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Erica Frederick is a queer, Haitian American writer from Orlando, Florida currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in fiction from Syracuse University and writes about being big in all the ways there are to be big—in body, in spirit, in Blackness, in Florida suburbia. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Tin House, The Rona Jaffe Foundation, VIDA, Lambda Literary, and the Hurston/Wright Foundation. She is well at work on her first novel, Fight in the Night. Banana Trees / Sunflower Seeds I’d seen her after Baby Bio at the Barnes & Noble Starbucks, you know, that’s where the baddies be, contemplating cake pops. She was brown-skinned and big-haired, everything pierced, everywhere a tattoo, tall and skinny as the devil’s trident and I got that stomach clutch, like: I gotta pee. And she looked at me and I’m a coward, so I studied someone’s strawberry refresher, but she was still locking eyes with me when I looked up so I turned, stumbled into Young Adult. She was in my peripherals, started circling me in Science Fiction so I just let her catch me and she said, “I know how this sounds, but see, I’ve never seen anyone so beautiful, so kinky-curly, so damn thick, Jesus have mercy.”  I said, “Sierra. Saint-Fleur.”  She said, “Betty, Jean Baptiste. And on top of it all, you’re Haitian too?” I nodded. I said, “Kiss me.”  She said, “Fuck me.”  I sat next to her, nervous, on the city bus, got took to her apartment and she did, I did. On a boxspringless mattress next to stacks of used and yellowed books under all her trinkets and twinkle lights. She laid next to me, naked and heavy-breathed and said, “I might could like you, but you’re gonna have to learn to fuck me better.” And me, anxious always, flop sweat, stomach always doing some goddamn thing, I said, “I should’ve said this, but I’ve never fucked anybody.” She put a hand on my shoulder, forehead on mine, breathed her breath into my nostrils and since then, she’s never stopped touching me soft.  Back home after the bus, I culled peas and plinked them into a cast pot while Mummy curled four fingers of one hand into the handle of a milk-jug-made-watering-can and held the other to her muumuu’d midsection. We were in the makings of a meal for us and for the spirits, so they could gift us everything we’d wished for, like for me final exam answers and for her our slumlord dead and buried. Mummy smiled, gap-toothed, into the ceiling, rolled her hips to konpa. I bit my teeth ’cause I couldn’t tell her that I knew then exactly what  gouyad  and grinding was all about. She poured water into the base of her banana tree, planted straight from the seed into one of the blue plastic barrels she usually used to steal my shit to send to Haiti. She picked yesterday’s offering up off the altar cloth that laid at the base, brushed the dirt off the shoulders of an unopened Barbancourt, then got back to bragging about how beautiful she’d been back in the day.  “Hey hey!” she shouted into the beat. “You know, I’m the reason every man is in search of a Jacmelienne, cherie , they’ve been searching for me since 1983.”  I smirked, plinked peas, said, “But your man left you?”  She lifted her arms and hands way up like she was praising the Lord and not le monde . She said, “He left you, cherie , not me. Because you came out bald and blinding light skinned.” I sucked my teeth, popped her with a pea. She opened her eyes finally, leaned in to cup my face, she said, “But now, you’ve been blessed to look just like your Mummy.” Her thumb was wet and wrinkled. “And your man will be in search of you soon.”  Betty and I started doing shit like going on walks and sitting forever on park benches. She’d graze her fingers over my arm hair or my inner thigh and I would go nuts at the chills she made in me. She started talking like, “Can you believe that once we were strangers?” And I’d twist, tilt, say, “I think I’d like to never stop knowing you.” She said, “I like how you’re looking to eat up life, even though you’re nervous.” I said, “I like how big you do it, belligerent, baby you’re a supernova.” “You’re corny.” “Isn’t that how I got you?”  She said, “Sometimes, I feel afraid, like I’m going to lose you. Like I’ll do it wrong, do too much, I’ll fuck it up, I won’t know how to love you right, and you’ll leave me.” “Sometimes, me too.” I said, “What if I can’t be enough for you, don’t have enough to give? What if my loving is too tiny, too tepid for you to feel?”  “Kiss me.”  “Fuck me.”  I got better, got good, gave her orgasms, learned to stop loving lightly, because she needed pressure. That’s how come it came to be that Madame Claude and Claude himself seen me and her at the Magic Mall. Because we’re Black and romantic, they seen me buying her bamboo earrings, gold plated, said Betty  on the inside of the hoops. They seen her get me a nameplate necklace for me to never take off, wear always, it said Sierra . And by the time Claude and Madame Claude see me pull Betty in by the mid-rise belt loop, kiss her nape, call her baby—I’d seen them too.  I rush to lip-kiss Betty goodbye and swipe a box of the almost-sweet carrot cake that Mummy craves but doesn’t ever buy herself, pray to the patron saint of city buses to make it home quick because I know those two will call her to snitch on me like it’s their day job, like I’m not grown, like … okay I still live with my mom but I’m a degree-seeking  daughter. But when I key open the pastel pink door, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, papers fanned out on top of it: she’s making up numbers for her taxes, home phone pressed to her ear. I slide the cake onto the table and duck into the living room to tap into the other line like it’s the early aughts. I hear Claude and Madame Claude suck their teeth like it’s a ritual required before talking shit, start with, Pitit: We seen your daughter with some slut, she was nose pierced and ankleted, she’s a lesbian .  Mummy, who used to take care and take her time to give me a zig zag part down the middle, braided my hair and put the boul gogo  at the base, my mom, who Haitian-remedied me through juvenile fucking arthritis, who fed me fried eggs and coffee sweet but strong as liquor—she listens to her sister and her sister’s cheating-ass, dusty-ass man say that dick won’t ever be enough for girls like me. I hear Mummy not say shit, not defend me when they say it’d be best to let in a gang to, one after the other, fuck me, force me. That’s the only way I’d ever be satisfied. She only sighs when they say that maybe men wouldn’t be enough. A pack of horses ought to do it for the madivine .  After they click off, I make sure she sees my silhouette in the kitchen doorway.  I say, “So?” She sucks her teeth, she never looks up. “I don’t know what would cause someone to say something so sick.”  “They’re sick,” I say, a bubble in my throat, “but it’s true.”  Her barely-there eyebrows meet in the middle. Jeez, you can almost see her beating heart come up through her bird chest and into the blue veins of her neck. But she is great at knowing nothing so disappointing could ever happen to her. She says, “Remove your lips from that lie.”  “It is true,” I say, “I’ve been gay.” And I have been, sweet since the babysitter, Beatrice. She’d ring the doorbell and I’d act a damn fool, be writhing when I saw her, the origin of the gotta pee feeling. She was busty and nice to me. She wore her hair relaxed and her face dimpled and once I asked: How do I know this is real life? She squinted, looked at me nearly to neckbreak. She said: Don’t ever stop asking questions like that.  Mummy says, “Are you trying to ruin my life?”  “What?” She stares only at the banana tree. She’s forever said I’d better show it some respect—it’d been growing since before I was, more hers than mine. She says, “We can get rid of this. I swear it to you, cherie , this spirit can leave your body.”  She looks at me, everywhere, the nose ring, the nameplate, the anklet. She puts her palms to her cheeks, like she sees now: all the gay signs were there. I shrug, I say, bleary-eyed, “I don’t want this spirit to leave me.”  She says, “Then I won’t have any part in it. In this, in you.” I creakily nod. I turn, a whirlwind into my room. I get on the ground, feel old rice grains and kinky hairballs in my kneecaps, head fog, ears plugged, a siren. I shove clothes, unwashed, into my pink and dirty old Barbie duffel bag. I pass my mom, both of us stone-faced, on my way to the bathroom. I steal the toilet paper because I bought it, steal her dusting powder forged in Haiti because I used to flour myself in it because I used to want to smell her everywhere. I rush back into the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets, orbiting the table. I catch side glimpses of her, slumped, face seems set to drip off her skull. I plop the duffel onto the table and take back the cake, crush the flimsy plastic container into the cartoon carrot drawn in icing, shove it on top of my tennis shoes and zip it away. I stand, waiting to catch her eyes just once, once more. I muss up all her documents, send them fluttering onto the carpet. She only takes a breath, pushes herself from the table, and turns to thumb a sun-spotted leaf of her banana tree. By the time I get to Betty’s I realize I’m breathing again, heavy and hot and a heartbeat. In the doorway, Betty puts one lanky arm over my shoulder, she’s warm. She’s got a blunt between her ringed fingers and holds it to my lips. I shut my eyes. I breathe in. She kisses me before I can blow out the smoke.  