles  around the tub after soaking  in chamomile flowers and baking  soda? Our house is on fire:  passports, photos, Oh God —  the dog. I knew she wouldn't live  long pulling up so much pleasure  from sucking herself all day.    My mother, two doors down,  hears the crackling and arrives  shoeless in her house dress.  Not one of the neighbors  can find a hose and the driver  of the fire engine is in bed  with someone else's woman.     My mother faints and is taken  to the hospital where she'll wait  in a corridor for three days  until they find a bed. No catastrophizing  can get me to tell you she's dead.    My sister must now travel  from overseas but the pilot is drunk,  the mist over the mountains mistaken  for the pale blue of sky. I pray  like our ancestors she learns to fly.    We've left the city behind,  arriving at the beach where  like a bloated sea-creature  I climb into a hammock between  two trees, the breeze loosens a coconut  that knocks me over the head.    You are in the water   fighting a shark no one expected  this close to shore, except me.  Last night I dreamed two people  marrying who exchanged a blue   baby instead of rings.    I told you we should have stayed  home. You tell me there are no  sharks, no coconuts; there is no   fire, no danger.   We are clinging to each other  in the water circled by a school  of silver fish.     You lick my neck,  your tongue is a meat cleaver.  My face floats towards the horizon  and the lifeguard looks away  as my headless body jolts and jerks  to shore where I fall on the sand.  Bury me here.  I've always known my ending  would be without song.    You wake to catch me  staring out the window at dawn  slipping into her orange dress.  What are you thinking?   Nothing my love.  Lie back down and rest.   THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Tanya Shirley and Jae Nichelle on January 25th, 2025. Wow, these poems are captivating. Thank you for sharing them. I noticed a throughline of death here—from learning to “not see a tunnel leading to death” in the poem “Marriage” to end-of-life planning in “The Days of our Years.” Yet, the tone in your work is not despairing. These poems are full of tenderness and love. Do you have any philosophies on death and grief that help you cope with them? Thank you. I don’t fear my own death but I still struggle with the knowledge that dealing with the death of loved ones is a part of our experience here on earth and the more you love someone, the more intense the grief. Poetry is my way of practicing grief, learning to sit with it in order to grow in my appreciation of it as an inescapable part of life. I have no profound philosophy except to say that poetry allows me to access language as a coping mechanism even while understanding the limitations of language in the face of grief.  In “Self-Portrait as a Catastrophizer,” there’s a line that reads “Despite my poems/ and good deeds, I'm nameless/ on the midday news.” Whew. As a writer, what are your feelings about the idea of legacy? How do you hope to be remembered? Honestly, I will be dead so I don’t worry about legacy in that way because unless I have the good fortune of being a ghost, I won’t know what’s being said about me when I die. I’m more interested in doing my best to lift people up, to tell their stories, to walk in my purpose and truth, and to nurture other writers while I am alive. If my books live on after I’m gone, that’s great. If they get buried alongside me, I won’t even know, so that’s fine as well.  What has been your most surprising career milestone thus far? Hmmm…I take none of it for granted. Just the other day, a man sitting on the sidewalk in the middle of New Kingston told me I was his favorite poet and that meant as much to me as hearing that my poetry was being taught at a university in Italy. I will say that the two days poetry made me bawl my eyes out were my two book launches in 2009 and 2015 in Jamaica when on both occasions, there were over 200 people in attendance which is usually unheard of for poetry launches. The big moments and the small moments —— they all surprise me.  In a  2012 interview , you mentioned that you used to dance and that dance and music inform your writing style. What is your relationship to dance these days? My relationship to dance has changed because of a chronic medical condition. I can no longer perform on a stage but I can dance around my house in small bursts and those moments remind me that the body always remembers. When I write, I say the words aloud before moving to the next line and I tune in to my breath, my body’s rhythm, its desire to move and I let all of that feed the poem’s direction.  You live and teach in Jamaica, where you’ve spent most of your life. What’s your favorite aspect of your local literary scene? I have taken a short break after teaching for around twenty years at the tertiary level. I am proud of all the creative writing students I got a chance to teach but I got to the stage where I needed to pour more into my own writing. I’m therefore a little out of the loop. However, I love seeing small groups pop up doing their own thing in terms of building a supportive community because my constant grievance is the lack of sufficient financial aid and opportunities available to writers in my country. So, I love seeing people get together and organize their own literary events, book clubs, workshops, etc.  If you could successfully live on the moon or at the bottom of the ocean, which would you choose? Why? Definitely the bottom of the ocean. I love the restorative aspect of water. I would spend the time digging up treasures, communing with our ancestors, and learning the magic of sea creatures.  How can people support you right now? By understanding that writers living in Jamaica are marketable, our stories carry weight and we can travel from here to literary festivals all over the world. When you support writers who live in the Caribbean, I feel supported.  Name another Black woman writer people should know. I could name so many but since you only asked for one, I have to recommend Professor Lorna Goodison because I would not have given myself permission to be a poet if I had not read her work and then met her during my undergraduate years.  ### 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.

Nijla Mu'min  is an award-winning writer, performer, and filmmaker whose feature film Jinn premiered at the 2018 SXSW Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Award for Writing. She has written and directed episodes of Blindspotting, Insecure, Swagger, Queen Sugar, and more. Nijla Mu'min is an award-winning writer, performer, and filmmaker from the East Bay Area. Her filmmaking is informed by poetry, photography, fiction, music, and dance. Named one of   25 New Faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine in 2017 , she tells stories about Black girls and women who find themselves between worlds and identities. Her debut feature film, Jinn , premiered at the 2018 South By Southwest Film Festival, where she won the Special Jury Recognition Award for Writing. Jinn , a New York Times Critic’s pick , was released in November 2018 and is currently streaming on Amazon. Her short films have screened at festivals across the country. Her filmmaking and screenwriting have been supported by the Sundance Institute, IFP, Film Independent, Women In Film LA, and the Princess Grace Foundation. She’s written for the Starz series Blindspotting , the Apple series Swagger , and directed episodes of  HBO’s Insecure, Hulu’s  Wu-Tang: An American Saga , Apple’s Swagger , and OWN’s Queen Sugar and  All Rise . She is currently developing her second feature film Mosswood Park , as well as a debut collection of poetry and prose essays. Her poetry has been featured in Aunt Chloe, The Temz Review , The Boston Review , and Mythium Literary Journal . She is a 2013 graduate of CalArts MFA Film Directing and Creative Writing Programs, and a 2007 graduate of UC Berkeley, where she studied in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People Program. Noor FADE IN:  INT. SUBWAY - MORNING  A crowded subway train headed for Harlem. PASSENGERS are pressed up against each other. Bodies bounce in unison. A BLACK MAN holds an iPhone and stares at the screen: an international broadcast plays. PEOPLE flood the streets in bloodied clothing. Some chant. SOLDIERS in riot gear rush into the crowd, wielding batons and guns. The man concentrates on the broadcast.  The train makes an abrupt stop, jolting him forward. He rises and exits. With his seat empty, we see NOOR, sitting several rows back, a slender 29-year-old black woman with deep-set brown eyes.  The train roars to a stop and she gets off. She walks with the mass of PASSENGERS, up the slimy subway steps. Sunlight hits their tired faces.  EXT. BUSY STREET - MORNING  Noor paces down the busy street. Several POLICE OFFICERS patrol the block. They talk into their radios. Noor's arm grazes one of theirs as she walks past.  INT. WOMEN'S CLINIC - MORNING  Noor enters a small clinic. WOMEN are packed into connected seats, waiting to be called. "The View" blasts from the overhead television. A chubby WOMAN with sweaty hands, looks away.  Noor walks into the reception area of the clinic. Her coworker, DEBORAH, types something into a computer. She turns around.  DEBORAH  Hey girl.  Noor sits at the reception desk.  NOOR Hey.   She sifts through files on her desk.  DEBORAH  We got a busy one today. Lots of last-minute appointments.   Noor looks out into the sea of people.  A woman, GINA, 31, walks into the clinic and approaches the reception window. Noor smiles at her.  GINA  I'm here for a nine-thirty appointment.  NOOR  Can I get your ID?  Gina rummages through her purse and hands it to Noor.  NOOR (CONT'D)  You're thirty minutes late. The doctor may have canceled it. I'll check.  Gina appears anxious.  GINA  I really need this appointment.  Noor looks at her.  NOOR  I'm sure you do, but we have a full day and a twenty-minute hold policy for late appointments.  Noor gives an agitated smile. The woman appears to be sweating now.  GINA  If I don't get this appointment, I may lose my baby --  NOOR  Okay, you can go have a seat and I'll let you know.  Noor looks at the line forming behind her.  GINA  I need to know now!  NOOR  Ma'am, please have a seat. I will check soon. Thank you.  GINA  You don't have to be so fucking rude. You don't know what's going on --  NOOR  I'm sure you'll be fine.  GINA  I won't if I lose this damn appointment.  NOOR  One moment.  Noor gets up and walks to the back. Gina stands at the desk, sweating.  INT. DOCTOR'S OFFICE - CONTINUOUS  Noor stands at the door of a doctor's office, staring at a clipboard with various names on it. Gina’s name has been crossed out, but Noor writes it back in.  INT. WOMEN'S CLINIC RECEPTION AREA - CONTINUOUS Noor walks back to the reception area.  NOOR  Turns out we can fit you in. Now, please have a seat and fill out these forms and bring them back when they're complete.  GINA Thank you.  Gina walks off, still looking at Noor. Noor avoids her glare. Deborah turns to Noor and pats her on the shoulder.  DEBORAH  You okay?  Noor nods, and schedules the next PERSON. A RESIDENT NURSE walks out of adjacent doors and announces the next patient.  RESIDENT NURSE  Diana Gomez.  DIANA GOMEZ looks up. A MAN holds her hand in the next seat. They walk toward the nurse with worry in their eyes. The doors close behind them.  EXT. NOOR'S PARENT'S BROWNSTONE - LATER  Noor unlocks the door to a house and enters.  INT. NOOR'S PARENT'S BROWNSTONE - AFTERNOON  Noor enters a well-decorated, spacious living room. Framed photographs of young Noor in pigtails and a yellow graduation cap and gown, line the walls. Next to them are photos of a young man who resembles Noor. There's an elaborate prayer rug spread out on one side of the floor.  Through the kitchen doorway, Noor sees her mother SHERON, dancing around the kitchen in hot pink rollers and a pink terry cloth robe, while washing dishes.  The faucet runs and hot steam rises into the air. Sheron turns around and notices Noor standing there. She tries to compose herself. Noor laughs.  INT. NOOR'S PARENT'S BROWNSTONE KITCHEN - CONTINUOUS Noor enters the kitchen.  NOOR  Am I interrupting something?  SHERON  Oh no, baby. Just getting ready for tonight. Me and the ladies from the salon are going out.  Sheron walks over to the stereo and turns down the R&B song. Noor smiles.  NOOR  Okay Mom, I see you.  SHERON What's up?  NOOR  Can I get the recipe for the bean pies you used to make?  Something comes over Sheron. She looks away.  SHERON  Yeah. NOOR  I texted you about it, but you didn't respond. I want to surprise Darren, you know? He's been working so hard lately --  SHERON  When is he ever not working hard?  NOOR  Mom, I didn't come over to argue.  Sheron goes to a drawer and pulls out an aged, crumpled piece of lined paper. It is more than ten years old, with grease marks on it. She hands it to Noor.  SHERON  It's all there... And don't go too heavy on the sugar, mash the beans really good --  Sheron is interrupted by the entrance of NASIM, 22, and YUSEF, 58, two good-looking black men in exact resemblance to one another, except one is older.  Yusef has a nicely-shaped beard and wears a black and gold embroidered kufi cap. Nasim kisses his mother and Noor on the cheek. He sets some bags on the counter.  YUSEF  A-salaam-a-laikum ladies.  Sheron doesn't return the greeting. Noor does.  NOOR  Wa-laikum-a-Salaam daddy.  SHERON  Nasim, some girl called here earlier for you.  Noor smiles.  NOOR What girl?  SHERON  Said her name was Jojina.  NOOR  Ooh Jojina, sounds cute! Is that Spanish?  Noor looks at Nasim, who doesn't seem too delighted.  .  NOOR (CONT'D)  Oh, she’s calling the house phone? That’s some throwback high school love affair-type stuff... She must really like you.  He smiles, softly.  YUSEF  What happened to the nice girl from the masjid that Rasheed introduced you to?  NASIM Dad, I told you. She can't even see me unless her pops is in the same room damn near. I can't get down like that.  YUSEF  It's the Islamic way, Nasim.  Sheron shakes her head, laughs.  SHERON  Yeah...I bet the way we met was the Islamic way too, right?  YUSEF  That was different, Sheron. You know that.  Noor and Nasim laugh at their parent's disagreement. Nasim checks his cell phone and walks briskly to his room. Noor starts getting her belongings together.  NOOR  Later y'all. Gotta get home.  SHERON  Bye, baby.  INT. BROWNSTONE HALLWAY - CONTINUOUS  Noor walks past Nasim's room on her way out. She overhears him talking to someone on the phone.  NASIM (O.S.)  Why’d you call my parent’s house though??!.. Wait, don't hang up. I'm sorry. I'm still thinking about what we did last night...    Noor's eyes widen. She's not supposed to be hearing this. She looks confused and curious as she exits.  EXT. SUBWAY STATION - MAGIC HOUR  Noor reemerges from the subway cellar with a mass of PASSENGERS. She carries some grocery bags. An OLD WOMAN hobbles up the stairs next to her, breathing heavily. She can't make it up the stairs. Noor offers her hand. The woman takes it. They walk up the stairs together.  OLD WOMAN Thank you.  NOOR No problem. Noor looks at the woman, then paces down the Brooklyn street, and into a brightly decorated bodega with a sign that reads "House of Hafiz."  INT. BODEGA - EARLY EVENING  The bodega is alive with CUSTOMERS and chatter. SCHOOL KIDS in patterned uniforms grab at bags of Hot Cheetos. A WOMAN jumps and knocks down a roll of toilet paper from atop the beer freezer. A MAN enters, yelling out an order to the deli.  MAN  Give me a turkey sandwich, extra mayo! Extra pickles! You know how I like it.  Noor picks up a few beers, and heads to the front. RAMI, 32, an attractive Palestinian man with a sculpted face and piercing, deep-set eyes, stands at the register.  He laughs with an OLD BLACK WOMAN in a roller set.  OLD BLACK WOMAN  When we gon' go out Rami?  RAMI  I don’t know, Mrs. Johnson. I’m not sure you can keep up.  She hands him some money. Noor looks at him, noticing just how effortlessly sexy he is.  OLD BLACK WOMAN  I can keep up, honey.  Rami laughs, handing her a lottery ticket.  OLD BLACK WOMAN (CONT'D)  I’ll be back. For your fine ass. Hmm, hmm hmm!  Rami can’t hold back a smile. Noor is amused. She giggles.  RAMI  Noor, haven’t seen you around lately. How are you this evening?  NOOR  Long day at work. But I’m good.  Noor fumbles through her purse to retrieve some cash. She hands it to Rami.  RAMI The light. NOOR What? RAMI  That's the meaning of your name. The light --  NOOR  I knew that, but thanks for reminding me.  RAMI  Did I ever tell you that my sister's name is also Noor --  NOOR  No, you didn’t.  RAMI  Any woman with that name, I regard very highly --  An older good-looking Arab man, HAFIZ, comes from the bodega storage room and taps Rami on the shoulder.  HAFIZ  Snap out of it Rami. We got a line going!  RAMI Sorry.  Rami looks at Noor, deeper this time, and returns the ID.  RAMI (CONT'D)  Have a nice night.  NOOR You too.  Noor exits. Rami still stares at her.  EXT. BODEGA - CONTINUOUS  Noor looks back at Rami, and giggles. She walks off smiling to herself, a little turned on.  INT. APARTMENT KITCHEN - EARLY EVENING  Noor stands in the kitchen. She presides over a counter of cinnamon, nutmeg, eggs, navy beans, vanilla, brown sugar, and other baking essentials. She stirs the batter for a bean pie.  DARREN, 30, enters in slacks and a dress shirt. He opens the refrigerator and pours some water.  DARREN Hey.  NOOR  Hey babe, how was work?  He takes a beat.  DARREN Good.  Noor scoops some bean pie batter into a spoon and walks toward Darren. Tries to touch his arm.  NOOR  What's wrong?  DARREN Nothing.  NOOR  I stopped by the store. Got some stuff for dessert tonight.  She holds the spoon closer to his face.  NOOR (CONT'D)  Here, taste this.  She smiles. He opens his mouth and tastes the batter.  DARREN  Almost tastes like my grandmother’s sweet potato pie.  He walks away, leaving Noor holding the spoon of bean pie batter.  NOOR Almost?  DARREN  Not sure what you want me to say. It’s good.  She looks out of the open kitchen doorway as he loosens his tie and walks toward their room.  EXT. STREET - EARLY EVENING  Nasim tries on knitted kufi caps at an outside vendor. He looks at himself in a mirror.  NASIM  Ay, you got this in blue?  HASAN, an Arab man, with an orange beard, nods. He unpacks a blue kufi cap and hands it to Nasim.  HASAN  I got anything you need. What you need? You need bean pies? I got them from the Nation of Islam men in Harlem --  NASIM  Naw, those bean pies are stale as shit. Don't try to play me like last time, Hasan.  Hasan smiles and massages his beard. Nasim continues to look at himself in the blue kufi cap, admiring his baby face in the mirror.  INT. APARTMENT LIVING ROOM - EVENING  Noor sits on the couch watching TV, extremely bored. A live NYC anti-police brutality protest illuminates the screen.  Noor turns it off, uninterested. Darren is consumed with typing something on his laptop, across the room.  Noor puts her face in her hands and sighs. The doorbell rings. She gets up to answer it.  INT. APARTMENT HALLWAY - EVENING  Noor looks through the peephole. She smiles and opens the door.  NASIM  What's up, sis?!  Noor and Nasim hug. He wears the blue kufi cap he just purchased.  NOOR  I wasn't expecting you.  She takes his coat and leads him to the kitchen.  INT. KITCHEN - EVENING  On the counter, two bean pies sit on wire cooling racks, covered in saran wrap. Droplets of moisture cling to the saran wrap. Nasim walks forward.  NOOR  Nasim, who's that girl you were talking to on the --  He instantly cuts her off.  NASIM  Is that.... I fucking love you right now, Noor. For real.  He leans in, inspecting the pies. Grabs a knife on the counter and tears the plastic wrap off the top of one. He shovels some pie into his mouth. Burns his lip.  Noor smiles, happy that someone enjoys her pies.  NOOR  Nasim, they're still hot.  NASIM  You think I care? No, really. I haven't had a good bean pie since mom stopped making them. Remember that?  NOOR  Yeah, I do.  He continues eating the bean pie, dropping crumbs onto the counter.  NASIM  The ones they sell down on 125th don't even touch this shit, Noor.  With each bite, he gets more excited. Darren enters the kitchen.  DARREN  Hey Nasim, what’s up?  They give each other a pound.  NASIM  Nothing much man... You taste this bean pie my sister made?  DARREN  Yeah, I did. It’s good... Do you think you guys can quiet down though? I'm trying to get some work done.  NASIM  On a Friday night? Y'all ain’t gonna go out?  Darren turns around.  DARREN  We went out last weekend.  NASIM  And?... Who stays in the house doing work on Friday night?  DARREN  People with careers.  NASIM  You need to loosen up, man. Take your lady out, dance, eat some of this here bean pie --  He holds some pie to Darren. Darren refuses.  DARREN  We done here?  NOOR  Don't talk to my brother like that, Darren.  DARREN  Well your brother should learn to come by when he's invited.  NOOR  He can come by whenever he damn well pleases.  Nasim, sensing Darren's anger, inches closer to him.  NASIM  We got a problem, man?  NOOR  Nasim, it's okay. Darren just had a rough day at work, that's all.  Darren walks briskly out of the kitchen. Nasim and Noor stare at each other for a brief moment.  NASIM  What the fuck is his problem? Noor avoids the question, and looks away.  NASIM (CONT'D)  I always knew his ass was uptight, but that's just too much --  NOOR  Look, it doesn't matter.  NASIM  Y'all don't do shit anymore. Every time I call or come over it's the same thing. I wanna see you happy Noor.  NOOR  Look, I said it doesn't matter. Just drop it.  The look in her eyes says the conversation is over. They stand in silence for a beat.  NASIM  Come out with us tonight.  Noor looks uninterested.  NOOR Who's us?  NASIM  Me and my boys. The Lux lounge down in Bedstuy. My man is spinnin'. It's gonna be a nice crowd. Some sexy ladies I'm looking to --  NOOR  Okay, I don't need all the details, Nas.  NASIM  You haven't been out in like decades.  NOOR  Yes, I have.  NASIM When?  Noor thinks to herself.  NOOR  Me and Malikah went to that gallery last Friday.  NASIM  A gallery?! You need some bodily contact, sis. Some sweat and shaken' in your life. And if any nigga try to push up on you, I got you sis. Come on.  Nasim does his best little brother pouty face at Noor.  NOOR  Okay, I'll go. But I gotta get ready.  Nasim gives her a once over.  NASIM  Yeah, you do.  Noor pushes him.  NOOR  Shut up Nas!  Nasim grabs a last piece of pie.  NASIM  You need a ride?  NOOR  No, I'll meet y’all there. I'm gonna catch a Lyft.  NASIM  Let me take some of this here bean pie for the road, though.  He puts the pie into some foil. They exchange a quick hug.  NASIM (CONT'D)  I'm out.  He exits.  INT. BODEGA - LATER  Rami stands at the cash register, reading a magazine. Two POLICE OFFICERS enter, with their walkie-talkies blaring. One Officer receives an urgent dispatch.  The officers rush from the bodega. Rami watches them as they exit.  INT. NOOR'S BEDROOM - CONTINUOUS  Noor admires her body in a full-length mirror. She wears only panties and a bra. She runs her fingers across the top of her breast, causing goosebumps. She smiles at herself.  Darren walks in, and glances at her body.  DARREN  Noor... I lost my job today.  NOOR  What... What happened? I thought you said --  DARREN  I lied. I didn't want to say anything with Nasim here. That’s why I was irritated --  NOOR  I'm sorry. We'll figure it out. With my income we'll be okay.  DARREN  No, we won't.  Noor seems distracted, though Darren needs support. She looks at her phone.  NOOR  I really have to go meet Nasim now. Let's talk later.  Darren looks disappointed as she leaves the room. For a brief second, we see his eyes glaze over as if he might cry, but he holds back.  INT/EXT. BODEGA - CONTINUOUS  Rami grabs two turkey and cheese hot pockets from the freezer and a beer. He puts them in a small paper bag. Hafiz stands on a ladder, restocking toilet paper.  HAFIZ  Nine AM tomorrow. No sleeping in!  LOUD VOICES can be heard from outside the bodega, startling the men. Rami goes to look.  EXT. BODEGA - CONTINUOUS  Several POLICE OFFICERS surround a BLACK MAN two blocks down from the bodega. Rami watches, his vision obscured by all the chaos.  INT. NOOR'S PARENT'S BROWNSTONE - CONTINUOUS  Yusef prostrates as he makes salat in the living room. The light is low, accenting the glittered strands of fabric on the prayer rug.  He brings his hands up to his ears to recite the first verse.  YUSEF  Allah-u Akbar.  EXT. STREET - CONTINUOUS  Noor hears a GUNSHOT as she waits for a cab. It shakes her. She looks down the street, where she sees several PEOPLE gathering.  Noor dials Nasim's number as she walks toward the commotion.  NOOR  (into phone)  Nasim! You better answer the phone. I'm almost there. I don't feel like  waiting in no long ass line. Can your DJ friend let me in?  She ends the call. Noor sends Nasim a text message. She calls again. No answer.  She talks to herself, worried.  NOOR (CONT'D)  Come on Nasim.  A large group of people line the corner near the bodega. Some are in a frenzied commotion. There are police cars lined up along the sidewalk.  Noor squints her eyes, confused by the scene. She stands outside of the commotion, then calls Nasim.  Noor sees a WOMAN crying on the corner. Reluctant, Noor nears the crowd. She pushes through PEOPLE. She finally reaches the front of the crowd. An ambulance siren comes from a block away. A ring of POLICE OFFICERS engage in a heated dialogue with several PEOPLE.  On the ground lay a Black man, face down, with blood streaming from his side. He does not move.  Noor jumps back from the initial sight of him. She can't see his face.  Noor looks closer at the man. He wears a blue kufi cap. Noor begins to breathe heavily. She drops her phone.  She walks closer to the body. She bends down and looks into the man's lifeless face. There's a hint of a smile there.  Nasim's smile. She touches his hand. Two police rush toward her.  POLICE OFFICER  Move away, Ma'am!!  She refuses.  NOOR Nasim.  She falls to her knees next to her dead brother. She looks up to see RAMI in the crowd, watching her. They lock eyes.  Noor is copyrighted and registered with WGA-West. Fire. We go to sleep to fire. We wake up to it. I don’t see it anymore, but I know it’s there. On the news. In the souls of us. I’m at Costco buying in bulk, waiting for the next smoke cloud to cover the mountains. I’m in an n95 mask, and folks are eating large beef hotdogs and laughing outside as I push my big cart through the parking lot. Maybe laughter is the only thing we have left. laughter through our confused lungs. Air that seems fresh and fine until we’re coughing specks of ghost homes from our mouths. Our noses burn with the smell of ash in a grandmother’s hands. The house she raised her whole world in. Her family’s cove. I want to hug her. Place the sweet potato pie back on the counter. Caress a lover’s hand on the couch. call the cousin to see if he’s on his way over. The roads are just chalk now.  But you can still hear us singing through the smoke. held. I hold. onto the body I have. In the doctor's office, studying pictures of livers and fallopian tubes on the wall, thin white paper wrapped around me. My mind sings When will it be over ? When will these white walls release me back into summertime. daisy dukes in the Bay. The air was wet & foggy & silver to the touch. I am held. I hold onto the memory of C-- asleep next to me. how he took off his glasses, then kissed me on my forehead. My baby. Him. My island sweetie. I am held by the whispered prayers of my grandmother sprinkling nutmeg in the sky. I am held. Even if I lose part of my body in this twisted medical complex. I hold onto the breath of my father, making Fajr prayer in the morning. how I used to wake up, after nights running wild on Adeline, to hear his recitation. I am held by his love in the sky. I hold my stomach as it aches into the rivers. If my womb must be cut, I hold light in my eyes. I am held. Detroit  I wear this love for you  like an exoskeleton  an armor on all sides  your laughter slips through my mouth  you resemble Malcolm from the side  as you drive  in that black cap and glasses  I wait in the car   while you make salat in the masjid because I did not bring a scarf.  Then I remember that Malcolm proposed  to Betty in this city  over a pay phone so I don’t need flowers just your hands it’s raining and the streets are wider than dreams we drive through the neighborhood  of your youth  your house, three times bigger  than my childhood  Hayward apartment where I read all those novels about love. Is this a movie? where I arrive to reclaim you  I flew to Detroit to get my heart  broken then hugged back together again in a sports bar eating honey-slathered biscuits  as the Lions lift and slam into the ground  bones broken, despite heavy armor I just keep leaning into the hour  me, a steely flower opening up because I don’t want to leave you-  clapping for a team I never clapped for  holding on for a city I thought I might move to  at one time my exoskeleton, hardened  by the weight of unreleased love  THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Nijla Mu'Min and Jae Nichelle on February 21, 2025. It’s exciting to have both poetry and a script excerpt here since you’ve said in interviews that your poetry background influences your filmmaking. Do you also find the opposite true now that writing scripts has influenced how you write poetry? That’s a good question. I started writing poetry when I was a teenager. Then when I was in college at UC Berkeley, I was a student teacher poet in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People Program. My immersion in that program and my study of different poetic traditions really informed my voice as a writer, and later as a screenwriter/filmmaker. Studying and teaching poetry allowed me to strengthen my use of visual imagery in writing, brevity, clarity in language, capturing complete dramatic events, pacing, metaphor and rhythm. These are all elements of my screenwriting and filmmaking as well. I do find that some of my poetry, especially my prose, can mirror dramatic writing for the screen. In both my film writing and poetry, I am concerned with building a world and telling a distinct story, with specific details and active movement. So, I think there’s a fluidity across all of my writing.  Your poem “Fire” addresses living with the constant threat of fires in Los Angeles, yet it ends with “But you can still hear us singing through the smoke.” What’s keeping you hopeful these days? Love keeps me hopeful. The love inside of me, and the possibilities for love in my life. I experience love when I sing. I feel whole and complete when music covers me.  Noor is an incredible script, and you are premiering the short film version of it this year! How was the process of distilling the story into this shorter format? How do you feel? I feel really good about the short film version of Noor . I’m ready to premiere it for audiences. The short film actually consists of some of the first act of the feature script that it’s based on, so it wasn’t challenging to adapt the story into a short film format. However, during the edit, we had to work to make the short film stand alone, and we experimented a little. The short film really captures Noor’s agency as a woman, her yearning, her sensuality, and her light.  So, the short film introduces us to the characters and the world of the feature and ends on an inciting event/cliffhanger that will hopefully have people wanting to see how the feature film unfolds.  Noor, as well as many of your other films (like your short film Jinn), has received many awards. Appearance on The Black List’s Muslim List, winner of The Athena List competition, and a Sundance Talent Forum pick are just a few of them. What impact do you feel these accolades and recognition have had on your career? Those accolades have definitely boosted my profile and recognition as a writer/filmmaker, but I’ve had to put in so much work outside of them, in order to have a career in this industry. This is truly one of the most difficult careers to pursue, especially when trying to tell stories that aren’t considered readily “commercial” or “mainstream.” I’ve been on a continual mission for the last 18 years to make poetic, complicated, hopeful and emotional stories about Black women and girls that show worlds we’ve never seen, and get to the heart of humanity. I’ve been told my stories don’t sell, don’t matter, and aren’t needed. I’ve also seen packed, sold-out audiences in tears from my films. So, while I’m so grateful for the accolades and awards, I’ve really had to fight to keep going, build community, get to know people, fundraise for my work, sacrifice my personal life, stay up late nights, pitch to people, face continual rejection, stand on faith and keep going by any means necessary.  What’s a lesson you’ve learned from a mentor that you’ll never forget? I learned a lot from one of my mentors Reggie Rock Bythewood, who was the showrunner for Swagger, a show I wrote and directed on. I’m not sure I learned lessons, so much as I really appreciated and learned from the example he set as a storyteller, showrunner and human being. He ran such an inclusive, beautiful writers room for Swagger, allowing all voices to be heart and respected. It felt like we were all family in that writers room and I learned so much about building a sense of community. He would also say that having “swagger” was about having a cause bigger than ourselves and that always resonated with me. The art we were making in that show was so much bigger than us, and bigger than basketball. It was about uplifting and humanizing the Black community, particularly our youth.  You’ve worked on both drama series like Queen Sugar  and Wu-Tang: An American Saga , and also in comedy with Insecure . How do you navigate writing or directing for these very different genres and picking up the tone of a show? Most of the shows I’ve directed have been one-hour dramas, with the exception of Insecure , (and Blindspotting , which I wrote for). When I direct a show, I go deep into the world and the characters of the show, and come to the job ready to honor the vision of the showrunner, while also bringing my voice to the story. It’s a delicate balance and one that I enjoy. I was already a fan of most of the shows I’ve directed, so I was pretty familiar with the tone and pacing of the shows before getting the job.  What parts of your upcoming projects are you most excited about? I’m excited to continue exploring different social justice issues through intimate, character-driven stories. I have two projects coming out — a comic book and a short film, that deal with reproductive health and reproductive justice for African American women. And I’m excited for audiences to experience my work in theaters, during screenings. We need more of that. I love sitting with audiences as they watch my work, seeing and feeling their reactions, their whispers, their tears, their laughter, and their love.  If a food critic was coming to your city, where would you tell them to eat? Well, I am from the Bay Area, but I live in Los Angeles so I’ll provide a few places:  In Oakland, there’s a restaurant called MUA. I always love the food, the vibe, and the decor there when I visit home. In Los Angeles, I really enjoy Bacari Silverlake and Two Hommès in Inglewood. One is Mediterranean fusion, and the other is African-inspired.  How can people support you these days? People can support me by following my work, boosting it online, attending screenings when they’re announced, and loving themselves and others. We are also doing a fundraiser to finish post-production on Noor. Contact to learn more at www.nijlamumin.com . Name another Black woman writer people should know.  People should definitely know Nadra Widatalla, a talented film and television writer. ### 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.