I wake up to her big spoon and her arm feels heavy on my waist. I lift it and drop it off me. She wriggles and wakes, lets out her little morning moan, rubs a big toe over my ankles. I shift to lie on my back. She puts her arm around me, again.  “How do you feel?” she asks. I look at her a little, her eyes big and her eyebrows bigger. I look up at the ceiling lamp: a teardrop on a chain, gray with dust.  I close one eye, worm an arm out from under hers to pinch the picture of the lamp out from my sight. “Just like that,” I say.  Betty’s clutching fistfuls of comforter and I’m hands full of thighs, face to face with her labia, where I’ve grown to love to be. “Is everything okay?” she whispers, craning her neck down to catch a peek of the crown of my head.  I muffle, “Mm-hm.” But when I bring my head back down it’s like pushing together the south poles of magnets. I try to inch forward but still spring back. I stare into her clit, I spiral, I … I can’t lick it, I can’t, I can’t, can’t like it. “Hey.” She crawls her fingernails in between my box braids, into my scalp. “Come up here.”  I climb up over her spindly limbs to lay beside her, look into her adorned face.  “Let’s buy a house and have a bunch of kids, name them all Betty and Sierra Jr.,” she says.  “Plant sunflower seeds in the backyard and then get married in it,” I say. “Where should we honeymoon?” “Haiti, the motherland, have a threesome with La Sirenn.”  “Do you think it’ll be the same,” I croak, “you know, without a mother, and everything?” She grabs my hands to interlace in hers, kisses each of my fingers, “You were born of Ayiti, cherie , nothing can steal you from her.” I walk, big headphones on, to pick Betty up from her work study job at the financial aid office, sure to avoid the super senior, this Sisqó dupe, lurking by the arches of the fountain, squawking at women who pass him by. Sure as sin, he’s there, so I turn up the konpa, watch him rub his hands together, holler at me mute-mouthed. I’m a yard away from him when, and when, when when my shoulder pivots, like it’s the core of the earth marionetting me. And just like that, I’m walking back the way I came, the music in my ears dwindles down to dead.  He says, “See, baby, you too pretty not to be noticing me.” I try again to push, fight back against this pull of gravity, but I pivot once again until I’m faced with him. North and south poles, south and north, north and south. His eyes are yellow and mine are hot.  I hear, “Sierra!,” in the distance, turn to see Betty trotting toward me. She starts with a smile, big teeth, big heart, but drops it when she catches sight of me, takes a single sideways look at the Sisqó stunt double.  “You good?” She grabs my hips, I’m hers, she says, “This is my girl.”  He throws his hands up. “My fault,” he says, “you know, I actually got respect for the LGBTs.” He steps back. A bubble bursts, a breath of air.  I open my eyes to Betty frowning at them. “It’s just not coming out right,” she says, furrowed brows and pursed lips. I raise the mirrored pallet to my eyelids, the rainbows I’d requested for the pride parade came out all overcast, smudged. I give up and get the makeup remover while Betty lights a bowl. I’d stopped the stuff, hoping I could cure this—the everything.  I got my license and myself deeper into student loan debt, so I drive us in my brand-new-used Honda Civic down the freeway, to the beach, Betty snoozing against the window, sunshades down. I can almost smell the SPF and the six-foot dolls in drag—no, no. And no, no, no, and no, no. I cut the steering wheel, the steering wheel cuts me, a U-turn into traffic. Betty jerks awake to tire screeches, all of the freeway honking, horns, horns, horns, cursing me, cars cutting and running from mine like a zipper.  Betty grips the glove compartment. “Sierra, what the fuck? What the fuck ?” But she turns to me, my wide eyes and white knuckles. She takes her two fingers, her short acrylics, her rose tattoos, to my wrists. “Please, please, turn around.” “I can’t,” I cry out, “I’m not, I can’t, I’m not in control.”  “Okay,” she says, “okay.” She rubs my shoulder, she cuts the wheel this time, puts us at least over the median and back into the flow of traffic.  “I don’t know where I’m going,” I say in shuddered breaths, phlegm and tears. “It’s all wrong. I think, I think, I’ve been repelled .”  “By what?” she whispers, maybe neither of us wanting to say it too loud.  “Being gay,” I whisper back. As soon as I put words to it, I know where we’re headed.  I show up at the pastel pink door, ask Betty to wait in the car because this is my business to unburden. I tap at the door with the baseball bat I keep in the trunk. And there is Mummy, bright and thin-skinned. I burst in, I ask, “Where is it?” “Thank God, you’ve come back to me.”  I wield the bat like a wand. Point it at my mom, coax her away from me as I step further into the home that once was so much home . “Show it to me! Show me the fucking token you used to make it so that you wouldn’t have a daughter like me anymore.” Mummy clutches her muumuu, says, “Sierra, this isn’t you speaking right now.” “You’re right, this isn’t me. It’s whatever you put on me.” I swing at the pre-owned China cabinet. The glass and the fake-ass China shatter. “How could you?” I ask. She ogles me, always stoic. I gesture the bat to the banana tree. “You can wish what you want me to do. You can pray to whichever of your whack-ass spirits to control my body. Try to pull me from pussy, push me to all the men you want. But you can’t change me.” I let her come close to me. Her pigeon arms. She unsticks the braids from my glistening forehead. “It’s okay, cherie.  That is enough. This will work, will let me love you.” I sniffle.  I heel-turn to the banana tree, the peeling trunk, the fenestrated fronds, and start to smash it to bits.  “No!” she screams, “no.” But the plates are too broken, liquor too spilt, everything between us is too wide, the insides of the tree too white. Then I see it peeking up from the soil. A 3D crystal photo I had etched for her for Mother’s Day: me on one side, morphed into her on the other. It’s bound in cotton yarn. I drop it on the floor. I raise my bat.  — In the car, right in my old parking lot, I sit on top of Betty. I put my hands up her shirt, she puts her hands on my waist.  “I’m gonna start my own altar,” I say, “summon lesbian spirits and shit.”  She smirks, says, “What are you going to put on it?” I think. I say, “Sunflower seeds.” “Fuck me.” “Kiss me.” ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

A. E. Wynter is a Black, Jamaican-descended writer and editor from New York. She is also a community organizer and currently lives in Saint Paul, MN where she has curated multimedia art exhibits, writing workshops, and readings, among other events. Wynter has received multiple grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and was a fiction fellow in the 2021-2022 Loft Mentor Series. Winner of the 53rd New Millennium Award for Poetry and The Florida Review 2024   Editors' Award in Poetry, her poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in West Trade Review and Water~Stone Review . Wynter was a 2023 resident at the Carolyn Moore Writers Residency. Track One (Kick, Push III) featuring Lupe Fiasco Any body, everybody watchin’ us here—two Black kids full throttling down the blacktop. Yeah , good  pavement a luxury—so we took it—out in Garden City where they whitestep side look . Grinds up a soul—being too dark for the garden—still we coast—roll—cause we ain’t mad at   the  world yet—just searchin’—skatin’ til the cops called—scared lady clutchin’ purse—& what  world wouldn’t be afraid—the audacity of a blackbodyinflight—me & my brother glide like we was  born to never touch the road—they hate the freedom of it—they can’t help wonderin’ did  theirs  too?—look, garden bodies too selfbound to fly—but me & my brother we Kick, Push, we uh -huh-uh-huh in our headphones, we free wheelin’, we a sound cruise—how Saturdays came and  went—we lost half a day outside ourselves—healin’—we skate loose the brick weight of a  they , of a million eyes scowlin’—blue lights ride & we ghost the garden quietly—praise the long four  hours before hunger hits—ma yellin’ if you in,   stay in —we head home blessin’ the way wheels sound on pavement—this heaven’s work—come Sunday, we back again—where we from would n’t need no smooth streets—our bikes leaping potholes—today, a whole hood gettin’ dirty . Take us to collect our scars—reclaim these bodies—we playing chicken on bikes—call us ghetto , them driveby outsiders—but we know what it takes to lift a darkness—the weight of Black kids.   There , down the block, see us BMX collidin’—that’s us shaking loose our wings—taking off— ### 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.