Tatiana Johnson-Boria (she/her) is the author of Nocturne in Joy (2023), winner of the 2024 Julia Ward Howe Book Prize in poetry. She's an educator, artist, and facilitator who uses her writing practice to dismantle racism, reckon with trauma, and cultivate healing. She's an award-winning writer who has received fellowships from Tin House, The Massachusetts Cultural Council, The MacDowell Residency, and others. Tatiana completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College and teaches at Emerson College, GrubStreet, and others. Find her work in or forthcoming at The Academy of American Poets, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review Online, among others. She's represented by Lauren Scovel at Laura Gross Literary. Notes on Conception I thought I needed to be something else for you to stay. Less cavernous. Less unwell. Less reeling from my childhood. Less inhibited. I thought it would be impossible for you to exist inside of me. Who am I to ask for another to grow from me? What makes me any sort of fertile root?  Once there was nothing but a desire for someone to love something else, alive. This is another way to say I had a mother once. Or another way to say I have some semblance of a mother.  I believed I was good enough for this. As she believed she was. We believed we were capable and responsible and loving enough for what we drew in our own minds. What makes that possible? What makes it possible that you have a beating heart, that beats faster than the one I carry? How are you so far ahead yet so unborn?  There is a beginning and growing I wish upon you. There is a life that is yours alone. You cannot exist without the ending before you.  Your grandmother laughs the first time I tell her I am pregnant. The conversation happens over the phone. “Really?! Really? ” She’s in disbelief. “Wow, wow, wow.” She says and laughs some more.  The laughter settles in me while my body changes. I have headaches and can’t get out of bed. I feel an exhaustion that I’ve never felt before. I spend way too much time on the bathroom floor, trying to survive the nausea. Is this what it felt like for my mother? There are no pictures of my mother pregnant. Sometimes it feels as if I am not real. What was spoken before I knew any semblance of her language? Before truly understanding the cadence of my own voice, the restlessness in hers. What must it have felt like to be one with her? Intertwined and without escape.  After I share the news about the pregnancy, she stops calling for weeks. This pause of us connecting is familiar, yet I still ache from it. I find myself bleeding the morning before teaching a writing class. This is when someone else takes over, a different version of me emerges and teaches the entire three-hour class, knowing something is terribly wrong.  After the class, your father and I drive to the emergency room. He doesn’t want to believe something is wrong, he is upbeat and positive. “I read online that sometimes bleeding happens…what kind of bleeding is it? Is it a lot? Is it spotting?” He’s earnest and innocent. He wants to be right. Something in me knows that he isn’t. It’s a Saturday afternoon, and the drive to the hospital is smooth and fast. I stare at each red light we encounter, willing it to change. I am powerless and I know it. When we arrive at the emergency room, we wait in a short line, it moves quickly. “What brings you in?” the front desk nurse asks. “I’m pregnant, but I’ve been bleeding,” I say, afraid of what’s coming out of my mouth. The nurse checks us in. The emergency room is filled with masked people. A young white family with a toddler, an ice pack pressed against their forehead. A woman trying to negotiate being seen with the nurse at the front desk. Us, holding our breath, waiting to be called. When we’re called, we wait in a small room with another nurse. “Congratulations!” she says. “Bleeding happens sometimes, they’ll figure out what is going on. You’ll be okay.”  I don’t believe her. Like your father, I know that she too, is wrong. She takes my vitals and tells me and your dad to wait to be called. It’s loud in the waiting room and the time moves slowly. We wait for almost two hours.  “We’re going to do an ultrasound,” the vitals nurse says. “Sometimes we don’t see anything on an ultrasound because you’re still early, but don’t worry.” She’s so certain and I don’t know why. We walk to the ultrasound.  I lay back on the table while the technician slathers jelly on my stomach. “I’m just going to press a bit, just let me know if anything is uncomfortable,” she says. We sit in silence as the technician moves the ultrasound wand across my abdomen. “We may need to do an internal ultrasound as well, but the doctor will let us know,” the technician says.  I sigh. I’ve experienced this before when my primary care physician was worried that I had fibroids. I dread the experience. We wait some more. She returns five minutes later. “Okay, let’s do the internal ultrasound. Is that okay?” she says. I nod yes.  She readies another ultrasound wand with lubricant. “Okay, do I have your permission to insert this wand for the internal ultrasound?” She is so formal in her asking. I nod yes. I try to think about anything else while she moves the wand around capturing images. It’s over in what feels like a few moments. She leaves the room again. I get dressed. We move to another room. We wait some more. Soon the doctor arrives.  “Okay, we aren’t seeing anything on the ultrasound…but that happens sometimes this early.” My heart sinks.  “Let’s do some bloodwork today to check your HCG levels, if they increase then things are okay. If not, then the pregnancy is no longer viable.”  I know my womb is empty. That the baby that was there, left before I even got to see it for the first time. No one says you’re no longer pregnant. Everyone is so careful with their words, yet I know there’s a truth no one is saying. I get the blood test, and my HCG levels are concerning. “Come back in two days for another test,” the doctor says.  We leave.  In the days following my HCG levels continue to drop while my body continues to bleed. I lay on the bathroom floor wailing until I can’t speak anymore. I don’t think then about having to tell my mother. I don’t want to believe it. There are mysteries in my body. Everyone pretends it's normal and I can’t. There are pregnancies that didn’t continue. I want to scream that there is a pain inside me even when this same pain exists for others. I want someone to know I bled something away. There may never be a birth. And what of me then? I tell your grandmother the news over the phone, more than a month after the miscarriage. “Oh, no, no suh” she says. Then she’s silent. I am too. “What happened?” she asks. She’s concerned.  “I don’t know… they don’t know,” I tell her. Deep down I know this must somehow be my fault.  “Okay,” she says. More silence. “I’ll call you back later. Bye.”  She hangs up the phone. When I first became pregnant, I knew that I could not be happy. There was no reason not to, but most of the things that I strive for are difficult. Arduous. Seemingly undeserved.  My mother once said she felt amazing when I was growing inside of her. It’s the only story I have of her pregnancy with me. It feels like a myth. When I grew you and the others, I felt untrusting of my body.  When I became pregnant again, this time with you, I wanted to be happy. I wanted to exist in a joy of having never lost.  Everyone journals, yet my language for you and the ones before you is different. It rejects prose, it rejects reflection, it rejects the parts of me that try to harness it, that try to write it down.  Carrying you has transformed my tongue. There is nothing and everything to say. It is a secret yet a thing I want to scream. Your presence in my body is a restraining impulse. I push out words and they aren’t the right ones. In the bath, I forget that my body aches, but I can feel you inside of me swimming. Pushing against the womb, reminding me you’re still there. I don’t want to admit that I have been depressed today. I don’t want to admit that my happiness is just as intangible as when there’s no baby inside of me.  I can’t eat or drink anything because the nausea is consuming. I spend my mornings lying on the couch until the last possible second before a work meeting. I’m grateful to work in a way that lets me log onto a computer and not leave the house. Only one person at work knows I’m pregnant, and she is understanding. Sometimes I lay on the couch in the afternoons as well. The fatigue hits my body at inconvenient times. I can fall asleep instantly, the whole thing is compulsory.  One afternoon after sleeping, I notice a white light floating above me. I know it’s them, the ones before you. The glowing light hovers and floats away from me. I must be going crazy.  I don’t look away from it. My eyes follow it as it keeps gliding across the room. I’m home alone. Its presence feels familiar. I vow to keep this moment to myself, but I’m telling you because maybe you saw it too. You were with me; you were inside of me. We experienced it together. The light flew to the door and out of the window. I never saw it again. I should think of them more. It feels easier not to because you are forming. Do they know I’ve stopped thinking of them? Have I stopped? Or have I just been thinking more of other things? When I find myself trapped in sadness about the things I’ve lost or the things that have left me, it’s strange to know that you might feel it too. You are closer to me than any person might ever be. I am afraid you’re already knowing me before I’ve begun to know you. We drive to see you, to see if you’re still there. It’s August and we are hoping your heart is beating. I try not to think of how empty my womb might be, yet I believe you are there. I don’t know why. On the ultrasound, a moving line shows your heartbeat. It’s 143 RPM. We get a picture, and you are a small amorphous shape in a larger black circle. You are alive. We’re in disbelief. Your dad drives us to work. He leaves the parking lot as the AC finally blows cool air. I look to his face and notice it changes. I tell him to pull over.  We park in an empty spot and he turns off the car before crying. I watch him cover his face. “I can’t believe it,” he says. He can’t believe you’re alive. I’m still processing but watching him weep reminds me of the way your presence can wring us from the inside out, even when you are still forming.  Your father stops and stares ahead, a smile grows on his face. I look out the window. There’s a playground with toddlers running around. I want to believe that you’ll be like one of them someday, running with endless energy. Something makes it hard for me to conjure this image. I smile anyway.  “That’s going to be us,” I say.  Your father looks at me, he holds my hand. ### 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.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs is an award-winning author of nonfiction and poetry. Her most recent book Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde  (FSG) has been named a Publisher’s Weekly  Top 10 book of 2024 and a Time Magazine  must-read book of 2024. Photo credit: Sufia Ikbal-Doucet Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Her poetic work  in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning  and movement . Alexis’s co-edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting, and queer transformation. Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative, and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press ( Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World   in 2018, and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.) Alexis is a 2023 Windham-Campbell Prize Winner in Poetry. Her book Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals  won the 2022 Whiting Award  in Nonfiction. Alexis was a 2020-2021 National Humanities Center Fellow, funded by the Founders Award, and is a 2022 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow. Her most recent book Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde  (FSG) has been named a Publisher’s Weekly Top 10 book of 2024, a Time Magazine must-read book of 2024, a Guardian book of the week, and was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal in Nonfiction. *note from Alexis Pauline Gumbs: Each of the following poems is for the painter Alma Thomas.  The footnotes reference the paintings that inspired the poems and in relevant cases the page where you can find them in the catalog for the Alma Thomas retrospective Everything is Beautiful.  theology all of us women held in pieces by our clothes standing on the cobbled gravestones of our names and the light pink world around us a shattered sunrise shaded what we did to our eyes looking for stars we are blood we are rain we are gold bow before us standing tight and close against the cold once upon a time there was a drum it woke us once upon a time  there was a barn we found it once upon a time there was a night we broke it with our gifts* * Three Wise Men, 1966 Acrylic on Canvas, 36 ½ by 23 ½ in. study in sistering this is how light works your face my face lean back into the triangle of sun and reach don’t look away your face my face our tilted heads one smile and reach don’t look away how much i love you our tilted heads one smile framed by the green that knows how much i love you a million leaves framed by the green that knows i am never leaving a million leaves a million stays i am never leaving lean back into the triangle of sun a million stitches million stays that’s how light works* * “Alma and Sister Maurice” 1922/23 Caption by John Maurice Thomas “Alma and Sister Maurice.  The costume made and designed by my Mother.  Picture made in the back yard of our home in DC.” p39 a ceremony for thicker skin first the red dirt they let me breathe it the basins the rags boiled and scrubbed Saturday nights then the gauntlet of weekday Georgia forcefield training a repeated decision  to escape the hanging tree you must grow bark and never bite the hand the land with all its mineral advice would line our pores with memories and salt the lubricated dinners lined us too warm from the inside the thin petaled flowers they planted in a circle but not before they let me touch  the roots* *  Reverse of Antares (detail 1972) and Reverse of The Eclipse (detail 1970) where the ground seeps through the back of the canvas.   Fig 6 and 7 p 98 on being blue I “There is little to make a black officer feel blue; other than sadness…”*  Karl Osborne  (a black NYPD officer and student of Audre Lorde) i learned to call you from underneath and the signal went up in all directions i learned the ocean had hallways where a sound could get lost and the signal went up in all directions and i sunk ever further where a sound could get lost this was my hiding place and i sunk ever further surrendered to depth this was my hiding place this was my peace surrendered to depth i forgot my name this was my peace in blue i forgot my name in the hallways of the sea in blue i learned how to call you** * Audre Lorde Papers, Box 82, Folder 2.  ** Untitled 1977 Acrylic on paper, 22 x 30 in  #169 p 318 on being blue II for Detective Capers and Patrolman Wright (two of the black NYPD officers shot and killed by white NYPD officers in the 1970s) i am the sea monster press my hands into waves they become sharks and sinking ships and this is why i’m blue and this is why i’m strong and this is why you don’t see me at night red lights warn in whispers from my breast  and both my knees i brace myself against the sea as if  it’s ground as if i’m free as if there’s any solid earth for me* * Blue Night (At Sea), 1959 Oil on canvas 40 x 30 1/8 in #155 p305 THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Jae Nichelle on Dec 13th, 2024. It’s an honor to read these pieces from your forthcoming project Primary , which honors the painter Alma Thomas. Can you speak a little bit about how this project came to be? What drew you to her work? I was really just living my Black feminist life.  I was in Nashville for the great Black feminist literary theorist Hortense Spillers’s retirement symposium at Vanderbilt and I remembered that the lesbian feminist photographer Joan E. Biren had advised me to go to the Alma Thomas retrospective “Everything is Beautiful” when it was in Thomas’s hometown of DC, but I missed it.  And so the morning after the symposium my partner and I went to the exhibit.  Right away I knew I was going to need much more than one morning with her work.  There were so many synergies.  Her interest in the cosmos, her work as an educator.  And honestly, I needed time to wrap my head around how in the world a Black girl born in Columbus Georgia in eighteen ninety-one at the height of lynching became one of the most influential theorists of color in contemporary art. What does color even mean when you are a Black girl born in the nadir of blatant racism in the U.S. South? And so I challenged myself to write inspired by her work every morning. Indefinitely. And I found so much.  Her colors took me to so many places, especially in my own childhood and adolescence. The flowers outside my childhood home, my fun-dip and skittle sugar era, my dark lipstick dreams.  But I also started to develop a listening for her life as an art teacher, a community member, an oldest sister (like me!), and a trickster. “Theology” is inspired by Thomas’ painting “Three Wise Men.” You nod to the vibrant colors of the art piece in the poem while simultaneously subverting the story of the wise men. I’m wondering how your relationship to Thomas’ work has felt from poem to poem. Is there tension? Synergy? Surprise? YES!  All of those things are there.  My method has been to surrender and to listen.  I don’t approach the work trying to say something about  the painting with the poem.  The poem is an artifact of what happens when I allow myself to welcome the unexpected associations that her colors and shapes bring to my body, mind, and spirit. I free myself from any mandate to make sense.  Often it was not until I went back and read the poems (after about a year) that I started to almost understand them. Alma Thomas deeply studied the emotional and spiritual resonance of specific colors.  This was core to her practice as a color theorist.  She also intentionally infused her paintings with “energy” and my job was just to move out of my own way, open my heart, and allow it to find me.  Many of the poems in the manuscript are almost maps for where that energy met me.     “On being blue I” begins with a quote from the papers of Audre Lorde, which makes this work feel like it is in conversation with your new book Survival is a Promise: the Eternal Life of Audre Lorde. How are you feeling now that this biography has made its recent debut into the world? For sure.  While I was writing these poems I was also doing the layers and layers of work that resulted in Survival is a Promise .  I wish I could sit and listen to Audre Lorde and Alma Thomas in an actual conversation.  Especially since they were both such impactful educators.  In fact, that epigraph is evidence of Audre Lorde making space in her classroom at John Jay College of Criminal Justice for her students, police officers in this case a Black police officer who had been shot at by his own white colleagues, to theorize what “blue” meant to him and to them. The poem is accountable to that work.   And how do I feel now that Survival is a Promise is actually in the world? It feels like what Beautiful Chorus says “gratitude brings room for more things to be grateful for.”  Survival is a Promise  is a work of gratitude for Audre Lorde and sharing it in the world has expanded the field of gratitude.  The events celebrating the book have been such sacred spaces of love and possibility.  It’s like exactly the inspiration and care that I have experienced from Audre Lorde’s work and her impact through her students…exactly the inspiration that made me want to write a biography that brings her to even more people IS the quality of the response to the book in our communities.  It also is a commitment to anyone who didn’t already know that I am ready to bring Audre Lorde into the conversation at ANY time. You once mentioned that your first three books came “ from the same decision ,” which was to write daily using the words of three scholars. What decisions have you made recently that currently inform your work? Well, I am still in the decision to write daily, which was an admonition from an early mentor asha bandele, who was also a student of Audre Lorde! And it was my community writing teacher Zelda Lockhart who really provided the structure to learn for myself what makes it possible for me to write every day no matter what.  But the decisions to engage in a particular project feel like answering my own attraction.  My own curiosity and queer desire because I really never know what is going to happen inside the work.  The work is teaching me.  Right now in my daily practice, I am inside a decision I made for my daily writing to engage my curiosity about my ancestors.  I am learning so much.  What’s the oldest piece of clothing you have? Why have you kept it this long? I have a lot of old clothes.  For a long time, I could still fit into clothes from my literal childhood, but I have finally come into my thickness so that’s not an excuse anymore.  Praises!   But I do have an archival adornment practice of wearing old clothes.  I think my oldest articles are T-shirts that my grandparents wore.  My grandmother’s NAACP shirt and my grandfather’s logo shirt for the hotel my grandparents founded, Rendezvous Bay Hotel in Anguilla.  They are both blue and I love the feeling of accompaniment I get when I wear them.  You’ve been part of several organizations, projects, and initiatives including UBUNTU and the Mobile Homecoming Project. What work are you currently excited about? So much!  I’m excited about the technology company that my partner Sangodare started.  It’s called QUIRC which is a combination of the words queer and circuit.  It’s about bringing our communities together through this polymatching innovation Sangodare invented that can facilitate us finding each other and transforming the world on purpose.  It blows my mind that Sangodare actually created a technology that makes our work in the Mobile Homecoming project of intergenerational queer black feminist liberation accessible to everyone on the planet as a mode of relation. (more at quirc.app ) I’m also excited to be part of the visioning council for The Embodiment Institute’s new retreat center in North Carolina.  All of it is about being present and profoundly connected to each other.  What are your favorite places to spend your time in Durham? On my office floor.  I have a rug that’s like the ocean.  I really love our home and the sweet small gatherings we have there with our community.  And then we live a couple of blocks away from Tierra Negra, the farm at Earthseed, a Black and brown land collective that Sangodare and I helped to found. I love being on the farm.  I love being in the barn (which is also where I get to participate in Mama Ruby’s West African dance class.). And I also love Duke Gardens.  It feels like part of my reparations to benefit from the WILD amount of money they pour into curating those gardens.   How can people support you right now? Honestly, it would feel supportive if people offered their prayers and magic for my uncle.  I have an uncle recovering from brain surgery right now that is the first thing that came to my heart.  Please send positive energy his way and to my whole family.  And it is tangibly supportive for folks to support our ongoing queer listening and community building with Mobile Homecoming at mobilehomecoming.org .  And of course please read Survival is a Promise  (or listen to the audiobook…it’s me reading it!) we need Audre Lorde as much as we ever have.  Name another Black Woman writer people should know. Well of course I already said Audre Lorde, asha bandele, and Zelda Lockhart.  There are so many.  But I’ll say Cheryl Boyce Taylor, another student of Audre Lorde and mentor of mine. Such a beautiful writer and an example for me of how we can bring writing to every day of our lives. ### 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.