Mon Misir (she/they) is a queer Black British writer and recovering lawyer based in London, UK. They use their writing to explore facets of their experience as a black woman, with a speculative bent. When not writing or editing others’ work in various writers groups, they enjoy reading, theatre (musical and otherwise), and learning how to wield a longsword. They have work published in or forthcoming with the Decolonial Passage and Midnight & Indigo . You can find their links here:  https://bio.site/Nomonbooks  or follow them on Instagram . Excise You return to the storeroom and close the door softly. In this room, it’s just you and her. This first breath in the same space tastes sacred, sliding through your lungs and imploring relaxation, release.  # You had to have her. This woman’s been at the agency since its inception. You felt the ghost of her all week, as people called you her name. You introduced yourself to everyone on meeting, at every mistake you did it again. She's years your senior, though she doesn’t look it. Her face has the plump of youth despite her age. Her professional photograph is from when she first started and the only changes are the look in her eye and the glint of her smile. Over a week went by before meeting her in person. You stayed late on the Friday and found her desk in the open plan office. She looked confused for a moment, then she placed you.  “Nina. Hi.” “Bunmi, nice to meet you.” You linger at her desk and reach out your hand for a shake. “Welcome to Cuttlefish. How are you settling in?” “People have been calling me Bunmi all week.” She rolls her eyes. As your hands touch it’s electric. Her warm palm against yours. You already know how she likes her coffee; the projects she’s working on; the inside jokes she has with her colleagues. Of everyone you’ve had conversations with, it’s this woman you are compared to, connected with, a tether between you both drawing you towards each other and acting as a repellent. You’re pulled in though, of course; this invisible history tastes like nectar.  “Find everything you need?” “You know, I still don’t know where you keep the pens.” You were shown the storeroom on your tour of the office on Monday morning at 10.45. Lucy told you where they keep the pens. It's not Bunmi’s job, but she humours you anyway. “Are there any other black staff?” You ask like it’s a secret. She looks at you with a chin tilt and her eyebrows raised. She takes a quick glance round the office, but everyone has already left for the weekend.  “Not at account level, no.”  You suck in a breath between clenched teeth, then shrug. “Not at any level if their name recall is anything to go by.” “Look, if I can make it as a senior here, as a queer black woman, there's space for you too. It just takes time.”  You are inspired by her words. Delighted. Ravenous. You can’t help but lick your lips. She leads the way towards the storeroom and you shadow her steps. She compliments your style, the ear piercings she’s never done, your signature afro puffs. You're trying to work out how to get her in the room with you but to your delight she steps inside, pointing out where to find everything you may need. So helpful. “Thank you for this. I know you probably have work to do.” You take a step towards her in the already cramped space. “Anything to help you feel settled in.” Her smile is big and gentle, revealing her irregularly shaped canines and slight overbite. It pushes up her cheeks and crinkles at her eyes, she turns her body towards you in the small space. “Anything?” You ask and tilt your head with the question. You lean in close and say, “You probably need to get home.” “I can stay.” She breathes.  You close the gap between you and kiss her. Her lips are the amuse-bouche, titillating your hunger as you press forward to taste her tongue, sucking and savouring every bit of saliva she relinquishes. On her lips you start to feel yourself changing. You press her into the wall as you kiss her neck, murmuring to her how much you want her. Her hands untuck your blouse from your skirt as you squeeze her ass. You pull back so she can lift your blouse over your head. You keep your chin tucked. You grab her hand and place two of her fingers in your mouth. You suck them and look at her, using your teeth to nibble them lightly.  “You like that?” You whisper in her ear. She nods. Your tongue licks her earlobe. You breathe in the scent of her hair oil. She gives assent for you to undo her zipper and you slip down her body. Your nails shorten as you do, the blue polish fading into pink nailbeds. Your hands are expert at removing her trousers, and they know how to touch her just how she likes. Your teeth rake down her thighs. Her leg over your shoulder, your tongue delving into her folds, her hand on your head as she jerks and moans your name. Your name. Nina. “I don't usually do this.” She says as you step back from her to take her in. “Neither do I,” you say with her voice. She looks at you then for the first time since your kiss. She looks at your mouth. Lips smaller, teeth no longer vacuous white. Your thighs are plumper now and you're taller; not quite as tall as her but you've grown. Your triple helix piercings have closed, one of the delicate bands is glinting from the strap of your bra. The others must have fallen to the floor. Your hands have changed too, stronger, more practical. A scar on the right from falling off your bike as a child, your brothers laughed instead of helping; a memory held by you both. Her eyes widen as you step in. You savour the moment she sees herself in your face. She doesn’t scream.  # She waits for you here every day. You unroll the tarp that covers her to delight in her body, prostrate at her feet, run the heel of your hand up and down her shins to warm her up. You bring her palm to your lips and bite down on her flesh. Her hands are so different from yours, boned and strong with short, clipped nails. The decaying scent of her flesh enhancing the grapefruit top notes of her perfume. You drink from the open wounds on her thigh. The taste of her blood is as familiar as your own by now, thick and viscous with inertia. You moan as she slips down your throat. You scrape your teeth up her stomach to take a mouthful of the soft flesh around her neck. You breathe her in as you lick her cheek. She is divine. As she was from the moment her flesh first knitted together, through each stretching, as each scar was carved into her skin. Your teeth excise a section of her cornrows, your mandible separating hair from scalp, washing it down with the tonic of her blood. You feel your hair part and lightly tug your scalp as it twines into the familiar style. After you gorge yourself, you sleep beside her, her breath animating you both. ### 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.

Sandra Jackson-Opoku is the author of an award-winning novel, The River Where Blood is Born  and  Hot Johnny and the Women Who Loved Him,  an Essence Magazine Bestseller in Hardcover Fiction. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and dramatic works are widely published and produced, appearing in Midnight & Indigo, Aunt Chloe, Another Chicago Magazine, New Daughters of Africa, Adi Magazine, Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, About Place Journal,  the Chicago Humanities Festival, Lifeline Theatre, and others. She also coedited the anthology, Revise the Psalm: Work Celebrating the Writing of Gwendolyn Brooks . Her debut mystery novel, Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes will be published in July 2025. Professional recognition includes a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, an American Library Association Black Caucus Award, the Chicago Esteemed Artist Award, a Lifeline Theatre BIPOC Adaptation Showcase, the Globe Soup Story Award, the Plentitudes Journal Fiction Prize, a Circle of Confusion Writers Discovery Fellowship, the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award, the Hearst Foundation James Baldwin Fellowship at MacDowell Arts, a Pushcart Prize nomination, the Casa África Purorrelato Prize, and the Chicago Sun-Times “Finding Chicago's Next Voices” Award. She placed as a quarterfinalist in the Stage 32 Springboard Diversity Screenwriting Competition and Roadmap Writers Short Story Competition. Sandra Jackson-Opoku taught literature and writing at the University of Miami, Columbia College Chicago, and Chicago State University. She presents workshops, readings, and literary events worldwide. Ghost Waters   That old Mississippi is such a tyrant, some say it must be a man—Old Man River, the Father of Waters, Big Muddy, Old Blue. He ain’t asking much. All he wants is to sprawl along a path of his own making, to flex and flow like he’s done for millions of years. What if people went to clogging up your courses and scraping at your bottom? If they built earthen walls to keep you out, then dumped farm and factory waste in you, don’t think you wouldn’t be acting up too. ‡‡‡ I’ll tell you how the river took from us and gave back if you want to hear it. I was the oldest of four children raised right up against the water. Delta dirt was so rich they said you could plant a dime and grow a dollar tree. Both my parents had worked cotton on Crawford’s Acres. After the war, they continued sharecropping right where they had been slaves. Captain C.W. Crawford was getting nigh up in age. His wife, Miss Mary up and died, and all his children had left him. That’s when he offered to sell my folks the old plantation. I had left the family sharecrop at 16 years old and went off to Yazoo City, first to work as a nursery schoolma’am then as a white folks’ nanny. Helping the family back in Bethel Bluffs meant scrimping on every nickel. I sometimes went without doing for myself to do for the folks back home. It took years but we made it, hallelujah, praise the Lord! My folks were finally able to own their piece of land. Now they didn’t have to give up half their harvest every season. My parents, brother, and two younger sisters had left the shotgun cabin and were living high on the hog up in the Crawford’s Acres big house. They didn’t need to sharecrop for anyone ever again. Now they had folks that were sharecropping for them. Then came 1927, Lord have mercy, Jesus. That big, terrible flood came and plowed the length of the Mississippi. We were in Greenville at the time. I have never seen nothing like it and I don’t want to see it again. Old Man River swole up like a snake that swallowed a cow then he went and busted his guts across the land. He exploded over levees and banks, a hungry bear just a-snuffling along and gobbling ground as it went. Brown water boiled up in a muddy stew, grabbing everything in its path--houses, horses, barns, trees, tractors, and cotton fields. And people sometimes too. My family used to think they were safe living high on the bluffs above water until that great gushing beast clawed up the rocky soil beneath them. All of Crawford Acres went sliding into the river, and with it the money, sweat, and dreams we poured into it over the years. No, baby. I wasn’t there. If I’d been able to see it, you might not be around to hear it. I knew about it from the only one who got out alive. Old Blue took the four as a sacrifice but left me my sister, Little Bay. But oh, that shifty, sly, winding, fickle river. Come seven years gone it shrunk back down to a thin blue snake. A long dry spell in ‘35 sent The Father of Waters bolting the banks like a runaway slave. A mudskipper raising up on all fours, it crawled way back from the shore. The settlement beneath the river broke through to the surface. A soggy ghost of a town came rising up—rubbled bluffs and bottomlands, the old ferry landing, the brick jailhouse, the hotel, post office, and church. River water poured like tears from all the doors and windows. Your grandpa, Little Bay, and I took the train up to see it. We thought of leaving the city, reclaiming the land, and trying to farm it. But Big Muddy had other plans. Like a hand that offers a perfect ripe peach then snatches it clean away, Old Man River came back again to take what he had given. ### 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.

Shirley May is the author of She Wrote Her Own Eulogy and a revered figure in the UK’s spoken word scene. Photographer: Nicole May Shirley May is a first-generation Black British poet hailing from the Jamaican diaspora and a proud Mancunian. As a member of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, she crafts evocative verses and leads as the CEO and Artistic Director of  Young Identity . In this role, she mentors the city's youth, inspiring them to find their voices through poetry and performance. Her debut album, Rainfall encapsulates the essence of poetry to music. Shirley’s book, She Wrote Her Own Eulogy , is a profound blend of wisdom, memory, future, and hope. Blazing with emotion and challenging all the senses, this life-affirming collection demands to be read. Shirley’s poetic prowess can also be found in numerous poetry anthologies. She was at the fore forefront  First published in the Guardian newspaper in the UK looking at the link between the slave trade is a part of a series in the newspaper about Manchester's forgotten activist it's apart of Cotton Capital look at the new papers link the transatlantic slave trade. Dedicated to Eloise Edwards MBE 1932 a birth date. The forest awakes, to bird song. de Komfa-man said ‘find you a hoatzin’s feather, when born you a grilchlild’.  Good luck will follow she. when nature's life electrifies air and the trade wind blows. Good luck will follow she.  Six years later, a daughter loses a mother, It did not follow her there Instead eternal was the banishing. A stinking. she learns resilience is living. A convent school teaching, Father’s love on frequent visits was home. Marriage a cathedral, in Georgetown in 55. It was easy to love this man with ambition.  Their love was unrestrained, provocative even. The Komfa-woman said ‘Place a feather from a hoatzin bird on the lintel of your door way and good luck will follow you. The ancient will protect you, as you seek answers to love, in a ugly world, where Mississippi was burning, love made three children and the trade wind called she to England, part of a new diaspora. She arrived carrying a grip filled with expectation and hoatzin feather and longing for Guyana. Trinkets of gold given by her father   Lockett with, She mothers photograph, Moss Side she destination. She was not ready for the levels of the cold she would encounter in England. The signs in the windows of houses said not welcome. Go home. Assassinations a killing field an unaudited litany of names, rivers of blood. A putting down of a revolution televised a jagged edge sword. Komfa-man said ‘Place a feather of the hoatzin’s bird on your mantle prepare she for battle,’ rooted an activist did Arise  Sempre Veritas (Always the Truth) Sempre Veritas (Always the Truth) commissioned by the Imperial war museum in the UK, celebrating 75 years of HMT Empire Windrush and Caribbean soldiers who fought in the second world war.  They came from islands small, It was a part of their blueprint. Churched men and women, They were water coconut, white rum and Saturday soup contentment. River people from Constitution, Wag water-rise, and Long Pond. Whose distant origins held fast to stories from Ghana's Ashanti they taught them to overstand. They were Black was the Berries, sweet was the juice Empire's shadow and emancipation's grace and truth. They were Christmas carnivals, a nation of many, yet one people. More than 10,000 souls their destination, UK For valour and glory, they came. To a land unready for their resplendent Sacrifice that could War down the strongest, Some camped in Filey for a while. This new vanguard, with overcoats and blankets to bear winter's harsh, Some were excited to see the snow on the northern plains no home comforts for twelve distinguished Bajan sons, and the daughters They heard the call to duty, first as ground crew volunteers, Yet willing to burn bright as boomer pilots if given half a chance Sacrificial lambs, as they served and survived in the army, navy, and RAF, willing to be the first to taste the bitter pill while taking to the skies, Amongst the volunteers were Engine room labourers, clerks, nurses, kitchen hands, and farmers willing to work on war-torn land. they crossed oceans deep to face racism and prejudice. Yet they remained pioneers, filled with pride for the arms of a mother. They held up at standard. Those who came from the Caribbean when they heard a call for unity. They brought the vitality of youth, and the wisdom of time. Some met a fate as casualties, others victorious adventures, Black was the Berries sweet was not this bruise, yet principled to the end, they marched for triumphal stories mixed with laughter, aspirational dreams, Those left behind will sing a praise song for souls lost to the long stillness Life's changes wouldn’t dim their remembering for so many curious minds. Those who came from Ten thousand splendid sons and daughters. Whose names we shall not forget. Alkebulan Teach me the ways of the Queens and kings of our ancestral lineage. I know the spring that wells from them, It’s one of worth and a watching, a welcome, a wonderment, of the wondering. It comes from Oshun, Yemọja, Mami Wata, Takhar and Shango. Those who wield infinitely the weight of Gods, Provide the life force to life. In them are love and liberty, loyalty, acknowledgement. My offering at your table is one Of a seeker, of scholarship and philosophy of the soothsayer waiting, so I might know the ways of Queens and kings, those who live in our past and divine our future. Belonging belongs to us. Veiled Spirit When we turn, the heart turns with you. It’s that understanding that makes you flee, the black hole of accumulating vicious talk. Recognising pestilence and the locusts that devour fields of truth, leaving no substance, only their lies. Coruscating light, diffused into fatigue, stress, squeezing life from you. Calling themselves your advocates, their armor rusts over time. No good thing is foundin those who de-light you in their greeting! When we turn,the heart turns with you. Healing is not there; dogs return to upspilled stomachs, infecting you with their pain. They air kiss you in public, looping arms through yours to make others believe lies. Your heart turns knowing their acts, will make you a victim, in time. So listen to the Goddess run for cover, find the high realms for protection. Call the Gods for their mantras, Be soothed by the balm of Gilihad. No good thing is found in those who de- light you in their greeting! The heart turns with you. Mami Wata in your thoughts, she turns with you too, giving a new perspective on life, spiritual, is your mother. Her healing mysticism, illuminating your soul. When you turn, you go back to the jars your mother taught you to drink, from, lakes of stillness, and cleansing. No good thing is found in those who de-light you in their greeting! THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Shirley May and Jae Nichelle on Sept 28, 2024. In “She was at the forefront,” a poem about activist Elouise Edwards, you use repeated instruction about the power of the feather of a hoatzin bird. What led you to use this directive to carry us through the poem? The feather of a hoatzin bird symbolises something ancient and rare, representing both strength and fragility. I wanted to convey Elouise Edwards’ unique position in history—someone who carries the weight of generations, much like a bird that has evolved through centuries. The hoatzin bird is indigenous to Guyana, and that is partly why I used it in the poem. During my research, I learned that the bird is prehistoric and only found in that country. The iconology of the feather connects to the traditions of the old world before enforced religion was imposed on African people and the indigenous people of Guyana. The feather symbolised good luck, and I wanted to create a bond between the place, the people, and ultimately the concept of home. I so love the final line of “Alkebulan.” How do you remain connected to your ancestry? Staying connected to my ancestry involves a continuous process of learning, storytelling, and honouring the voices that came before me. I find this connection through the work I do with Young Identity, through writing and spoken word that reflects our shared history, and by engaging with the cultural practices and traditions that have been passed down. My writing serves as a bridge to my heritage, allowing me to explore and share those stories. My mother always plays a significant part in my writing. She influenced me to write as she always kept a journal. Part of my journey as a writer has been to jot down thoughts that come into my head—sometimes on a napkin, sometimes on the back of an envelope. Trust me, I have a bag full of bits and pieces, not just books, but fragments that reflect my thoughts. One day, I hope to put them all in order. My mother also wrote about her children and our connection to each other, which sparked my interest in genealogy. Due to the history of the Caribbean, and Jamaica in particular, I wanted to know more about our roots and our connections to the religions and folklore of our original homeland. My mother would always tell stories of Jamaica and her love for her ancestry, which inspired me to write about the grandmothers she taught me about Arabella Phipps, Ida Harvey, and my great-great-grandmother whose name was Rosina Walker. I know little about them, so as I work on this new collection, I plan to draw from my mother’s knowledge of those women and explore that history further. She Wrote Her Own Eulogy was my first collection while I’ve been in lots of different anthologies it was a privilege to be published in 2018 in my own right.   