Camille T. Dungy is a celebrated author and professor whose honors include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, an Honorary Doctorate from SUNY ESF, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry. Camille T. Dungy is the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden . Soil was named book of the month by Hudsons Booksellers, received the 2024 Award of Excellence in Garden and Nature Writing from The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries, and was on the short list for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. Dungy has also written four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade , winner of the Colorado Book Award, and the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History , a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, the first anthology to bring African American environmental poetry to national attention. She also co-edited the From the Fishouse poetry anthology and served as assistant editor for Gathering Ground: Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade . Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems , Best American Essays, The 1619 Project, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, over 40 other anthologies, plus dozens of venues including The New Yorker, Poetry, Literary Hub , The Paris Review , and Poets.org . You may know her as the host of Immaterial , a podcast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Magnificent Noise. A University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Dungy’s honors include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, an Honorary Doctorate from SUNY ESF, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry. This’ll hurt me more Don’t make me send you outside to find a switch, my grandmother used to say. It was years before I had the nerve to ask her why switch was the word her anger reached for when she needed me to act a different way. Still, when I see some branches— wispy ones, like willows, like lilacs, like the tan-yellow forsythia before the brighter yellow buds— I think, these would make perfect switches for a whipping. America, there is not a place I can wander inside you and not feel a little afraid. Did I ever tell you about that time I was seven, buckled into the backseat of the Volvo, before buckles were a thing America required. My parents tried, despite everything, to keep us safe. It’s funny. I remember the brown hills sloping toward the valley. A soft brown welcome I looked for  other places but found only there and in my grandmother’s skin. Yes, I have just compared my grandmother’s body to my childhood’s hills, America. I loved them both,  and they taught me, each, things I needed to learn. You have witnessed, America, how pleasant hillsides can quickly catch fire. My grandmother could be like that. But she protected me, too. There were strawberry fields,  wind guarded in that valley, tarped against the cold. America, you are good at taking care of what you value. Those silver-gray tarps made the fields look like a pond I could skate on. As the policeman questioned my dad, I concentrated on the view outside the back window. America, have you ever noticed how well you stretch the imagination? This was Southern California. I’d lived there all my life and never even seen a frozen pond. But there I was, in 65 degree weather, imagining my skates carving figure eights on a strawberry field. Of course my father fit the description. The imagination can accommodate whoever might happen along. America, if you’ve seen a hillside quickly catch fire you have also seen a river freeze over, the surface looking placid though you know the water deep down, dark as my father, is pushing and pushing, still trying  to get ahead. We were driving home, my father said.  My wife and my daughters, we were just on our way home. I know you want to know what happened next, America. Did my dad make it safely home or not?  Outside this window, lilac blooms show up like a rash decision the bush makes each spring. I haven’t lived in Southern California for decades. A pond here killed a child we all knew. For years after that accident, as spring bloomed and ice thinned, my daughter remembered the child from her preschool. And now, it’s not so much that she’s forgotten. It’s more that it seems she’s never known that child as anything other  than drowned. My grandmother didn’t have an answer.  A switch is what her mother called it and her grandmother before her. She’d been gone from that part of America for over half a century, but still that southern soil sprang up along the contours of her tongue. America, I’ll tell you this much, I cannot understand this mind, where it reaches. Even when she was threatening to beat me, I liked to imagine the swishing sound a branch would make as it whipped toward my body through the resisting air. She’d say, this is hurting me  more than it’s hurting you. I didn’t understand her then, but now I think I do. America, go find me a switch.  *previously published in Literary Hub , and The Best American Poetry 2021, Ed. Tracy K Smith, and There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love . Eds Tracy K. Smith and John Freeman. Penguin/Random House, 2021 in the hallway there used to be a hatch  that opened to the attic.  heat poured out in summer.  one winter, frost collected  around failed seals. we hired  some guys to throw up new  insulation. I wanted to leave the crawl space, keep the hatch  in case we had to hide people  someday, but Ray reminded me  they have infrared goggles now.  so we asked the workers to cover the opening with drywall and paint. most of the time I forget that would-be shelter was ever there. Expectant; or, What the Transition Phase of Labor Confirmed about Being a Black Woman in America I thought I would say, now! and a new life would suddenly crown— another beautiful, ordinary head driven to split me wide open. But look at me. Still  on my hands and knees. Still pushing. *previously published in Buzzfeed True Story The cat wandered between two women. In one house, the kibble and clear water. Sometimes, bits of roast chicken, even, sometimes, translucent fish skin. That’s the house that first called her its own and, for all those nights until  she found the other woman, she’d purred  there without asking for anything more. But, I’ve already told you, she found the other woman. Whose house held  the wondrous calm of no children. A blessing.  Wet food in the kitchen. Catnip growing for her in the yard. The women came to be like sister wives. Accepting, if not companiable. Opening and offering everything when the cat came around.  For years this continued. They lived next door to each other, the women, on the wooded west slope of a mountain whose winding road runners liked to climb. The cat lay her body down first on one bed then on another until the arrangement settled into a system as unremarkable as love. One woman believed, as Issa believed, that in all things, even the small and patient snail, there are perceptible strings that tie each life to all others. The other woman was born in Chicago. There, the lake’s current carried a black boy past some unmarked line and a mob on the white beach threw rocks until the boy was no more. She didn’t  side with the mob, this woman, but she knew where they came from. She came from  there too. When the cat got sick, the woman from Chicago wanted to put her down quickly. Keep her from all this suffering, she said. The other woman wanted not so much for her to live forever as for her to fully live  every second of her allotted time. Meanwhile,  winter rain threatened the shallow-rooted  eucalyptus on the hillside. Meanwhile,  the runners still ran. The women argued  in their divided driveway about how they’d prefer  to die. Until she didn’t anymore, the cat  continued eating in both the women’s houses.    *previously published in Los Angeles Review of Books , June 2021 THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Camille T. Dungy and Jae Nichelle on January 7, 2025. Thank you so much for sharing this brilliant work with us. I feel a deep resonance to “This’ll hurt me more,” especially in lines like “America, you are good at taking care of what you value.” I’m curious to know what you value these days and how you’ve been tending to those values. I value my community, my family, the people who walk through this world alongside me on a regular basis. Sometimes this community I value lives in the same house, or the same town, but I also believe in the community I create through my words and actions. (Torch is part of this community!)  My people show up for me all over the world, and I place value on showing up for them as well. I am committed to being present for these people—my people—in a way that might mean I am less generically present to just any whosehisname out there. My daughter is a teenager, and I am intensely aware that the days of her needing me on a daily basis are numbered. I am committed to not taking this special time with her for granted. Similarly, my parents are in their 80s and though they are strong and healthy, I don’t want to take time with them for granted either. Every commitment I say “yes” to means other commitments I have to say “no” to. I am trying to be more mindful of what I choose to let go of so that I can more completely make space for what and who I need and want to prioritize. These poems are story-driven, and I especially love how “True Story” directly addresses the reader/listener. What would you say is your storytelling philosophy? I don’t know if I have a storytelling philosophy. My mind just works narratively. It’s a thing in our family to ask me first thing in the morning what I dreamt. My dreams are often wild rides, and they are almost always story-based. A couple days ago I had a long complex dream that revolved around taking my daughter to a ballet audition at a hotel and conference center where a friend of mine, who in the wide-awake world is a writer and ornithologist, was also staying. We saw him out on the small hills behind the hotel walking with another man and looking at a flock of female pheasants and their chicks. Between talking to the dance program director about the auditions and watching my husband participate as a stand-In for America’s top taste tester at the International Taste Testers competition (held at the same busy hotel), I thwarted an attempted coup and assassination attempt. My ornithologist friend was the target. He was about to be named president of Birders International, but the old guard didn’t like the idea of a Black man at the helm of their 250-year-old organization. They’d come up with an elaborate scheme to “get rid of him” in a "hunting accident." When I’d seen my friend out on that hill and waved at him and the would-be assassin, I messed up the whole scheme. My friend figured out what was happening and contacted law enforcement, who arrested the plotters. There were a lot more details to the dream than what I’ve just offered (the dance audition thread and the Taste Tester competition both wove back into the coup storyline by the end), but I shared this gloss so you can get a sense of how my unconscious mind naturally organizes information. Maybe it’s the All My Children I watched for the first few decades of my life. Or maybe it’s not the soap opera that caused it. Maybe I watched All My Children nearly every day for decades  because  wild interwoven ongoing storylines feel good to my brain. When it comes to writing, it’s not the stories that are the difficult part. It’s figuring out how to organize the several interconnected stories in ways that can make sense to other people and still retain both their weirdness and rightness. Speaking of true stories, you’ve spoken previously  about writing docupoetry and how “witnessing” is a key component of your work. How do you approach the act of witnessing—especially when it comes to difficult or painful subjects? Witnessing is one of the tasks I believe writing must undertake. Writing must be honest. Writing must be urgent. Writing must mean something. Writing must matter. The world is full enough of fluff and distraction. The world is full enough of lies. If I am asking for your time, I intend to honor the gift you’ve given me by providing something true and substantive. Something worthy of your time. Writing from a place of truthful witness and honesty can be scary and dangerous and exhausting, but it seems to me that anything other than truthful witness and honesty is a fundamental waste of our time. I want to respect you and your time. I intend to offer you the kind of truth you need to read. To do this, I find ways to share the truth in a manner you will want to read. I offer beauty, paths toward joy and love. The world is full enough of unmitigated heartbreak. Truth told well can start to mend a broken heart.  In an interview in 32 Poems , you mentioned that you used to play several instruments! If you had to pick today, what song and instrument would you play? Oh goodness, that’s a curious question. You know, I am surprised by the answer that came first to my mind: I would participate in a bell choir. Maybe it’s because I am writing this so close to the holiday season and all those pretty Christmas carols are still in my head. I like the idea of being in a community of music makers, without whom I could not make the music, or I couldn’t make the music as completely as I could in communion with others. A lot of the other things I do with my time these days are solitary. I like the idea of showing up every Wednesday from 7-9pm to practice making music with a bunch of other people who are all pitching in with their small range of notes to make a sound that will fill a building and spill out onto the street. What are your go-to dance moves? I am raising a dancer, but I’m not the best dancer myself. Since I am raising a teenager who is a very accomplished dancer, I am made painfully aware on a regular basis of how completely not a dancer I am. Still, I do like to dance. I like a low drop and slight pop. I just looked up this move to see what the kids are calling it these days. I don’t appreciate knowing that my favorite move is called a “Slut Drop,” but there you have it. When I’m dancing, I like to drop it like it’s hot. You’ve edited several anthologies in addition to being the poetry editor at Orion Magazine . What’s a lesson you’ve learned from your early editing days that has stuck with you? I learned very early in my editing experience that I am partial to poems that open strong. You can catch or lose me as a reader in the first four lines.  There is such a thing as a slow burn, where the import and impact of the opening lines magnify as I move through the poem, but when I am reading hundreds of poems, if the first four lines aren’t reeling me in I am likely to move on to the next poem, and so will many readers.  I want to add another important lesson, which is that no writer can please all readers, nor should they try. It is entirely possible that the few lines that don’t captivate me might prove utterly captivating to another reader. That’s one of the scariest and most liberating things about creating art. It’s hard to know whether something is working or failing based on anyone else’s opinion. Certainly not one individual reader’s opinion. You must learn to build your own set of criteria for success and failure and decide with each piece whether you’ve lived up to your own expectations or not. Your work has expanded our collective archive and understanding of Black environmental poetry. Thank you! What further progress do you hope to see in this area? I’m working on a project that I hope will offer an exciting answer to this question. More details forthcoming…. For now, I will say that one of the most exciting developments since the publication of Black Nature  is how many Black writers are actively and visibly directly and creatively engaging with the greater than human world. When I edited and published Black Nature back around 2007 to 2010, it was possible for me to complete a thorough survey that identified most of the Black writers and writing that fit the category, even considering the ways that I worked to expand the existing limits of the genre. Such a comprehensive survey would be impossible today. So many writers finding so many ways to write about how we live and love and lose and work and dream in this immensely interconnected planet. That is thrilling to me!  How can people support you these days? Goodness. I love this question so much. Love how you’re always modeling ways we can lift as we climb. I said above that I want to write toward honesty and truth, so here’s one thing: I would really love to see Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden on the NYT best sellers list. Sometimes books show up on the bestseller list through a kind of exponential word of mouth whereby suddenly 8000 people buy a book for themselves and their friends and family and libraries and book groups in the same week. Since you asked, I’ll go ahead and write this wish so the universe (and the internet) can hear. If you’re buying or recommending books in the new year, please add Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden to your list. Name another Black woman writer people should know. I teach literature at the college and graduate school level and am often surprised by how many Black writers students don’t know. Then again, I don’t remember really knowing Audre Lorde’s work until I was in college myself, so I try not to be downcast about it. Everyone meets their heroes at some point, and not everyone can come out of the cradle knowing all the writers who will grow to be important to them. Hopefully, if you don’t already know the work of Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, Lucille Clifton, Toi Derricotte, Rita Dove, and Anne Spencer you will find your way to their work soon. Then there are some of my peers who thrill me every time I pick up their books. Evie Shockley, Ruth Ellen Kocher, January Gill O’Neil, Duriel Harris, Remica Bingham-Risher, and CM Burroughs spring immediately to mind. But I’m actually going to use this space to speak to a fascinating book by a beloved peer. Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat Turner’s Community , written by Vanessa Holden, uplifts unsung women heroes of our nation’s past. There are some painful truths in this book, but also necessary lessons. We’ve got to be thinking our way towards active resistance and sustaining communities, and Surviving Southampton  is full of truths more of us could benefit from knowing. ### 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.

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.

Elisha Mykelti conjures poetry that honors sight. She serves on the editorial board for Sundress Publications. 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: Rootwork.” She holds a BA in English from the University of Tennessee. In her free time, Elisha is a perpetual hobbyist and reads tarot. With Three Fingers, I Point to hell with you , swallowing                 a stiltoned olive and cucumber gin        I learned spades at a family dinner, so that November could sleep; and I could live without you  avid and drinking.  My partner, a good woman,  handled the men by set, witness, and wag. Then the family’s mouth  opened to our plate of eight books. We rode the ninth in our last hand.  The girls spit my husband, my husband into the punch bowl and mine calls me over to cold cut sandwiches What do you think at the sough of my name? Me enid then— my kitty jaw? I have your last name,  inked on the ace’s foot  headside down. ### 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.