A couple of these poems were commissioned by various organizations. How do you approach a commissioned piece? What do you do if you don’t feel inspired by the subject? When I approach a commissioned piece, I always start by immersing myself in the purpose of the commission—understanding the audience, the intention, and the emotions behind the subject. If I struggle to feel inspired, I try to find a personal connection to the topic, something that resonates with my own experiences. I also allow myself space and time to explore different perspectives until I find a way in, sometimes through research or drawing on similar themes in my past work. I try to do as much research on the people as possible. If they have people who are still alive, I try to talk to them to understand a person’s character, especially if I am in contact with them. I’ve been lucky enough to know many of the women I have been commissioned to write about—like Kath Lock, Louise Da-Cocodia, and Elouise Edwards. They were all activists and friends of my mother, and they became major influences in the UK. In many ways, their activism shaped my own. I’d love to hear more about Young Identity, the youth writing collective you co-founded. What has been your favorite Young Identity event so far? What made it impactful? Young Identity has always been about giving young people a platform to express themselves authentically. My motto has been to those who have funded our organisation “Could you give me enough funding for those at risk of excelling” because so much of what we are given is about prevention when it should be about supporting young people to discover their voice. One of my favorite projects was Alphabus, a play produced in partnership with the Manchester International Festival. It’s also one of my favorite pieces because my daughter, Nicole May, was the dramaturg on this project. She is the executive director of our organisation, and her work consists of producing, writing, and directing. The project included a dance collective from the United States called The Dream Ring, directed by Reggie “Rock” Gray. They perform a type of hip-hop-forward, reggae-inspired dance called “Flexing.” The story dealt with censorship and how withholding knowledge prevents people from accessing the truth. It showed that if we only have a book with some of the words in it, we naturally seek a book that contains the whole story. The production emphasized the importance of good knowledge, and it was the biggest project Young Identity had ever done as a small community of writers on such a significant stage. It was a privilege to work with the right budget and to explore the possibilities of combining poetry, dance, and music in that way. It was impactful because it showed the potential of our work when given proper resources. What was it like recording your album Rainfall? How did you decide what musical sound you wanted to achieve? Recording Rainfall was a deeply emotional journey. I wanted to create a soundscape that felt organic, rooted in my own experiences of growth, loss, and hope. I worked closely with Clive Hunte, who wrote and produced all the music. The process started before COVID, and during the pandemic, we adapted by using remote technology—I learned how to take over my computer to record myself while Clive worked from his home. Later, we came together for post-production. The album was inspired by 20 years of writing, as I hadn’t produced much of my own work while supporting others in their poetic careers. It was an opportunity to finally share my own voice. The album was put out by Jonny Jay, a legendary producer in my hometown of Manchester, under the label T9. You can find the poetry album here: Rainfall on Apple Music . What are three songs you would recommend to someone that would give them a glimpse into your personality? I would recommend “Four Women” by Nina Simone, “Redemption Song” by Bob Marley, and “Try a Little Tenderness” by Otis Redding. Each of these songs speaks to different facets of my personality: resilience, a deep connection to freedom and justice, and an underlying tenderness and care for others. What places in Manchester feel like home to you? Old Trafford is home to me, with its rich cultural diversity, it’s also where we run some of our community workshops for Young Identity where we meet and share poetry. Additionally, Whitworth Art Gallery is dear to me. I spent a lot of my teenage years wandering through its exhibits, sitting and musing over the paintings. I remember they had an Andy Warhol piece that I loved, and I’d sit there and dream about being a dancer and an artist. Poetry didn’t come naturally to me at first as I am neuro-diverse dyslexic; however, places like the Whitworth helped me find the poetic essence in visual art. Withington Library was another important space where I discovered books and fostered a love for literature it was a safe place for me. How can people support you right now? Supporting me right now means supporting the work of Young Identity and the young voices that are growing through this community. It also means showing up for our events, sharing our stories, and advocating for the arts, especially for marginalised voices. You can buy my book She Wrote Her Own Eulogy , published by Wrecking Ball Press, or my album Rainfall. You can also support Young Identity by donating to help us continue our work with marginalised young people. Name another Black woman writer people should know. I would say that it’s difficult to name just one Black woman writer who has influenced me because most of those who have had a significant impact on me come from America. Poets like Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, and Sunni Patterson—who I met at Brave New Voices—have been hugely influential. When it comes to British contemporary writers, I particularly like Tolu Agbelusi, who is a Nigerian British, poet, playwright, performer, educator and lawyer whose work addresses the unperformed self, womanhood, and the art of living. She recently published her first collection for Jacaranda's book, "Locating Strongwoman”. Writing about women's voices and experiences is important to me, and she does it well. I also admire Mahogany Browne. I met Mahogany over 20 years ago while she was on tour with Diké Omja, a British-born contemporary poet who introduced us to the art of great performance poetry  RIP Young King. What I love about Mahogany she can silence a room and make an audience listen—she’s a “Jedi” in poetry performance terms. She is, in my opinion, one of the best performance poets in the world. Her ability to captivate an audience is truly exceptional. As I mentioned there is no one black woman Poet that I would pin that accolade onto because there are so many writers and influencers of which I am under their spell. I really just want a more equitable space for black women writers. ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Savannah Balmir is a Caribbean-American writer from Mount Vernon, New York. She studied English at Howard University and earned an MFA at the University of Kentucky where she won the 2024 UK Fiction Award. Savannah was named a 2023 Emerging Scholar by the Haitian Studies Association, and she has received fellowships and residencies from Kimbilio, Oxbelly, and The Albers Foundation. Her short story “Night Riding,” published in Pinch Journal , was longlisted for the 2024 Elizabeth Nunez Caribbean American Writer’s Prize. Savannah’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Castle in Our Skins , Kweli , Pree , The Seventh Wave Magazine , and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories. At the End of Every Apocalypse is a New Apocalypse  The Greater Mercy Episcopal church yard is full of squealing and laughter, and the occasional territorial conflict. English is the lingua franca of this place and has become the currency of arguments. Yusuf and Damian quarrel about who can be goalie. They boot the same four words back and forth (Am Goalie! No, Me!) Meanwhile, the older boys patch a hopeless soccer ball with duct tape. Yusuf and Damian don’t realize that they could both be goalie, if one of them just walked to the other side of the yard.  On the concrete edge of the playground, Joy and Grace have a shared desire for one translucent hula hoop, the kind with swishing liquid and purple glitter inside. Joy calls out that she wants the hoop, but Grace gets to it first, steps into it like an invisible skirt and sticks her tongue out at Joy. Grace sets the hoop in motion, relishing in the tinkling swishhh  of every revolution. Joy’s envy gets the best of her. With one sharp jab she knocks the spinning hoop down. It falls and catches Grace’s soft sneakered ankle. Lucy, a seventeen-year-old in a yellow Greater Mercy T-Shirt, intervenes. She confiscates the hula hoop, sits the two girls out on a picnic bench.  “You guys shouldn’t fight,” Lucy reminds them. “You’re from the same place.” Joy and Grace roll their eyes, thinking how dumb Lucy is to not know the difference. The only thing they have in common is the river Zaire. The difference is de Brazza and Leopold. Jupiter and Mars.  The girls one picnic table over trade tales of their past selves, though none of them is older than fourteen. Orlendy clips plastic butterflies onto Hindou’s hijab. Asmahan uses the tip of a pencil to trace sections in Fabiola’s head. Aissatou says she has two older sisters who used to do her hair.  “What are their names?” says Heben, whose large eyes glitter under the sheen of her wide forehead pulled tight by skinny Habesha braids.  “I can’t remember,” says Aissatou.  “You can’t remember your own sisters’ names?” says Heben. Aissatou’s mouth parts and then stiches back tightly. Her eyes blunt with incomplete memory; her gaze sinks to her lap, to the red henna flowers in her palms.  Aissatou is not the only one. The entire group is caught on the question. They search their own memories for names.  “Yes, if they’re back home,” says Asmahan, nodding with the lifted eyebrows of an elder. Her long fingers pause in Fabiola’s thick hair. “If they’re back home, and you haven’t seen them, sometimes it happens. You can forget.” The girls breathe. They nod their heads too. They are learning to sift through their losses.  Nadia, who looks like a young Alek Wek, retrieves her phone from her hoodie pocket, and scrolls through her feed. The music playing from the phone lifts the general mood a bit. Heben rises to show them all her rendition of the bacardi, and then Joy gets up to join her. They skip their feet and treble their hips to the ting ting ting  of A-Star’s latest amapiano hit.  “That’s not how you do it!” says Grace, delighting in Joy’s stiff back and awkward footwork.  “Let’s look for one that teaches the steps,” Nadia says. The girls huddle together, and Nadia keeps scrolling.  In the next video, there is a body without legs. Eyes lacquered open. A skull crushed and weeping. Dust. Dust like a lace veil over curling hair, along the fan of a baby’s eyelashes. Blood like black sap, crusting on blued skin.  Silently, they watch the apocalypse. Each of them has already lived through one of their own.  In seconds, the death is gone, replaced by the tutorial Nadia had been looking for. Nobody says anything, and so they forget. They get up and dance. They record themselves and after a dozen takes, post their coordinated steps online. In a few months, when new children arrive freshly salvaged from their apocalypse, the girls will learn their names. They will invite them to the picnic table. They will brush their hair and henna their hands. They will remember, and they will forget, and they will survive.  ### Torch Literary Arts  is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Donate to help Torch amplify Black women writers.

Dr. Yunina Barbour-Payne is a scholar/artist whose interdisciplinary scholarship involves Africana studies, Appalachian studies, folklore, and performance. Her teaching and research areas include Black performance theory, Black theatre and performance, Theatre with and for Youth, Black feminisms, Black Appalachian performance traditions, and Affrilachian (Black artists' experiences in Appalachia) aesthetics. Barbour-Payne is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow and Rising Scholar at the University of Virginia. She earned a Ph.D. in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas at Austin where she was a Donald D. Harrington Fellow.  As a scholar/artist, Barbour-Payne has experience as a performer, dramaturg, director, and playwright. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, she locates the Ensemble Theatre in Houston, Texas as her artistic home, being the first theatre to support her work as an actor on stage, director, and writer of theatre for and with youth. As an actor, some of her favorite roles include Clyde in Ground Floor Theatre’s production of Lynn Nottage’s Clydes , Edna Thomas in Penfold Theatre’s world premiere of  War of the World s , and Sally Mae in the Ensemble Theatre’s production of  Too Heavy for Your Pocket .  In addition to her stage work, Barbour-Payne combines her love of history, art, and performance through her commitment to museum theatre.  In addition to her museum theatre work, she is a dramaturg with Gesel Mason’s Performance Project’s Yes AND ,  a performance project that recenters Black womanhood as the norm and operating force in the creative process. Her life long work merges her artistry and scholarship as the founder of the Affrilachian Memory Plays , an archived-based performance inquiry for celebrating Affrilachian identity in its various creative iterations.  Tobacco Fields CHARACTERS: GIRL #9 “NINE”: An eighteen-year-old Black Kentucky GIRL. Though she has a tomboy demeanor “NINE” has glimmering potential of being fine as Dandelion wine, and everyone knows. She is often disheveled in appearance, yet lively in spirit. GIRL #7 “SEV”: A twenty-one-year-old Black Kentucky young woman. She is gentle and nurturing in her demeanor. She has a great talent for storytelling. MAMA: A Black Kentucky woman in her late thirties. She is visibly with child. She has spent her entire life in the country. She is a talented cook, quilter, and homemaker. BOY #5: A twenty–three–year–old Black Kentucky young man. He has spent his entire life working the land and is exceptional in the fields. He has a roguish demeanor. He is a twin. Scene Various locations on a family tobacco farm in rural Kentucky Time Late August 1967 SCENE 1 SETTING: We are in a shabby, bare country home. The home takes up a very small amount of space. It has only one room, with a rocking chair, a bed, a table for the kitchen and the rest is field. A t RISE: It is nighttime, and GIRL #7 and GIRL #9 are curled in a bed together, giggling. MAMA has fallen asleep in the rocking chair. An older boy sleeps on the floor. It is well past bedtime. The room is small and swells with the excitement from the girls. GIRL #7 is reading GIRL #9 a story from a personal notebook. GIRL #7 (whispering) In the beginning was the Word GIRL #9 And the word was loud GIRL #7: (GIRL #7 shushes and giggles) With a long A…. GIRL #9: Two legs, two arms and a small head GIRL #7: Some high and low points GIRL #9: Low like valleys and high like mountains! BOY #5: (grumbles) GIRL #9: Shhh GIRL #7: (whispering) Long as the Ohio river (she moves to the hallway) GIRL #9: (following) Moving like curvy mountains on a page GIRL #7 With 2 F’s GIRL #9: And 5 A’s GIRL #7: (counting) 5 A’s? GIRL #9: (re-counts) 3 A’s GIRL #7: And the word stuttered GIRL #9: Af-f-f-- GIRL #7: And struggled GIRL #9: Af-f-f r-il -Affril - ach GIRL #7: And stumbled GIRL #9: A-f-r-r-i-l-a-c-h-i-a-? BOY #5: (grumbles, Dreaming) No GIRL #7: And finally stuck GIRL #9: Affrilachia GIRL #7: And the word was GIRL #9: Affrilachia! GIRL #7: And the Word was! GIRL #7 and GRIL #9: Affrila- (They both Scream) MAMA: (off) Girls! (Enter MAMA, in a worn night gown and slippers.) MAMA: (reprimanding) Girls! Now you know you are supposed to be in bed. GIRL#9: It was a snake mama! MAMA: Snake? GIRL #7: Yes ma’am, there on the floor and it’s humongous! MAMA: A humongous snake on the floor? If that isn’t the… (she sees the snake) Oh my… Clyde! (TRANSITION OF TIME) (Later that day in the tobacco fields at sunset. A Tractor is heard. The girls are coming in from the field) (GIRL #7 GIRL #9 enter visibly exhausted) GIRL #9: My eyes burn. GIRL #7: (fixing her hair) It’s alright, here use this, it’ll get better in a week. GIRL #9: A week! I hate the fields. I hate them. I hate them! GIRL #7: Remember the story? (pulling the notebook from her pants.) -Long as the Ohio river (grabbing GIRL #9 in a dance) GIRL #9: Moving like curvy mountains on a page GIRL #7: With 2 F’s GIRL #9: 3 A’s GIRL #7 and GIRL #9: Affrilachia! (They both laugh and stumble to the ground overwhelmed with good feelings.) GIRL #7: Here, come listen. (She reads to her in a big sister performance kind of way.) I call it ‘raised by women … (GIRL #9 looks unimpressed. GIRL #7 puts down her book.) Let’s play a game. I’ll start by saying “I was raised by,” and you finish it. Ready? I was raised by Some high yellow, red bone, red-haired Green eyed Cherokee knowing- (prompting GIRL #9) GIRL #9: cherry eating, tobacco cutting Will rush you off the phone in a heart-beat kind of women GIRL #7: (laughing) Mmmhmm! I was raised by … Some macaroni and cheese making Polk picking GIRL #9: Pimple popping GIRL #7: Bible reading GIRL #9: Church going GIRL #7: (laughs and sings) Choir singing GIRL #9: Ushers .. AND Sunday school teaching GIRL #7: Sister of the preacher seating -“isn’t it funny that they don’t believe in women in the pulpit- (GIRL #9 delights at the truths in her statements) Kind of sisters I was raised by women. (GIRL #7 and GIRL #9 delight together in their story) (beat) GIRL #9: You got your stories, but me I don’t have talents like that. GIRL #7: Sure, you do GIRL #9: Nuh uh- none that I know of. GIRL #7: Have you ever tried writing? GIRL #9: No, hate it. GIRL #7: What don’t you hate? GIRL #9: I dunno, dunno what to write GIRL #7: All you have to do is imagine. GIRL #9: Imagine what? GIRL #7: Anything. Close your eyes. Close them. Now what do you see? GIRL #9: black GIRL #7: not literally… GIRL #9: …..I see… I see….A woman… from the city. GIRL #7: A what? GIRL #9: A city woman. She’s tall, bigger than daddy, and has hair and her skin- like mine. GIRL #7: And what does this fine city woman do? GIRL #9: -Did I say she was big, way bigger than #5 and athletic, and smart. She never misses school and never even seen tobacco-only mountains. GIRL #7: Mountains? GIRL#9: City-woman was born on a mountain top. OH AND She saves people. GIRL #7: Is that right GIRL #9: Mmhmm and she’s a snake killer, she travels the world killing snakes -and she’s comin’ GIRL #7: Comin’ where? GIRL #9: Comin’ here. GIRL #7: Here? GIRL #9: Yep, she’s on her way right now. She’s coming to save me from these fields. GIRL #7: Oh just you! What about me? You gonna leave me here? GIRL #9: (she opens one eye) I’ll ask her to bring you too. GIRL #7: Oh good, just make sure my hair is done first. (Beat) I think you might just have a talent. You’ll be alright. GIRL #9: You sure? MAMA: (off) Sev come in here GIRL #7: I’ll be right back. (She places her notebook down on the ground) (The stage is left empty with GIRL #9. She picks up GIRL #7’s notebook and pen from the ground and begins to write.) GIRL #9: Dear City-woman, (pause) I was raised…… I was raised….. I was raised working in tobacco. I was raised working on 80 acres of farmland in a family of 11. And we work. All 1- 11 of us. We raise chickens, pigs, cattle to sell, milking cows- in tobacco, corn and wheat fields. (She thinks) When it tobacco cutting season- girls not treated like girls in the country. Is it like that where you’re from? A body is just a body— #5: (#5 enters from behind her) What you writing girl? GIRL #9: Nothing. #5: Don’t look like nothing. ( he takes the notebook ) What you doing with Sev’s notebook?