Sakena Jwan Washington (she/her)   is a Pittsburgh boomeranger and creative nonfiction writer. She was recently named the 2024-25 Emerging Black Writer-in-Residence at Chatham University where she is teaching MFA in Creative Writing students and developing a limited-edition chapbook as part of the Boosie Bolden Chapbook Series  published by  The Fourth River . She is also the current guest editor for Tributaries , the weekly online publication for The Fourth River. Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review , Huffington Post , Jellyfish Review, and others. In 2021, her flash essay, "The Blood Remains" was nominated for the 2021 Best of the Net anthology. She is also one of five Pittsburgh-based storytellers who documented the public art project, "Art in Parks" in the city's Allegheny Regional Asset District parks. She studied English at Clark Atlanta University and earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. More of her work can be found at  sakenajwan.com . Love is Not Loud I got married on a sunny, 80-degree day in late September before two reverends, 101 family and friends, four vendors, and my therapist. Not a physical therapist, but the kind that makes sense of my brain.  I stopped short of the aisle to take a deep breath. The church I got married in had no air conditioning and a slow trickle of sweat tickled the skin beneath the bodice of my wedding gown and sat trapped above my ribcage. I turned to my brother, Daryl, who clutched my right arm next to his torso before walking me down the aisle.  I took his fingers and pressed them to the side of my neck. “Feel my pulse.” It throbbed in a discordant house beat.  He pulled his fingers back and smiled. I can’t remember what he said, beyond a silent wow, but his hooded eyes widened as he grinned. He probably told me it was a good thing. Daryl subscribed to the same ethos as me: love is loud. When the procession song, “You and I,” began the opening chords triggered a wave of carbonated tingles up and across my back. Our musician channeled Stevie Wonder and everyone stood and smiled towards the back of the church.  Daryl and I made our entrance and took our first step down the aisle. I looked to my left. Standing alone in the last row of the center pew was a petite woman with sandy blonde hair. We locked eyes and she scanned me approvingly. It was my therapist Hannah. I invited her months prior, but she declined. “I’m your therapist. I can’t come to your wedding.” I joked that she could pretend to be on my mother’s side because of my mother’s light skin. “No one would know.” But then she showed up anyway. She wasn’t there to make a scene or object to our union, but to witness my metamorphosis. She floated in like an apparition and disappeared before the reception.  I’d been seeing her since the fall of 2009—two years before I met Rick, and five years before we exchanged vows. I was peak messiness. I’d been living in Los Angeles for the previous seven years before I decided to move back to my hometown for Matthew, a man I barely knew. The day I made the decision, I was in a Steelers bar tucked away in an LA neighborhood I’d never been to before. I texted Matthew, “If the Steelers win, I’m moving to Pittsburgh.” When the Steelers scored the winning touchdown in the AFC Championship, my fate was sealed. Over the next six months, we texted daily, spoke on the phone after work, and attempted grainy video calls over Skype. But less than two months after the move, he developed an acute allergy to direct communication and withdrew. On the day he unceremoniously canceled a dinner date with his parents via text, my friend’s husband declared a flag on the play. That same evening when he offered to swing by and take me out to dinner as an apology, he chose a local hot dog joint even though I was dressed like I was going to church. I came to my senses when he went on vacation and made no contact for two weeks. I broke it off in a two-page email and never spoke to him again. This chain of events was no surprise to Hannah. I had her at “we’d gone out twice.”  My first session took place on a dreary, overcast day in October. I slumped in her upright chair and declared myself an idiot.  “Promise me one thing. If you start dating someone again, will you let me know?”  I nodded with resignation. I wanted to do this on my own—the way I’d always done, with self-help articles, romantic comedies, and getting advice from friends whose dating history was equally questionable.  “You need to get more information.” For someone like me who obsessed over true crime dramas and 30-minute docuseries about bamboozled women, I believed that I was in fact an expert on getting more information. I had no wealth for Matthew to con me out of, he didn’t have a prison record, and he wasn’t married. He was a loner, but not a serial killer. Comments left by women on his Facebook page were appropriate and familial. As far as I was concerned, I’d done my due diligence. Plus, he lived in the house next door to my friend’s childhood home. Wasn’t that a sign? A serendipitous opening to the romcom of my life? Over the next five years, Hannah would have to rewrite my definition of love. The love I longed for was an unrestrained, soulful ballad on full blast, a kaleidoscope of butterflies flapping in your gut so hard you had to puke, a 100-year-old wooden rollercoaster that jumped off the tracks, an undertow that gripped your feet and propelled you in a backflip before spitting you up on shore. Love was supposed to hurt before it filled you with all-encompassing ecstasy. Love was supposed to be loud.  My love delusion began in preschool. I was four years old when I got my first taste of unrequited love. His name was Shawn. A pudgy light-skinned boy with big brown eyes and a tight round afro. My best friend, Priya, was already matched in a reciprocal love affair with Shawn’s best friend, so it seemed natural for us to be star-crossed lovers. When the school day began, all the children filed into a small, carpeted area and formed a circle for our morning devotion. Each day, I stood beside Shawn and cupped his hand as we recited the Lord’s Prayer. With our eyes closed, Shawn crushed my fingers until the center of my palm turned dark pink and dug his thumbnail into the back of my hand until it made a deep half-moon impression. Sometimes he broke the skin, but I didn’t let go until we said, “Amen.” I’ve never been one for reading signs, or, in this case seeing the obvious. Love hurt every day in my house, but it was always complicated by the image of a well-adjusted family. Too often, my father used his fist to settle arguments with my mom and brother. Then a few days or years later he would counter that cruelty with a trip to Kennywood, a shopping spree, or a two-week syllabus designed to occupy me during spring break. Love was a house of horrors that sometimes cleaned up nice for the yearly Olan Mills family photo.  Once I hit puberty, rejection became more nuanced. I spent hours decoding context clues, half-admissions, and suggestive statements to uncover my target’s true intentions. If Hannah had been my therapist back then she might have told me to stop fooling myself and pay more attention to their actions instead of their riddles.  In middle school, I attended Green Valley Day Camp run by two hippies in Glenshaw, a small suburb outside of Pittsburgh. That’s when I met Jake. He was a freckled 10-year-old with a crew cut. His parents were divorced. During the summer he stayed with his father in Pittsburgh, and in the fall, he returned to his mom in New Jersey. We were instant friends and over the course of three years, we wrote each other monthly letters between September and May. He had a special sign off that I soon adopted: TLA. “It means true love always,” he wrote the first time he used the abbreviation. Every June, I looked forward to his arrival at camp. And every summer, he developed a new and very public crush. First Courtney, then Julianna, and then Amy. I was content with this arrangement, because I figured it had something to do with the fact that interracial couples weren’t in vogue yet. Our last summer together, he held my hand and walked close to me before JP, a fellow camper, walked into the clubhouse.  “You were gonna kiss her!” JP laughed through strings of saliva and a bucktooth grin. “No, I wasn’t,” Jake said.   His denial pummeled me. This was the part where he was supposed to take both my hands, lean in for a kiss, then march outside to announce our union to the rest of the campers.   But none of that happened. Instead, Jake walked out of the clubhouse and pretended the whole thing was a misunderstanding.  On our last day at Green Valley, he handed me a tape with tears in his eyes. Listen to this when you get home, he said. On the tape, he dictated his final correspondence to me. It ended with a song dedication. “I Won’t Forget You” by Poison. Until that moment, I didn’t even know heavy metal ballads existed. We promised to see each other in five years—a random time frame we declared at 13. I knew it was goodbye, but a part of me held out hope that our love was stronger than distance. “You’re a pursuer,” Hannah said to me one day in session.  “What does that mean?” I’d been dating Rick for several months and I was already spiraling from the amount of time we didn’t spend together. This was after telling him that practicing jiu-jitsu five days a week and driving the church van every Sunday until three in the afternoon was too much. I knew something was wrong when I started keeping an imaginary ledger of the time we spent together and apart. If love was a feeling that I’d previously failed at, then surely it had to be quantifiable. If I subtracted sleep and work responsibilities, there were roughly 70 hours of possible couple time but not a single issue of Cosmopolitan magazine boasted an algebraic formula on its cover for calculating how much time was enough time. All I knew was that in the first 10 months of our relationship, I’d only spent three eight-hour days with him, and our average weekly time spent was six hours. But every time I expressed this frustration to Hannah, I justified my needs with what other couples did, namely the ones who morphed into conjoined twins from Friday night through Sunday afternoon.  Hannah ripped out a piece of paper from her yellow legal pad. She drew two stick figures with a line between them. The pursuer stick person stood to the left of the distancer. She pointed to my stick figure and animated it with sloppy “x” marks moving forward. When the pursuer caught up, the distancer moved further away and so on. “You’re too available, she said, “you need to distance yourself.” This was the kind of relationship strategy I hated. I had to temper my desire to be with Rick. My takeaway that day was that I had to pretend to be so into my life, my interests, and passions that Rick’s curiosity would only intensify. The summer I turned 22, my father offered similar wisdom to me in a noisy Steelton, PA pub. We sat at the bar sipping on whiskies and coke as I shared the details of my latest pursuit—a man I’d met in college who moved to the West Coast to be with his high school sweetheart. I imagined that if we stayed friends long enough that he would realize what he was missing in her.  He stared straight ahead like he was contemplating his next drink order and interrupted me. “When a man sees an independent woman, he wines and dines her until she’s dependent. And then he looks for another independent woman.” He took a sip from his rocks glass and looked at me. “Stop chasin’ these fools.”.  The idea of having to restrain any part of my infatuation was excruciating. Like when people tell women that the moment they stop looking for a partner, that’s when the right person walks into their life. Even when I tried to follow this logic, I felt myself looking over my shoulder at a café, a bookstore, a restaurant, a grocery store, at the club dancing—HOW ABOUT NOW? What about right now? Have I demonstrated to the cosmos that I’m ready?  There was no making sense of who I had to be to woo a man. A man I dated in college wrote me love letters every few days, sent me two dozen roses on my birthday, and had a custom belly chain made for me by a silversmith. And this only after a month of dating. But when he felt overwhelmed by my availability, he would say “I need some space.” When I asked for a time frame, he shrugged. But it was always two weeks. When my punishment was over, I would hear his loud muffler pulling into the driveway of my apartment and he would ask me to come back to his dorm with him. I always obliged. I put more stock in his effusive displays than the unpredictability of his moods. I trusted the flair more than his absence.  “Have I talked to you about boundaries?” Hannah inquired one day.  At this point, I’d spent more than a dozen sessions comparing my relationship with Rick to other couples. One couple I knew spent every Sunday doing NYTimes crossword puzzles and reading Moby Dick, but Rick was driving the van. Another couple had brunch every Saturday morning together, while Rick was at jiu-jitsu practice. Another spent every evening together until the sun rose, while Rick dutifully returned to his apartment so that he could prepare a lesson plan or play video games or just settle into the evening. I had a checklist in my mind for what this relationship was supposed to look like from the outside, and my portfolio didn’t seem to measure up. Hannah took this as a no. She pulled a sheet from her yellow legal pad again and drew two columns. In the first row, she drew two circles far apart from each other. “This is estranged.”  In the second row, she drew two circles overlapping each other. “This is enmeshed. This is what you seem to be describing.” In the third row, she drew two circles just barely overlapping their midpoint. “This is what you want. This is what a healthy relationship looks like.” I groaned. This was a more calculated effort than I’d ever put forth in my life.   I had no boundaries. In my 20s and 30s, I made a career of this. I thought men wanted to be needed. When I showed men who I was, it ended in criticism. And instead of taking this as a cue, I shape-shifted into the woman they wanted to be.  The guy I dated after my college graduation was vocal about what he disliked about me. That summer I saved up to purchase a bottle of Evelyn perfume by Crabtree & Evelyn. Its signature note was rose oil.  “You smell like somebody’s grandmother.” That was the point. I chose that scent because it reminded me of the concentrated air freshener that my grandmother picked up at Loblaws once a month.  He didn’t care that it was nostalgic or that my grandparent’s bathroom smelled like roses, and not poop, so I stopped wearing it. He also detested my style. Every weekend, I donned a pair of brown stompers with a black platform rubber heel that my brother purchased for me in the Village when I was 16. The shoe's surface looked like stained wood, and I adored them. One day he told me I looked butch in them and the next day they disappeared. When I inquired about them, he told me that he threw them away. Weeks later, I found them hidden in his trunk and confronted him.  I thought you threw them out.  “I should have,” he said.  He let me reclaim them only if I vowed never to wear them again. I agreed but held out hope that he would fall in with them and me. He preferred heels. He also preferred not to call me his girlfriend.  The men I dated wanted me to be the opposite of me, and I tried desperately to hold their attention despite myself. I was also arrogant and foolish enough to believe that bending to their every whim would coax them into submission.  Rick proposed to me in DC, over dinner at Kruba Thai and Sushi by the navy yard. Everyone except for me knew the day was coming. He’d called my brother and mom days before, and he showed the ring to a few of my closest friends. The restaurant was empty except for us, and another party seated on the opposite side of the dining area. He pulled out a box and in it were earrings.  “Happy anniversary,” he said.  I’d been growing impatient with Rick. We’d been dating for two years and my 40s were closing in. But he wanted everything to be just right. He wanted to know me. He wanted to pay off his student loan debt and find the perfect ring. I told him that none of that mattered, that my clock was ticking, but he still took his time.  “I saw those at the arts festival.” I looked down to see a pair of blue earrings and thanked him with a tight smile. Then he pushed another box forward. “I thought you might like this too.” I opened the box and the light caught the sparkles of a diamond engagement ring with a princess-cut center stone and two smaller diamonds flanking each side. Its detailing was subtle and unique, like me. When I realized it was a proposal, I was so excited I couldn’t eat. We took our dinner to go, and I ran around the navy yard until I was out of breath—Rick jogging just beside me.  When I shared the news of Rick’s proposal with Hannah she asked me what my expectations were in a marriage.  I looked at her like she’d given me more Calculus homework.  In hindsight, my expectations sounded aspirational and half-baked. I wanted the flowers, the unpredictable displays of affection, and everything to be 50/50.  “Love is boring,” she said. She might as well have walked up to a playground of children and told them that Santa Claus burned their letters.   When I finally built up the courage to ask Rick what his expectations were, they sounded nothing like mine.  “I want someone who has their own interests so that we can come together and share our experiences.” I thought that arrangement sounded lonely. It didn’t match the romantic comedy in my head. It sounded like someone who wanted me to keep writing, knitting, wearing comfortable shoes, and decoupaging. It sounded like someone who wanted me to be me. This was a foreign concept. But now that I’d found this rare and imperfect unicorn, I had to start telling him my own wants and needs, not by comparison or through the lens of a friend enmeshed with her Hallmark-trained boyfriend, but by my own assessment. I didn’t even know where to start.  After I spotted Hannah at our wedding ceremony, I took note of every face in the church that day. My smile got wider and wider until I met eyes with Rick. We selected 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7 to be read by my mom at the wedding. The one that details what love is supposed to look, feel, and sound like. It seemed like an appropriate, if not typical bible verse to be read at our wedding. But I don’t think I really understood what was being spoken to us that day.  In 2021 I finally purchased a car of my own after 20 years of taking the bus in cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh where the city design and traffic nearly tripled my commute. I soon discovered how much I loved driving aimlessly blasting music through my speakers. One day I landed on “Tell Him” by Lauryn Hill, a song I’d avoided for nearly as long as I’d been a professional pedestrian. It reminded me too much of old hurt, but I let it play anyway. Instead of damning past decisions, I smiled recalling that the lyrics were based on the same bible passage Rick and I heard on our wedding day. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does boast, it is not proud.  In “Tell Him,” Hill sang “love is not loud.” All these years, I thought loud had to do with avoiding an abusive monster. It never occurred to me that loud might have to do with the kind of performative love I craved. I never gave thought to the idea of love being quiet, predictable, and steady. But as this lesson sunk in, I realized for the first time that love being quiet didn’t mean I needed to be. I needed to turn up the volume and say exactly what I needed and wanted.  ### 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.

Jordan E. Franklin (she/her) hails from Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from Stony Brook Southampton and is a doctoral candidate at Binghamton University. She is the author of the poetry collection, when the signals come home  (Switchback Books), and the chapbook, boys in the electric age (Tolsun Books). Her work has appeared in Breadcrumbs, Frontier, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, the Southampton Review and elsewhere. She is the winner of the 2017 James Hearst Poetry Prize and the 2020 Gatewood Prize. 1: poet discusses how she inherited the new world “Ah fear, fear, she's the mother of violence Making me tense to watch the way she breed” - Peter Gabriel Question: How were you able to survive for so long? I come from a long line of folks who kept shotguns  behind their fridge. They couldn’t be shadows  because they were too long, too dark. Love was brief,  left holes in our walls. I could’ve reached  the gun if I tried. My fingers were slim enough, long enough but Dad said I was too little then. Worried about the kickback. He taught me how  to use a gun before I bled. I was born among knives:  me, a C-section spilled onto a hospital bed. Dad kept  them sharp throughout our apartment, tucked away  in drawers, closets. I wasn’t supposed to make it  but he insisted. To truly live, you need to sleep  loaded. Safety off, I can hurt. I can aim,  squeeze the trigger. I can reach your bleeding heart.  ### 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.