- You stole it! I’m going to tell her you stole it. GIRL #9: I didn’t, she let me see it! #5: Did she really? No, she didn’t- I can tell you lying. I’m going to tell her. GIRL #9: I didn’t! #5: What reason I got to believe you? GIRL #9: -please! #5: You don’t want me to tell her? GIRL #9: (GIRL #9 shakes her head no.) #5: What you going to do? What you going to do to make me believe you? GIRL #9: (pause)(She looks around for an answer) --- #5: (laughing) You gonna give me a kiss ain’t you – you gonna give me a kiss right here- (He holds his finger on his cheek.) —then I’ll believe you. (GIRL #9 reluctantly kisses him quickly) (#5 gives the book back to her by pressing the book to her breast. The book slides to the ground as his hand stays pressed. GIRL #9 snatches the book from the ground.) Well then, I guess I believe you. (GIRL #9 nods.) (He exits.) (GIRL #9 watches him leave, anxiously picks up the notebook and opens the notebook back to her page) GIRL #9: Sometimes… (she thinks about telling) Sometimes…(looking at the tobacco around her) Sometimes… #4-9 go working on our neighbor’s farm- picking the ground leaves for tobacco. See with tobacco, the lower leaves ripen and have to be harvested first. I usually do alright. I can stay low to the ground— GIRL #7: What you writing? (GIRL #9 screams) Girl you screaming like you just saw a snake! GIRL #9: I didn’t take it, you left it and I just started looking through it, and writing like you said, but I didn’t take it - swear. GIRL #7: You’re all right, here, you can have it. To distract yourself from the work. GIRL #9: Sev, You sure? GIRL #7: Sure. MAMA: (Hollering, as if she is about to go into labor) Sev— come heh- I need you. (GIRL #7 exits. GIRL #9 works then distracts herself. At first she thinks aloud. GIRL #9 is in the thick of the field. Exhausted from work, she finds a spot, pulls out her notebook from her pants and begins to write.) GIRL #9: You gotta get the ground leaves before they turn brown otherwise that’s money that you loose -that’s what daddy say. So I get low to the ground, and I done invented this technique where I can use my fingers and my teeth. And I hum a song while I’m doing it, so it feels like a game. So I hum and pick, and hum and pick and hum and pick. And I was doing alright til- #5 GIRL shouldn’t be dreaming in the tobacco fields. (He snatches the book.) GIRL #9: I’m not sleeping. #5: Don’t look like that way. I’m going to tell daddy you was sleeping in the fields. GIRL #9: No, I wasn’t #5: (taunting) You was just lying down. (She shushes him.) (He mocks her shushing) You don’t want me to tell him? GIRL #9: (she shakes her head no pleading for the book back.) (GIRL #9 and #5 FREEZE) GIRL #9: GIRL ain’t safe anywhere in the country, ‘specially not in no tobacco field,’ #5 come up on me. And afterward, I was still. I lay out in the tobacco field next to the ground leaves pricking my back and in my hair. I laid there while my mind left my body. I laid there with my hands outreached hoping someone would be there to help me. (Whispering) It doesn’t sound as painful as it is. Hoping someone would place their hand in mine and pull me close. I closed my eyes, thinking on city-woman. She’s coming to rescue me from the tobacco fields. I see my city-woman- all black on, leather gloves, that briefcase and sunglasses. My city woman never goes to the field ‘cept this time when she’s come here to save me. I reach my hand out to my city-woman who is coming to surprise me with flowers in hand. I can hear her talking love to me. Her voice is deep like water wells. I lay there, tears hard on my face and I can feel city-woman’s presence blowing them dry. And she’s humming my song and drying my tears/I even feel heat next to my hand and I know it’s city-woman’s glove. I’ve never felt leather before but I feel it now as the heat from her hand slides in mine. I open my eyes to see city-woman. Instead- #5: You gonna give me a kiss to make sure I don’t tell. Ain’t you? (She goes for his cheek.) Naw Right here – (He kisses her long, too long on the lips. Then drops her book.) Well then, I guess I won’t be telling this time. (#5 exits.) (GIRL #9’s screams) GIRL #7: (runs to her) What is it!? GIRL #9: I seen a Black copper head! it slid in place of city woman’s hand. GIRL #7: What? GIRL #9: When I realized it wasn’t city-woman I jumped, and me and the snake both fly into the air. GIRL #7: You dreaming Nine.. when I said find a distraction I didn’t mean go to sleep. Daddy’s gonna get you. GIRL #9: It’s true! and While I’m flying, I turn my head and see daddy and #5 standing side by side at the end of the field. Both me and the snake hit the ground. And I hear daddy laughing at me. In between laughs he’s scolding me for laying down on the job. He laughed and I laid there. Said he didn’t know who was higher.. me or the snake. #5 was laughing so hard he had to hold his stomach. And I was there, lying in a field of tobacco. GIRL #7: You gotta be smarter next time. (GIRL #7 exits) GIRL #9: Like I said - Nothing good happen in the field. ‘Cept sweat and tears.(beat)I ain’t staying here. I ‘m leaving soon as my city woman come. And when she do -I ain’t coming back…. (She sits, opens the book and continues to write. GIRL #7 is hidden in her own corner of the field revising.) GIRL #7 In the beginning was the word GIRL #9 I was raised by … GIRL #7 Long A GIRL #9 Some multitasking Independent thinking Cooking and Cleaning Feeding the whole family and then some because “You don’t take things for granted’ Kind of women GIRL #7 (said like a curse word) Two F’s GIRL #9 Some snake fighting Field surviving Tobacco pulling Achieve every dream because “You’ll be alright” Kind of women GIRL#7 Three A’s GIRL #9 Some – GIRL #7 AND GIRL #9 Heart county, Country living GIRL#7 And the word stuttered GIRL #9 City Moving GIRL #7 And struggled GIRL #9 Memory of an elephant I’m going write a Story GIRL#7 And stumble GIRL #9 Call you a snake And tell all the family business kind of women GIRL#7 And finally stuck. GIRL #9 I was raised by women. GIRL #7 Affrilachia. (MAMA looks into the fields from the kitchen of her home, with a new baby girl in hand. MAMA, GIRL #7 and GIRL #9 are standing on three sides still and silent.) (Blackout) (END OF PLAY) ### 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.

Torch Literary Arts is excited to launch our Bookshop affiliate page where you can find books by past and current TORCH features. Your purchase supports these incredible authors, independent bookstores, and Torch Literary Arts. When choosing a bookstore on Bookshop, please support our friends at Bookwoman and Black Pearl Books. Happy reading. Onward together! Shop Today: bookshop.org/shop/torchliteraryarts 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. TORCH has featured work by Colleen J. McElroy, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Elizabeth Alexander, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats. Help TORCH continue to publish and promote Black women writers by donating today.