Octavia Washington is an emerging writer who graduated from Carleton College with a degree in English and is currently a Dramaturgy MFA student at Columbia University. She lives in New York and can be found shopping until dropping, probably. Follow Octavia on Instagram and Twitter . babybreath   CHARACTERS Angel, a black woman in her 20s The Husband, older than her     Setting: The Bed Time: None in the Void   Angel is lying horizontal on the bed in her pink robe and bonnet, one leg exposed. She keeps rubbing at her temples. Her sheets are undone, unmade, fraying; every second away from her temple goes to its exposed strings. Her husband is sitting in a chair across from her, monitoring for any worrying signs — well, more worrisome than her usual. She’s surrounded by dial-up telephones, receivers as far as the eye can see. Another ring — and no answer. The phones get bigger and smaller all around her; they shrink and balloon, and she follows their lead with her movements.   Angel hears a click after each name. No telling if the husband can hear them too.   Angel Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. These are the first instruments of the baby machine. I have to take a nap but I can’t stop thinking and I need you to help me carry my thoughts. Okay, can you do that? I need you to carry my names and then we’ll all find some peace in dreams. Okay, can you promise that? Alright. I have - pass me that. (He passes her the crumbled piece of paper on the floor; she unravels it.) These are my physicians but I don’t think they went to school for medicine. I think they’re fake. Don’t look at me like that. Forget the degrees painting the walls and the pillows that devour and the games in the waiting room and the snotty receptionist at the desk and the fancy Ivy Leagues of it all. They majored and degreed in Baby Killer MD. And now I have something to say. I stand and shout (Angel tries to stand up but falls back down) , I sit and shout: I have something to say. I have -- what was I -- I’m sorry, I’m not -- oh, Kolin.   That was the first stop. All aboard the abortion express. Sorry. That’s not funny, I know you don’t like when I make, when I make light of things like — dark things. I just meant that he was my pediatrician and that’s why I saw him first. Kolin’s hair went like (she gestures)  whoosh; he had the quaff, baby, the quaff, okay, it was the 90s. He found me in the waiting room playing with the piano rug, the long one with all the keys, you ever seen those shits? No? Well, I was brushing my foot over  c  and humming something so loud that I didn’t hear him and he had to tap me twice with his ghost hands because he’s known me since I was small enough to have to put my whole body on c  to get it to play.   And when I took off my pretty dress from Puerto Rico and sucked my butt into a paper gown, he waved some blurry black photos of my insides and said, do you know what this means, my Angel? And I said, please don’t tell Daddy, because I already had three hot messages from him in my voicemail that I hadn’t listened to but they went something like, I’ll pay for it, blah, just like your mother, blah, hardheaded, blah. And he said we have to tell Daddy. And I said, nuh-uh. And he said, uh-huh. And we went like that back and forth and I guess the stress got to be so much that something in my stomach suckered in,  (hold breath) spun,  (exhale)  and whirled into a vacuum.  (Spit)   And that’s one down. You can find them at siete-uno-ocho cuatro-tres-cuatro y dos-nueve-nueve-dos. See, I don’t even need the paper. I’m smart. Your baby is smart. I memorize all their names because time freed me. And now I have space for lullaby.   Here are the - I - can I talk? Can I talk? Thank you.   Angel lies flat on the bed, spreading her arms and legs so that she’s in a snow angel position.   Here are the weapons they used to destroy me: Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. Khasidy. Kamin. Kamal. Kassof. Kaminski. Kaiser. Joseph. Julien. Jofe. Jack. I remember Joseph best! I remember that bitch. I remember Joseph with the green Jordans. I remember because I went, damn, you got it like that? Not mister uptighty bitey tidey-whitey whitey who won’t make eye contact when he puts his instruments in me got some Jays? I asked about them when he was putting his cold stethoscope on my teta, just because I got his number from this white lady in my building, the one with that badass kid — oh, you know her, Jacqueline! How is she? Oh, yeah, yeah, he didn’t say nothing. He shrugged then parted my knees with the gloves. I was trying to get to know him, you know, because I had never met him, and I like to know people before they look in my hoo-ha and put rubber on my panties because I am a classy lady, alright, I was raised alright. But he didn’t want to be known I guess. I guess in his program they tell him the patient is just a chart and a number and a birthday and a history of smoking and cancer in the family. He didn’t talk to me one bit, except to tell me that he noticed some bleeding when he parted me, and that he was very sorry, but he didn’t hear a heartbeat.   You can find him at siete-uno-ocho seis-tres-tres y uno-uno-cuatro-dos. Afterward, I went around to everyone I could find. I grabbed people’s jackets on the train. I yelled on the bus. I yelled so much the bus driver said can someone shut that miss up? But no, no one can stop me when I start hurricaning.   I said, do you need a doctor? Preferably better than him? This is where you can find them: Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. Khasidy. Kamin. Kamal. Kassof. Kaminski. Kaiser. Joseph. Julien. Jofe. Jordan. Jefferson. James. Jerome. Jayasundera. Jean-Pascal. Jean-Brice. Jean-Noel. Jean-Pierre. Jean-whatever. So many men and they all rot of babybreath. (Getting up)  I am thirsty. I want water. Your baby wants water!   Husband runs out of the room. We can hear water being poured off-stage. He comes back, helping Angel sip her water.   I’m sorry for yelling. I just get upset when I think about Joseph. The way he was looking at me, you know? Like I was procedure, not person. But if he knew me, if he really opened his ears and consumed me, I’d have her. I’d have a baby. We’d - I’m sorry. I know you like me to speak for myself. From now on we’ll say Jo-shush. Can you repeat after me, Jo-shush? You good? Good.   Listen, will you listen? (sung mostly to herself) Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. Khasidy. Kamin. Kamal. Kassof. Kaminski. Kaiser. Jo-shush. Julien. Jofe. Jordan. Jefferson. James. Jerome. Jayasundera. Jean-Pascal. Jean-Brice. Jean-Noel. Jean-Pierre. Jean-whatever. Issac. Ibsen. Inna. Now this one’s gonna get you mad. Issac. I only know his name because I looked for him in the thing that’s online? Yes, you can -- yes, you can! You can look people up by their inmate number and that’s what I did. After. Not before. I know you don’t like it when I get all feelings first. When -- what was it you said? When I move with my anxiety, not my logic. And this was one of those times where I was holding my anxiety but I was desperate. You’d get desperate too, okay, if every path kept taking you to the grave instead of to heaven.   So what had happened was I traveled down the yellow brick road and down a gray alley where there was a woman sitting with her dog in her lap and she was looking at me and I was looking at her because she kinda looked like Tia Flores, a little if I squinted and tilted, just like her with a little more dirt under her nails. And I asked her if she knew which way Gravesend was and she said, why the hell do you wanna go over there, that’s where people get ganged and banged and I said, I’m a hero, I’m saving my new baby, and there’s a man there who will protect her and me from demons and doubters who are forged in the fire of exacting supremacy. Yeah, I see you shaking your head but that’s what I said, okay, I said that shit, because that’s what I thought and I say what I think, always, because I don’t believe in doublespeech like you men of gun, I believe in the truth, the truth is what brings you closer to God, the truth is what keeps the devil at bay, the truth is free. But anyway, I said that and she pointed down to the left, to the left so I followed the yellow brick road and found a gray apartment door on the corner of Avenue D. I knocked. He answered. He had one gold tooth and I thought, man, this really is a private, private, private practice. He said I should leave on my shoes and I immediately got a bad feeling because what type of home doesn’t have you take off your shoes? A bad one, that’s what. He gestured that I should sit in the makeshift living room turned lab turned armchair turned stir-ups and under the flickering lights he put his scalpel on my thigh and said, so you need to get rid of this one? And I said NO. The opposite. He asked me if I was sure. I said YES. He kept shaking his heads and I mean heads because at this point the chlorine -- he had just cleaned before I got there, right -- was getting up in my nose and into my brain. He said I was too pretty and too young to be ruining my life. I didn’t respond because I was getting bothered. The gold, the light, the gray. Instead, I snapped my knees together and stood. And he was like, you still have to pay! And I said MY CURRENCY IS MY FOOT and kicked him in the balls like Tio Rod told me to do when people started looking at me funny. And he screamed YOU BITCH and I ran and ran and ran and I started flying and dropped the latest baby on the way down the street, past the lady, past the trash, past the construction guys who said why you running ma, past the cops who gave me the good ole red and blue and said SLOW DOWN, but then they took pity on me because I was crying so hard that it turned into burps and I looked like the black one’s little sister. Snot and all.   (Beat)   See, I knew you wouldn’t like that story. But that’s what happened. Deadass, that’s what happened.    Can you call my mom? You don’t have your mother-in-law programmed into your fancy little gadget? It’s siete-uno-ocho tres-ocho-dos y cero-cinco-cero-cero. I know we’re not talking right now but I would really like to listen to her breathe. Can you --? Gimme me. Thank you.   Husband hands over his cell phone. As the phone rings, the receivers around her stop breathing — or stop moving so much, whatever’s easier. Angel makes a call. No answer.   (To the voicemail) Hi, Mommy. It’s your Angel. I have a secret: (quiet) Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. Khasidy. Kamin. Kamal. Kassof. Kaminski. Kaiser. Jo-shush. Julien. Jofe. Jordan. Jefferson. James. Jerome. Jayasundera. Jean-pascal. Jean-Brice. Jean-Noel. Jean-Pierre. Jean-whatever. Issac. Ibsen. Inna. Irwin. Iwanicki. Ingber. Ingberman. Igor. IIina-Yelena.   Wait, stop talking. I hear something.   Pause as they look around. Then comes swelling, sweet music. It sounds a little like an aria but of many rhythmic, popping voices. It’s clear to Angel that it’s her babies singing.   My parasites came to visit. They sound so good! You can’t hear them? Stop this bullshit: you hear them!   Angel gets up and spins herself. A lovely, if clumsy, pivot.   They’re getting hungry. They need something to eat. Do you have anything? Give me something! No, not that! Watch me:  (Angel does a fast step routine)  Kolin. Kerolle. Kerstein. Khafif. Khan. Khasidy. Kamin. Kamal. Kassof. Kaminski. Kaiser. Jo-shush. Julien. Jofe. Jordan. Jefferson. James. Jerome. Jayasundera. Jean-pascal. Jean-Brice. Jean-Noel. Jean-Pierre. Jean-whatever. Issac. Ibsen. Inna. Irwin. Iwanicki. Ingber. Ingberman. Igor. IIina-Yelena. Henry. Hollander. Horne. Hope. Are you full yet?   (Abruptly stops dancing) Maybe she changed her number. She moves around a lot, you know, I was just trying the kitchen phone. Do this one: Siete-uno-ocho siete-cuatro-tres y cero-cuatro-seis-cuatro.   No? Nothing?   That’s okay. I have one last story for you. Although you were there for this one. So it’s not a story, I guess, for you, it’s a memory. You like Henry. I like Henry. He’s not a whoosh, or a Jay, or a gold tooth. He’s a cackle. Literally. He’s more laugh than person. What! It’s not an insult! He goes (she does his laugh) . It’s trustworthy. A man who cackles is not a man who lies. And he’s brown and he’s pink inside and he’s purple on the outside. That’s a person you can trust. You can trust a cackle. It’s not his fault his attendant -- okay, you’re getting upset. I thought the song would cheer you up. No, don’t cry. You don’t see me crying. This one was almost full-term. I should cry. I stink. I smell like babybreath.   I was getting a bagel that day when I felt it. This quick suck. Quicksand in my belly. I begged the guy at the bodega to call the Mr, tell him to meet me at Bellevue, okay, tell him I’m going to Bellevue. And I closed my eyes and willed myself down 1st Ave. When I transported to the receptionist desk, I said, I’m hurt. And the attendant was passing by on his lunch, yes, the old white one, and he said, no, he whispered because I wasn’t supposed to hear, he whispered, can it hold for my cholecystectomy? And the nurse nodded and then put her needle nails in my arm and said hurt how? But she wasn’t looking at me, you know, her eyes were around and about. And I said I’m hurt ing  now, right now, it’s hurt ing , because that’s the only way to get them to take you seriously. She said sit down, the doctor will be with you soon, and I said, I need Dr. Henry now! Give him to me, give me to him, whatever, but it needs to happen now, right fucking now or I’m gonna explode, there’s a bomb in my chest. And she said, ma’am, that’s a serious accusation, if that’s true we will need to call the police and I said, call the fucking police call the governor call the SWAT team call the FBI call motherfucking Batman you dumb bitch if you don’t get me Kolin Kerolle Kerstein Khafif Khan Khasidy Kamin Kamal Kassof Kaminski Kaiser Jo-shush Julien Jofe Jordan Jefferson James Jerome Jayasundera Jean-pascal Jean-Brice Jean-Noel Jean-Pierre Jean-whatever Issac Isben Inna Irwin Iwanicki Ingber Ingberman Igor IIina-Yelena Henry Hollander Horne Hope Hassan Hausknecht Halper Handler George Gary or Goldstein I will kill you. And then you arrived, wrenching yourself out of a cab. And when I saw you I knew. My insides broke in the lobby and I just knew. It wasn’t Henry’s fault. It’s not your fault.   That’s why I’m telling you right now that I’m not seeing another doctor. Not even if it’s a woman. Not even if it’s light itself. I’m not leaving my bed. You can call them right now. Go ahead. I don’t care if it’s Fred or Fong or Feurman or Flores or Fuchs or Friedman or Ferzli or Fazio or Feldman or Fairwa or Frenkel or Francois or Epstein or Erber or Empire. And when you call Siete-uno-ocho seis-tres-tres y ocho-uno-ocho-tres, tell them my wife and my kids said, I banish you!   No one believes me. No one ever believes me. No, you don’t. No, YOU DON’T! I don’t like to be told who I am and what I am and what compels me and what magic makes me! I’m not a liar! I had all those babies and they ate each other up in my womb and they ate me up, and now I’m not going outside anymore. I’m going to lay here for the next forty-eight hours, or days, or months, or years. No, I want to get up. No, I want to sit. Fuck you! I don’t know!   Angel stands but she bumps into too many things. She trips over one of the phones and ends up on the ground. She vomits into the waste bin. Not real vomit, of course. She’s puking out all of the names; it’s a strange, glittery occurrence. Her husband stands behind her and holds her head. When she’s done he smoothes her edges and holds her.   Sorry for yelling. I believe in the sun, you know? I salute the sun. I cast a hex on all those naughty men. I reach into the void and pull out a wand and I curse them for financial ruin, for emotional instability, for a toilet that never flushes, for a washer that always stains, for a drain that always clogs, for shoelaces inevitably untied, for sickness do we part, for hell and beyond.   Thank you for understanding. Sorry for yelling. And these are the names of all my babies: Daisy, Dagney, Daphne, Diana, Dorothy, Destiny, Desi, Dali, Dayo. Chantel, Charmaine, Candy, Catherine, Catalina, Carolina, Caprice, Camila, Cristina. Bella, Belcalse, Bethany, Bianca, Blanca, Brianna, Belinda, Brandy, Birdie. And I’m their only angel.   Angel sighs then stops talking. The Husband shakes her but she doesn’t stir. It seems she’s fallen asleep in his arms. ### 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 special events. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Sapphire is the award-winning author of Push , which was adapted into the Oscar-winning film Precious. Sapphire has received numerous awards and recognition including the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction; the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s First Novelist Award; and in Great Britain, the Mind Book of the Year Award. Sapphire is the author of Push , American Dreams , The Kid , and Black Wings & Blind Angels . Push: A Novel , won the Book-of-the-Month Club’s Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction; the Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s First Novelist Award; and in Great Britain, the Mind Book of the Year Award. Named by the Village Voice and Time Out New York as one of the top ten books of 1996, Push was nominated for a NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work of Fiction. Push was adapted into the Oscar-winning film, Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire .  Sapphire’s work has appeared in The New Yorker , The New York Times Magazine , The New York Times Book Review , The Black Scholar , Spin , and Bomb . In February of 2007 Arizona State University presented PUSHing Boundaries, PUSHing Art: A Symposium on the Works of Sapphire . Sapphire’s work has been translated into over 18 languages and has been adapted for stage in the United States and Europe.  The Harlem Trilogy (excerpt)   Mississippi 1910 Pt 1   The House of Satin Madam Satin’s last paramour, Mr. McKenzie, had fallen blind in love with her. It happens. Not as often as one likes, but it happens. He was the last of a string of lovers, johns, and pimps whom she had extricated herself from. The man before Mr. McKenzie who, she wasn’t sure, but knew it was possible, that he could have been Flossie’s father had come after her with a violence. Heavily pregnant but nowhere near ready to drop by her own calculations, Madam Satin, nee Mary Ann Cassidy, had gone to a shabby clip joint where she used to work, dropping in on friends to pass a bottle and partake of gossip. She had gone into labor grasping a bottle of stout, laughing convulsively upon hearing that Jane Murray had dodged the cops by dressing as a man. Only to be picked up on another corner by coppers who weren’t looking for her, ‘for appearing in public in men’s clothing. Jane was fined $10 for this, which is more than she would have been fined for hooking. Mary Ann’s guffaws had turned into howls and her convulsive laughter into contractions as she went into labor clutching her bottle of stout. Mary Ann’s hand was extended as she was being carried to a side room with a bed. A girl coming down the hall took the bottle out of Mary Ann’s hand, turned it up and drained it. The girl who hadn’t been invited to partake in the jollities in the dusty parlor narrowed her eyes and scrutinized Mary Ann’s red and contorted face dripping with sweat, tried to remember what she knew about this woman, and when the Aha! ping of recognition sounded, she ran down the hall, out of the door, down the street and down another street and didn’t stop until she ran straight into the man they called Emerald Isle, the notorious pimp and gambler (known to his mother as Francis Michael Gallagher). Mary Ann had run off from this man some months before taking his diamond cufflinks with her when she went. And for five dollars the breathless acquaintance informed the infamous Mr. Emerald Isle she would be happy to tell him where he could find Mary Ann Cassidy. Mr. Emerald Isle picked her up by the scruff of her neck demonstrating to her what he saw as her stray cat status in life and informed her that she would tell him where Mary Ann Cassidy was five dollars or not. She merely answered, “Times a wastin’ Mr. Emerald.” He responded by throwing her to the ground and then throwing two dollars on top of her. Mary Ann had recognized the loud footfall and loud voice of Mr. Emerald Isle as he walked into the house and had wrapped her newborn in a pus and piss-stained pillow case, climbed out the first-floor window of the shabby and nameless whorehouse with her daughter, and made her way as best she could down the same street she had come to the Convent of the Holy Mother where her cousin was a novice. Madam Satin had asked the nuns to keep her baby girl until she could sort out her life. She was walking down the street from the convent where she had left her child who, the myth-making creature that she was, she referred to as her only child. What that meant was, she chose to forget having been forced to leave one infant on a trash heap, and years later having sold another child with no regret other than that she should have driven a harder bargain. She decided walking down the street that this last one was her first one and that she would keep it. She was twenty-nine and gifted with looks that had people thinking she was seventeen. Yes, this child would be her last child. Tears of rage and woe streamed down her alabaster face and she stumbled as she walked down the street fantasizing about killing her pimp. She was determined she would get her child back from the nuns and raise the baby herself if she had to run away or live in hiding in the convent to do it. The international financier capitalist Mr. Mackenzie who had been out tippling spied her from the window of his carriage and saw the woe but not the rage, and asked his coachman to slow down to see if he might be of assistance to, what appeared on first glance and second glance too, a young golden-haired girl walking and crying with every step she took. Madam Satin, née Mary Ann Cassidy, an experienced raconteur and street diviner, realized that the man who introduced himself as Mr. Mackenzie was really and truly an angel, and asked God as she knew her, as she had been introduced to her in stank dank basements and alleys by witches, colored Creole women, and Catholic girls who had gone rogue, to Guide her tongue/ Treoir Mo Tongu!  She could see her perfusion of golden curls and tears had further besotted a man already well along the path to alcoholic stupor. She spoke slowly refusing a brandy and water that would ‘comfort her’ and chose her words carefully because there was a possibility he would remember them, and so that she should not forget what she said, aware his coachman might be straining to listen to every word she said. Mary Ann Cassidy’s life had been one of fluid invention since her mother, an impoverished woman from Dublin, had left with her sister to seek their fortunes in London. They had landed in a London jail and been scraped out of it and transported to America years ago. Both women had had the good sense to eschew forever and always all things English and Protestant and to seek blessing and sanctuary in the true church of the virgin mother, l’église catholique romaine. Mr. Mackenzie listened to the fair and lovely girl who said she had been turned out of her stepfather’s house when she spurned his advances and had been walking down the street to find the river’s edge and would have walked into it had he not stopped his carriage and saved her. When she drew away from her eyes the handkerchief he had given her and raised those reddened orbs to his, he was impressed by their pale Alpine blue. He pressed some bills in her hand and dropped her off at the Hotel Carmine and told her who to ask for to get a room. And that he hoped he would see her there in two hours when he had finished his morning endeavors. He hoped she would have the forbearance to wait for him, but he understood if she could not and decided to return home, either way the money was hers to keep as he hated to see someone in distress that could so easily be remedied, and not remedy it. He was an old man and fell in love with her in the way that old men do who intend to spite relatives they know have never loved them for anything but their money. He told her he loved her over morsels of tender beef and later ruby-throated hummingbird cake and Bridgetown rum. After a second glass of rum, he told her that he wanted to marry her. Mary Ann Cassidy was rather cool-headed for a woman who had had to drop a newborn that she had given birth to at seven o’clock that morning at a convent. She repeated that she had rescued herself from her stepfather’s house, why she knew, but for what she wasn’t sure. Mary Ann Cassidy was 29, not 17. She knew she did not want to be hanging around waiting for some old man to die, an old man whose relatives would be hovering over his soon-to-be corpse like buzzards. She was clear when she told him, “Give what you would give me now . My mother suffers already this very day that I am not there to take care of the house and children while she goes out door to door with a bucket and brush to scrub the marble steps of the rich.” A third glass of rum and the two were in bed beneath an embroidered coverlet. Her pain and the postpartum blood she left on the sheets were to the drunk man the crying blonde girl’s unasked for proof of virginity. Even her cousin, who has since learned not to doubt the woman now called Madam Satin Fontaine was shocked when Mary Ann Cassidy who had said she would be returning with provisions for her daughter (they all said that), was back the next day with five hundred dollars for the Convent of the Blessed Virgins and her blonde-haired child. She was going away on business for two months after which she would be back to have her baby baptized and then take her home. She would be back in the wink of an eye/ en un clin d’œil . Please sing to the infant in French. Mary Ann Cassidy left the United States with Mr. McKensie thinking she might find a way off the street, maybe enter an established house where she could make a lot of money. What could she do with a lot of money? Buy a house of her own? Such big thoughts. Her mind which had never been really geared toward imagination made a subtle shift from invention to imagination. A house. I want my own house. What night bird did not want her own house, to be her own woman one day? Although some of the simpler ones just wanted to be married and be taken away from ‘all this’. And what was all this? Mary Ann snorted! More in one day than shop girls got in a week (and those little duckies ended up having to give it away to the boss man or the shop steward to get the goddamned check that they had run their respectable feet off for all week!) And then there were the girls who just wanted oblivion—a pipe or a bottle. But most girls were ambitious, Mary Ann thought. Ah, but few had the view or means to achieve if they did have vision. So, visions, dreams, and desires were given short shrift. But that night with the old man Mary Ann Cassidy’s vision was if not born, resurrected. Her first plan, not enough had transpired for it to be so; but the old fellow wouldn’t have known that, was to track him down and ensnare him a few months hence as the father of her child. But no that would be so clumsy, she thought. But better than she could have planned would be revealed over breakfast. The fool wanted to marry her now . He believed her! When would that happen again? The man who thought the tearful girl’s pain and effluvium following childbirth were the blood of a virgin whose maidenhead had been pierced by his propulsive penetrations was a new beginning for Mary Ann Cassidy. She realized that she had now begun a new chapter of her life and that it would begin with a rewriting of the first chapter. This was no problem as she was creative. He told her he had a business trip and he wanted her to accompany him to the continent. Later she would ask someone where that was. At the time she just nodded. He gave her money, more money than she had ever seen, to purchase a wardrobe. He mentioned a couple of shops she had only stood outside of before. She took a phaeton straight away to the convent and gave half the money to her cousin. Her cousin burst into tears and clutched her neck as she kissed her. They were both rebuked. Her cousin put her green agate cross around her neck. The Mother Superior rebuked again but looked away because the bit of her that was sentimental was touched despite her hard position at the top by this young woman with enough iron in her spine to claw her way up. The convent was not an orphanage per se. The sisters allowed girls of many different circumstances to leave children for three months, after which the children were then sent off to orphanages. The girls are told at the time they leave their children that the nuns kept no records and that they would send the children off and into good hands, but that they did not keep track of whether those good hands were from Baton Rouge, Detroit, or Saskatchewan. The nuns would wait ninety days. The girls promised. Perhaps they had intended to, but few came back. Looking at Mary Ann Cassidy’s fine head of golden curls and small eyes like frozen blue water the nuns did not think looking at her the first time she would be back. When she came back eighty-five days later she had learned a language. In the time they had been gone the old man, Mr. Mackenzie, had only fallen deeper in love with the blonde and would not be disabused by comments muttered in low voices, by old acquaintances he would not call friends, who offered warnings about her, he coolly withdrew himself and his paying-for-the-next-round-of-drinks largess. He watched her win at the gambling table one night. It was the beginner’s luck big win that the house orchestrates to draw the new gambler in and begin the cycle of win-lose win-lose that ends with them losing if not everything close to everything. He watched Mary Ann Cassidy swoop upon her chips like a hawk grabbing a chicken’s neck and walk away from the table. Mr. Mackenzie was impressed with this stolid good sense and decided to reward it. Observing her listen over the course of three months to the language spoken around the resort, he heard her pieced-together patois of street French transform into the language that was spoken in the casino and at the track—French. “Tell me about yourself,” he said watching her watch everything as if she was one of those newfangled movie camera machines recording everything. Busy watching the waiter as he set a platter of raw oysters in the shell on the table, she didn’t answer. She watched how Mr. Mackenzie used a little fork, not his fingers and tongue as she was used to doing at the tavern. She had nothing to tell him she thought as she shook out a napkin and observed how he handled his cutlery. “Me?” she said finally, “there is not much to tell. I don’t like talking about myself. It's unladylike.” Despite her intention not to she had forgotten some of what she told him on the street after getting in his carriage. The old guy had been drunk, but not that drunk. Mr. Mackenzie nodded at the waiter to fill Mary Ann Cassidy’s glass. She demurred. An old pimp had told her, Never drink as much or more than your mark ‘less you end up a mark yourself! “Well, my father was a French Creole and my mother the same. My father sent us all to school where we learned proper French, it’s coming back to me hearing it here. But we was kids and clung to our patois at home and spoke English in the street. My mother died and my father took another wife and she straight away wanted me to take care of her kids, she brought two to the union. My father was a night watchman and was killed in a robbery and my stepmother married again. And there I was, a stepchild to one parent and a step-stepchild to the other parent. It wasn’t long before I was having to fight him off. So, that’s where we run into one another. I couldn’t take no more.” The waiter had reappeared, “And the lady what would you like/ Et la dame qu’est-ce que vous aimeriez? ” “ Je voudrais un café noir, s’il vous plait /I would like a black coffee please,” she replied. “You learn fast,” he said. “Yes, I put myself in  it I guess you could say,” Mary Ann Cassidy said. “Well, I guess that’s all there is to say about me. My mother always said a lady’s got to have some mystery, you know.” She attempted a playfulness she did not feel. “And what about you Mr. Mackenzie?” She listened and heard nothing new. He was a rich man and had not been happy at home. Oh, why did they marry in the first place! The café noir kept her awake. His children didn’t appreciate him, all they wanted was his money. Well, give it to them, she thought! His wife had died after a long illness and he was free to marry again and was struck by her beauty and, despite everything, her character. Character? And what was he doing to it, she sneered, bringing her to these glistening gold gambling casinos and ravishing her nightly. The word that came to Mary Ann’s mind was, sum . He needed to settle a ‘sum’ on her head, she thought as he prattled on about what he owned and how big a man he was. Yes, he must take her to the bank and settle a sum on her head. She would never marry him or anybody else. “May I take this, Madam?” the waiter asked. “Yes,” Mr. Mackenzie answered, “we are satisfied.” 8. On the voyage home he watched her and fell, old man that he was, deeper in love with his creation of a pure girl set upon and wronged by a wicked stepfather. He knew he was sick and had planned for a long time to spite his children. So, they, after she spent a night at the convent where she obtained a birth certificate for herself as well as her daughter, both stamped with Satin Fontaine and signed by the Monsignor. She waited around for an hour for her daughter to be baptized, retrieved a baptismal certificate for her baby, and as long as they were at it she asked, could she have one for herself. She then headed for the bank. If her papers did not seem unusual and like an abundance of fresh ink it was perhaps because they were issued and common in an age of invention. She retrieved her child and installed it with a nursemaid in a hotel and went to the Bank of Mississippi where she met Mr. Mackenzie and announced her presence and her name—Satin Fontaine and her readiness to begin a new life that Mr. Mackenzie could be honored to be a part of it. The bank manager raised his eyebrows but they dropped and he nodded when Mr. Mackenzie took out his checkbook and wallet. Satin agreed to half the sum being in annuities that would begin paying monthly sums immediately, and the rest in cash. She was quite capable of managing her money she assured the bank officer. Mr. Mackenzie agreed. She repaired to the hotel and gave instructions to the maid. She was ready to move on. Mr. Mackenzie returned to New York divested of fully one-third of his fortune. He waited for Mary Ann Cassidy to join him in New York. It was a scene from theater, the kind-hearted gentleman and the blond vision of loveliness in distress. They would play their parts. He had played this role in his past, though it had never cost him as much before. It was a new role for Satin Fontaine nee Mary Ann Cassidy. She flubbed her lines in ways that would have cost a lesser actress her part but being clever she was not recast. She had seen a house, a large house, a house on President Street, in Le Quartier Canard Blanc . She wanted to buy it. Now that she could afford them, she had dreams. She planned. She knew how to work hard. Two weeks after he had gone back North, she took a deep breath and wrote to Mr. Mackenzie and told him, she had changed her plans and decided not to come to New York and marry him. He could reach her at the convent where she was now a novice and to which she had given all her worldly goods upon taking her vows. Mr. Mackenzie was not a fool, but he felt his days were numbered (they actually turned out to be more in number than he had thought), and old though he may have been he was at the top of his game, he set about his business, his fortunes doubled, and he did not smart at the piece of it lost but what did chagrin him was the loss of his cherished role in this bit of theater. Flossie was seven years old when Mr. Mackenzie returned to Blue Gulf Town, Mississippi. His business had brought him to the Mississippi Sound again and for the last time. He knew where to find Mary Ann Cassidy now Madam Satin. When he entered her house he was escorted to the parlor as was par for the course for gentlemen callers of his caliber. He gazed at the six-foot-tall slender black servant who had escorted him to the parlor. She wore gold hoop earrings, a black bustier, see-thru lace brocade black harem pants, a shiny belt made of foreign coins around her waist, and very smart kid-skin boots. He had never seen a get-up quite like that anywhere else. She looked like the sleek gold-collared black panthers he had seen in cheap oil paintings of exotic Eastern harems on whorehouse walls, except she didn’t look cheap or even attainable. “I would like to see Madam Satin,” he said. “I’m sorry,” she answered, “She is busy. I will be happy to attend to you. Tell me what you wish.” “She will see me. Tell her Mr. Mackenzie is here. She should make haste I have a train to catch,” he said. When she heard who awaited her in the parlor, Madam Satin’s first impulse was to throw a veil over her head and run out the backdoor of her own house. But she thought again and sent Maria back to the parlor via the back staircase, and Maria pulled back the deep-purple velvet curtain of the little schoolroom by day and counting house by night, and invited Mr. Mackenzie in. After a financial transaction had been made Maria led him to Madam Satin’s boudoir. What made her know he had come to rescue her again? She took down her chignon and let her luxuriant golden curls fall unrestrained on her shoulders and donned a white silk camisole over a simple white corset that he would unlace with those fingers that trembled to reveal her still high pink-tipped breasts white as driven snow. She eschewed her imported French perfume and dabbed a vanilla-scented mixture Maria had conjured for protection on her wrists. She took off her diamond earrings. Underneath the scent of confectioner’s vanilla was the smell he had never forgotten—the musky stink between her legs mingled with the pong of sweat from under her arms, and her breath that had somehow always smelled like ripe strawberries. It had not changed. He unlaced her stays with firm sober fingers that began to tremble as her form was revealed. He almost wept as he sucked her breasts. She drew him to her and educated whore that she was, she did what she needed to do to help an old man get an erection. And when he heaved inside of her there was no ‘almost’, he did weep. And Madam Satin could see he was not worthy of her shame. She had not wronged him! What were a few lies or a bit of dissembling if a man came back to you, paid for his pleasure, sucked, and swallowed what was between your legs, and wept on your breast? She had not deceived him. No, Madam Satin had not deceived him. And when Mr. Mackenzie left Blue Gulf and caught the train to New Orleans to finish up his business before he returned to New York he left her with gifts, among which was the diamond wedding ring he had bought seven years ago for her. That was twelve years ago. Mr. Mackenzie has since died. And Madam Satin has continued to rise. ### Poem Found in Scientific American    On November 16. 2022 an article In Scientific American , a reputable magazine as magazines go, calls the question that I now put to you my friends: “Who is dying from COVID now, and why” Is something a poem if you have to tell someone it’s a poem? Wouldn’t they know by the end rhyme or the number of beats in the line— ta DAH  ta DAH  ta DAH  ta DAH ta DAH five times across the page It doesn’t sound like: She is gone! The shock of that—one million times She is gone She is gone She is gone— not like a friendship gone bad like it had or money borrowed and not paid back but like gone, like the ship disappearing over the horizon. She is gone. She wrote me some time ago:   Sorry for sending this card so late I have not been in the Holiday spirit at all. I got fired from my job on November, 15 after 16 plus years on the same job So, basically I have to start over again from scratch In this day and age and [at] my age is not easy. They just fired another person last week after 30 years on the job. Every since they merged with this other company they have been getting rid of people in one way or the other FUCK Trump I have something to say about that also   The article asks who? Who? Her, that’s who! While the total number of COVID deaths has fallen, the burden is shift-shifting-shifts even more toward people older than 64… COVID deaths among people age 65 and older more than doubled between April and July this year rising by 125%...Racism and discrimination play an outsize role. Another friend denise h. bell was a poet. She described herself as “a mature published poet”. Her poems, as I interpreted them, shone a light on marginalization, ageism, poverty She had been published in Rattle of which she was duly proud. Had done time at the Board of Ed. Had been accepted to Cave Canem workshop at over the age of 64 that was, we considered, quite an honor. A stunning poem titled remember my name about an older man who has retired and sees himself in the diminished light of one whom society feels has outlived his usefulness. The poem ends with lines hoping his wife puts “a picture on my obituary” so people remember who he was. denise h. bell denise h. bell denise h. bell denise h. bell denise h. bell denise h. bell denise h. bell denise h. bell denise h. bell denise h. bell denise h. bell denise h. bell Gone! Overall, the article says, U.S. life expectancy has dropped significantly significant signify sign— sign of late-stage capitalism—my words Not the article, who questions the hangman until he comes for them— Who thinks he is coming for them What is my crime you cry out   The article says, “ That is unprecedented, ” She’s talking about the drop in life expectancy. And we had so few expectations— To publish a poem, to be remembered on a lover’s lips, fantasy of a new lover’s kiss—Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s old man finds love with a 14-year-old. It happens to old men in novels—mostly old white men w/14-year-olds of either sex. Though there was "Harold and Maude," but look what happened to her!   At the peak of the recent surge in August 2022, 91.9% of all deaths around the country were among people 65 and older—squeezed out workers, ticket punchers, bouncers, beer hall, beach ball Gramps, Ma’Dear, Auntie, Grammie Spinster sitting at the wheel spinning thread The scissors, the hand that snips the thread dragged off her stool and slapped on a stainless steel gurney intubated in the hospital hallway— to be not strong enough to fight for resources all that tax money to Uncle Sam the sanity lost in Vietnam what you did to your kids when you got back from Korea what you saw in WWII when they emptied the camps the leg you left behind in Iraq the student that attacked you at Public School 321— you didn’t deserve that, but you got it. Now you’re on this gurney waiting for a bed you are not welcome in because of Medi- care’s low reimbursement rates. You look at a little plastic machine attached to your finger saying 70, 60, 50— You don’t feel so much, you thought dying would feel different. And then suddenly it does! Grabbing you by the throat you think about your apartment all your things—things you traded your time and life for—watches—the one red Gucci bag— you were scared to carry on the subway. You call out the tube goes in your throat you think Jesus. The article says younger people are still dying at higher rates, I’m reading but I can hear the man’s voice rise in pitch, “Under normal conditions in the U.S. younger people rarely die.” “Black people are dying at higher rates.” He doesn’t know to say it’s been that way since slavery. But he does say, “That’s not even acknowledging American Indians, Alaska Natives and Pacific Islanders…” Whose land Whose land we stand upon— Who were decimated with guns & type- writers banging out cowboy novels: home home on a plane. It’s November 22, 2022, two days before Thanksgiving I’m reading all this. I’ve seen the affable old white guy say on TV, “The pandemic is over.” He grins, his granddaughter fairytales on the White House lawn—so pearl pristine sun- shine and green grass, the top of the chain—   The article says: “We’re still in the middle of this crisis. The most vulnerable will not just be left behind but will be sentenced to death.”   ta DAH ta DAH ta DAH stopped on a dime Nobody wants to hear that end rhyme ta DAH ta DAH ta DAH stopped for a dime.   THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Jae Nichelle and Sapphire on January 2, 2024. From Push  to The Kid to these excerpts from The Harlem Trilogy , your body of work has shown a remarkable evolution in style and narrative. How do you see your writing style and storytelling approach evolving over the years? Are there specific influences, experiences, or literary movements that have shaped your journey as an author?   As the stories I wanted to tell over the years differed and changed, my style also evolved and changed. What I needed was different for The Kid  than what I needed for Push.  Push is written in an intimate first person in the voice of a girl with limited education. She’s sixteen when the novel starts and eighteen when it ends. There’s an earnestness and purity to this character. That was deliberate, AIDS was highly stigmatized at the time (still is to some degree). In personal ads, folks would say things like, “I’m clean,” when they were discussing their HIV-negative status. She’s a highly “reliable narrator”. Abdul in The Kid  is not. He’s a tormented soul who at times lies to himself. His ability to love himself and the world is called into question. Unlike his mother, he’s highly literate and worldly. Both novels deal with the effects of intergenerational violence, racism, homophobia, art, literacy, and class. Both novels are told in the first person, so we see the world through the character’s eyes. But they’re very different. The question for me as a writer is, what will serve the story, what conceit, technique, device, etc. will bring this story into being? I think that is where “style” should emanate from, what will serve the text. With The Harlem Trilogy,  I am telling an intergenerational story that begins in 1910 and takes the reader up to a few years past the Obama presidency. I had to use different storytelling techniques, but the question remained the same, what will serve the text? When I think of primary influences on me as a young writer I think of Ntozake Shangé. I was studying dance with Raymond Sawyer and Ed Mock in San Francisco. One of the dancers in Raymond’s company was Ntozake Shangé. She was beginning to create the work that would make her famous, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuff . I would watch her artistic collaborations with choreographers like Raymond Sawyer, Paula Moss, Halifu Osumare and poets like Jessica Hagedorn, and various jazz musicians. I was mesmerized. This had a profound effect on my developing artistic sensibilities. I was in California, they went to New York. So, it was obvious New York was the place to be. In New York, I discovered people like Pedro Pietri, Miguel Algarin, Dael Orlandersmith, Bob Holman, the Pussy Poets, Carl Hancock Rux, Janice Erlbaum, Patricia Smith, June Jordan, Sandra Maria Esteves, Sarah Jones, Paul Beatty—the whole movement that was the Nuyorican Poets Café. In 1994 my work was included in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café . Pedro Pietri, June Jordan, and Ai remain foundational poets for me. Speaking of spoken word, in 2010 I recorded June Jordan’s novel, His Own Where , for Audible audiobook. It was such a thrill to do that for a work and a person I admired.   In “Poem Found in Scientific American,” I had to pause and take in the question “Is something a poem if you have to tell someone it’s a poem?” The piece itself is such an intricate collaboration of news, voices, and eulogy. What role has your poetry played for you in difficult times and political moments?   With a piece like “Poem Found in Scientific American” the methodologies of visual artists like Betye Saar who uses assemblage, Romare Bearden the master collagist, and Rosie Lee Thomkins the quilt maker guide me. And as the title of the poem reflects found poetry is important to the working of this poem. Found Poetry can be defined as: “A borrowed text, a piece of writing that takes an existing text and presents it as a poem. Something that was never intended to be a poem—a newspaper article, a street sign, a letter, a scrap of conversation—is refashioned as a poem, often through lineation…”. That’s from A Poet’s Glossary  by Edward Hirsch. The other word that comes to mind is collage, which etymologically stems from French, gluing, from coller to glue…” Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged . The first time I remember using this type of collage form, i.e., mixing documents and poetry was when my brother had been murdered. I had asked his ex-girlfriend to send me the documents she had concerning his death, the death certificate, etc. Time passed; I forgot about the request. Some months later I got an 8 by 11 manilla envelope in the mail. I opened it not knowing what it was or who it was from. The envelope contained my brother’s birth certificate, his death certificate, and his autopsy report. You know, information, data, the reductive facts. The facts often tell their own story, for example, as I write this, 8,000 children have been killed in Gaza by Israeli bombs and the IDF fighting forces. Those are the facts. Now juxtapose those facts with a clip of a denying obfuscating Israeli government official saying, “We don’t know who  killed those children”, and then maybe show a picture of a Palestinian mother preparing her child for a funeral by enshrouding them in these pristine white sheets we see on the news. By ‘collaging’ all this we tell another story. We do this now ,   so our story exists, at least for us, as a contradiction to the official narrative. Which in the case of Israel and the United States is that Israel is trying to irradicate Hamas. We begin to see through snips of data, a leaked government memo that calls the current moment an “OPPORTUNITY” to move the Palestinians out of Gaza, we juxtapose that with a real estate company offering Israeli Jews seaside property in Gaza. By employing the artistic methodology of the African American quiltmaker, we get a different story. Taking broken and shattered pieces of existence and pasting or stitching them together into a coherent text through the act of collage or assemblage allows my brain to make an explanatory and perhaps healing work of art. Romare Bearden worked in a lot of mediums but it was his work as a collagist that really, like that of the African American women quilt makers, had a profound effect on me. So “collage” or “assemblage” is an opportunity to take our shattered selves and make them whole. The following is an excerpt from the poem AUTOPSY REPORT 86-13504 published in 1994. I used official documents, poetry, and personal correspondence: 3.    Autopsy Report 86–13504 From the anatomic findings and pertinent history I ascribe death to craniocerebral injuries Los Angeles, Ca. October 14, 1986, @ 1230 hours subcutaneous subgaleal subdural cerebral cerebellar extensive skull fractures the body is that of a well-developed black male 74 inches in length tall weighing 179 pounds appearing the stated 38 years of age 37! he was 37! the hair is long measuring 6 inches in length in an afro style. there is also a moustache & slight beard growththe sclerae are white & the irises are brown. nose shows blood the left ear contains blood & fly eggs. the mouth shows fly eggs on the hard palate the teeth appear to be intact thorax symmetrical configuration normal abdomen flat you extremities show no were clubbing, edema or deformity beautiful   4 . …extensive Head and Nervous System damage soul contorted locked up busted penitentiary you said it was fuck or be fucked. said they let you out with a string attached to your ass to pull you back if you breathe wrong.   5.     Dear Sapphire, I sent a letter up to the other address explaining the times and change of life. Since the happenings of the last letter things look better being that I remember where I was a year ago (in jail). Also walking down Sunset to get my last check from the big ‘Z’ I happen to look behind me and see this sister and white boy walking together. She looked as if she didn’t want to be bothered, so I gave her the high sign and she ducked into a phone booth and I into a store. She came out and we started walking down the street arm and arm exchanging words no names yet. She told me she had a friend around the corner with some jam, so we walked by and got Hi. Found out later she is S— S— of Earth, Wind and Fire. Spent last night at her apartment on Sunset. Saph, for the record I have never been so Hi! In my life and awake to remember it: wine, coke, hash and opium. Yes, once again I am in love chasing the happiness (so called) that we all chase. Other than that money is getting funny. Power to Us Lord Lofton   There are themes of trauma, violence, and uncovering complex identities in your work. How do you take care of yourself while writing? Community! For years I attended a meeting of women who had survived sexual abuse. I stopped going for various reasons. But during the pandemic, I joined a Zoom support group. That was incredibly important for me. I also regularly see a therapist. That has worked for me. When I lived in Manhattan there was a church, St Francis Assisi on 31st St, that had student therapists you could see for thirty to thirty-five dollars a session. We need more avenues to access therapy even if you don’t have money or private insurance. Of course, the real solution is MEDICARE FOR ALL, destigmatizing mental health issues, and free mental health services for all. We have to question how we can afford to finance war in Ukraine and Israel while we do without healthcare. How do you rest and recharge?   I try to pay attention to diet and exercise, it’s about progress, not perfection. You never get all this stuff right. Ultimately it comes down to I want to be here for the work and I have to be alive to do it!   As a spoken word artist, what is your current relationship with the performance of your work? Because of the pandemic and my personal health vulnerabilities, I have chosen to limit in-person presentations. So ZOOM is a big word for me right now. When I think of the performance of my work now, I see productions or movies. I would love to see Push , the musical. I would love to see a one-person choreopoem stage or film adaptation of The Kid .   Over time, your work has had a profound impact on readers from around the world, sparking important conversations and challenging societal norms. I love the anecdote you shared in The Poet Speaks Podcast  about a young woman who stopped you on the street to tell you Push  was her favorite book!  Can you share any other memorable experiences or encounters with readers who have been deeply affected by your writing? How do you feel in those moments? One moment that stands out for me is The Kid  and Push  both being translated into French, Chinese, Portuguese, and Italian, so readers could really get a sense of the world I was writing about in a way they could not if only Push  had been translated. Another moment that stands out was in November of 2022 I was invited to the Syracuse YMCA Downtown Writers Center as part of the Syracuse Symposium series: It Takes a Village: Recovering Our Children Through Literature & Literacy. I was honored to be invited. I had presented at this venue, Syracuse YMCA Downtown Writers Center, twelve or thirteen years ago. So, when the presenter was introducing me, he said, “She performed here 12 years ago”, then he said, “Some of those same people who were here twelve years ago are here tonight.” That just went all through me, it gave me a tremendous feeling of community and continuity. The work is so much bigger than bestseller lists and prizes. We’re, at least I am, trying to get the oppressor’s foot off our individual and collective neck as we simultaneously try to make something beautiful out of our existence. Do you have any hidden talents or special interests that people would be surprised to learn? Yes, I’m a visual arts person and have tried my hand at small assemblages and doll-making. What, if anything, is giving you hope these days? The continued blossoming of Black women’s writing and other forms of art. I’m inspired by the new BRILLIANT voices in Black women’s scholarship. I’m inspired by the anything is possible-ness of Serena Williams and Simone Biles! I’m inspired by the resistance that has sprung up all over the world, in the street and online, to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. There has been such a bold courageous response to the illegal mass punishment inflicted on the women and children of Gaza. It has given me great hope. I’m inspired by South African International Relations and Cooperation Minister Dr. Naledi Pandor who announced South Africa would be bringing charges of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.   How can people support you right now? The best way to support me is to read the work. Make sure it’s not taken off the shelves in your local libraries. Support the brilliant scholarship, Sapphire’s Literary Breakthrough: Erotic Literacies, Feminist Pedagogies, and Environmental Justice Perspectives  by Elizabeth McNeil, Neal A. Lester, DoVeanna Fulton, and Lynette D. Myles about my work. And most of all keep writing and publishing your own brilliant and needed work!   Name other Black Women writers people should know. Novelist: Bessie Head, author of When Rain Clouds Gather , Maru , and A Question of Power.  (Born in South Africa to a white mother in a mental hospital at a time when interracial relationships were illegal; Bessie Head would go on to become one of Africa’s most influential writers.) Poet: Ai, author of the National Book Award winner Vice  and The Collected Poems of Ai  edited by Yusef Komunyakaa (Ai is known for her mastery of the dramatic monologue and exploration of outré subject matter.) Memoirist: Harriet Jacobs, author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself . (Notice the words “ Written by Herself ”. Until Harriet Jacobs wrote her memoir female African American slave narratives were written (and the content often censored) by white women amanuenses. Harriet Jacobs’ memoir was a game-changer.) Scholar: Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South  which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History, the Dan David Prize, and the Merle Curti Social History Award. (A tour de force They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South  is also a game-changer and required reading for anyone interested in Black women’s lives, studies, and stories.)   ### 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.

Natasha Ria El-Scari is a poet, performer, writer, Cave Canem alum, Ragdale Residency recipient and facilitator/educator for over two decades. Her poetry, academic papers, and personal essays have been published in anthologies, literary and online journals.  Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, Natasha has a BA from Jackson State University and an MA from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. In 2015, Natasha released her first book, Screaming Times  (Spartan Press, 2015). Her second book, The Only Other  (Main Street Rag, 2016) dives into the taboo voice of the other woman. In 2019 Natasha released her first self-published and non-fiction book in collaboration with her son entitled, Mama Sutra: Love and Lovemaking Advice to My Son.  In 2020, Natasha self-released, I Say, T(He)y Say a chapbook about a special decade in her maternal grandmother’s life. In the same month she released Growing Up Sina , her first novel created after challenging herself creatively to grow outside of her first love, poetry. Her forthcoming work, Steelife , explores her feminist upbringing and the evolution of her womanhood. She recently released Te Deum: Lessons a performative collaboration with a chorale ensemble. Natasha’s CDs, DragonButterFirefly (2006), This is Love… (2010), CuddleComplex (2016),  We Found Us (2023) and DVD Live at the Blue Room  (2015) establish her as a spoken word artist.. This mother of two adult children and a bonus son is also the founder and curator of Black Space Black Art , an organization created to promote the exhibition of African American visual arts and businesses. She is also the founder and curator of the Natasha Ria Art Gallery , a small powerhouse that focuses on exhibiting marginalized visual artists. Natasha and her musician husband Kevin plan to open a day/overnight urban retreat space for creatives in the future. Follow Natasha on Instagram and Twitter . The Viewing   Big Mama's Funeral was pink, her suit pink, her casket pink, flowers, pink and her hands were hidden.   The Funeral Director said that it was best to cover Big Mama’s hands. They didn’t look like they belonged on her body.   I wanted to witness, one last time the pea shelling hands- faster than a machine at removing each eye from its socket into the tin bowl. If I shelled, silently, I got to listen   to woman-talk. As the sun went down the bowl weighed heavier between my knees where the gnats gathered with each pea drop.   The Funeral Director thought fit to add another layer of pink taffeta to cover her hands. He thought we would be as pleased as he, until her great granddaughter and self-proclaimed pink lover whispered, Where are her hands, did you bury them first?   Show her gnarled hands not just her pristine faith. Do not shroud her history like she was ugly. Show her dirty weapons. Display the things that saved us. ### 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 special events. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.