Lynne Thompson is the award-winning author of four collections of poetry and was the 4th Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. Lynne Thompson served as Los Angeles’ 4th Poet Laureate and received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of four collections of poetry, Beg No Pardon (2007), winner of the Perugia Press Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award; Start With A Small Guitar (What Books Press, 2015) ;   Fretwork , winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize selected by Jane Hirshfield; and,, Blue on a Blue Palette ,   published by BOA Editions in April 2024. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Thompson is the recipient of multiple awards including the George Drury Smith Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles, the Tucson Literary Festival Poetry Prize, and the Steven Dunn Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Summer Literary Series (Kenya) and the Vermont Studio Center. She serves on the Boards of the Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Thompson’s recent work can be found or is forthcoming in the literary journals Best American Poetry 2020, Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Copper Nickel , and Gulf Coast, as well as the anthology Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters, and Poems For and About One Mr. Komunyakaa , among others.   Thompson’s website can be found at  www.lynnethompson.us . Like Choosing Which One To Be Forever Changed Into   The dragonflies are only the first thing.   There are places, still, that no moonlight ever conquers  and there’s a meadow I can’t stop coming back to.   There’s a slant of light I used to call Self Portrait having been lost unfindably   where your dragonflies are only the first thing.    It’s easy to confuse estrangement with what came before.  When did our yard get this swollen?   What happened to the meadow I can’t stop coming back to?   My heart is not so much broken as beating.   Maybe stamina’s just a fairer form of stubborn  and dragonflies are forever the first, the only thing.   It is our shadowed tenderness I break inside of,  a forest that stands at the exact center of sorrow  alongside a meadow I can’t stop coming back to.   Then again, everything is findable, even now.  See how sky becomes an echo of what’s flown through it?  There are dragonflies which are only the first thing  and also, the meadow. I can’t stop coming back.  In this version (a wishlist),   a mother, compelled or complicit,   decides to keep her child,   decides to disobey, to resist,   decides blood is thicker than blood.   The mother, in this version,   is wiser than she has been told:   she remembers the consummation     and smiles; she remembers   the conception as if she can   pinpoint its ultimate insignificance.   In this romance, her child smells   of rosemary and piss on sheets,   has eyes the color of no god’s pupils,    has DNA flecked with wily witticisms.  In this un-tragic, the father is peripheral.  Whoever’s opinion matters less than.   Her child won’t fall to ground in either  version, doesn’t wonder or wander clad  in barkcloth, and this is the child who   plays well with ridicule and farce, every  synonym being more than another  illusion, another product of thievery   which raises those thorny questions of  reparations, amends, recompense; see  the Late Latin reparare : to restore but   who restores the mother who declines to  resist, to disobey, to keep her child—she  who is the essence, the lasting version of—?  In this life, this eight to the bar,   I am single-voiced,   generous— despite   this bubble burst of life’s techno-madness,   the density of its point-and-penciled vanishing.  I wish I could hear Coltrane live —   not looking down,   inside every step,  between,   while I languish here—   corner of Pacific O,   unable to be anywhere else,   my gun wiped clean   almost—  Highway 61 Blues     —you begin with a sound wrapped around a syllable—   Quincy Troupe   Wocha take me Bobby J? Woncha take me  up the trail outta New Orleans, past Natchez  past Vicksburg, all the way to Rollin’ Fork?  You and me gonna beat the boll weevil,   gonna beat the bent back heat all the way  to Duncan, all the way to New Africa been  on my mind. I’m lookin’ for a blue devil,   a blue devil to set me free from floodplains,    from Yazoo, from Tallahatchie, fly free me  all the way to Greenville, Tutwiler, all teh way  to Clarksdale where my gutar just gotta moan  Preachin’ Blue all the way, all the way, all the way    and I’m hollerin’ loud I been `buked and scorned  Willie Brown; I been beat down Howlin’ Wolf;  hey Kid Bailey, got any scratch? Can you get me  to Shelby where blues ain’t dead? So said some   pretty one-eyed gal who gav eme two six stringers  and a hard drum, said pace yourself, pace yourself  and yeah, Mr. Jimmie Cotton soothe me sure with  some sweet, sweet devil music to keep me movin’    outta sullen heat and deep blue and   Jim Crow and sharecrop—no mo’ dry throat,  no mo’ hot whipe, no manny sold to don’t know  where, no white man’s cotton but no forty acres   and no goddamned mule, yeah, so take me, Bobby J,  all the way to Memphis, out west to Houston  up east to Cincinnati, up north to Chi-town, away  from the woncha, please Stop Breakin’ Down Blues.  The Day My Brothers Met Malcom X,   they knew our Antilles-bred parents were  wary of black Muslims: mother gave hijabs  a cold one-eye when she saw them troublin’    the innocents on our streets. However, our  folks did enjoy the bean pies those bow-ties  sold outside a branch of the Bank of America    but not quite as much as the brothers enjoyed  meeting Minister Malcolm in the barbershop  of the Hotel Watkins, perched majestically,    Adams Boulevard, Sugar Hill. The brothers  gave up chairs of favored barberettes—Angie?  Gloria?—and the rhythm of old men’s playing   of the dozens in answer to Mr. X’s proposition:  I don’t want to look like I need a haircut but also  not like I just had one. It was May, 1962, when   X came to L.A. to protest the policeman whose  bullet pierced the heart of Ronald Stokes, X’s  friend, a Muslim, a Korean War vet. His crime:   unloading several dry-cleaned suits from a car  parked—legally—near Mosque 27. Malcolm  strode into the Watkins the same day he   preached nobody can give you freedom…if you  are a man, you take it and everybody knew  Malcolm was The Man. Many gotta-get  my-afro-oiled-and-shaped were intimidated  by this Muslim who would grace a 1964 cover  of Jet magazine alongside Cassius Clay,   meaning that two years after X came, life  hadn’t changed here much; meaning most  Afro-Ams—excuse me, Kneegroes—sang  a blues chorus—emboldened, yes, yet fearful—  for this preacher. And my brothers revealed  more about themselves than Malcolm because   they weren’t sure what they were allowed  to ask him. But maybe their untapped rage  rose up, making one brother a sk what should    we believe, man making Malcolm mourn: we are  a violent people . When the brothers spoke of it  years later, I understood Malcolm never fully   answered before he took a bullet, 1965, so  the question hangs in the stank air that blew  over Stephon Clark—what should we believe? THE INTERVIEW This interview was conducted between Lynne Thompson and Jae Nichelle on August 8, 2024. You mentioned that “Like Choosing Which One to be Forever Changed Into” is a cento inspired by Carl Phillips. And it is so lovely in its cascading repetition of the starting lines, including how you made use of Phillips’ line about the meadow from his poem “Falling.” Can you share a bit about what drew you to breathe different life into these lines?  I am a big fan of the cento and I’m also constantly looking for opportunities to pay homage to the poets who have inspired me with their work and their friendship. Carl Phillips is one of those people. His oeuvre is amazing and I’ve been re-reading his work and, as a result, I found opportunities to say “thank you” for what he’s gifted to those of us who love his poems. In addition to the poem “Falling”, “Like Choosing….” incorporates lines from the following Phillips’ collections: Double Shadow; Riding Westward; Then the War, Reconnaissance; The Tether; Speak Low; and Silverchest. The poems you’ve shared have a variety of perspectives and voices. I’m wondering where you view yourself in relation to the words on the page. As a poet, do you feel like you are an observer, a reporter, an inquirer, or a professor? All or none of the above?   I’m often all of the above all at once. In “In this version (a wishlist), a mother, compelled or complicit,”, for example, I am an observer but I am also the child who is referenced. I’m always looking for ways to mix up the perspectives that must, necessarily though not always happily, co-exist. In an issue of Moria , you suggested that poets read outside of the box—Aka, read more than poetry, but “read recipes, NASA reports, old maps, bills of lading, to name a few.” What’s something “outside of the box” you’ve read recently that has inspired you? Like so many people, I’m fascinated by the plight of animals in an environment where species are constantly at risk of extinction. I came across an article by journalist Tim Brinkhof about the wild zebras purchased by William Randolph Hearst—who provided the titular model for the movie Citizen Kane —to roam his estate, Hearst Castle, in California. I was fascinated to discover—though I shouldn’t have been surprised—that someone would “import” a species of animal native to Africa to his home as his playmates! I’m working on a new piece that explores this hubris. You transitioned from a career as a law litigator to a path that allowed you to prioritize creative writing. Before that happened, did you find that your love of poetry and creativity informed the way you practiced law?   Early in my legal career, a judge praised my poetic language in a brief I submitted. He then promptly denied the relief I was seeking! That taught me to keep the two paths separate! As a person born and raised in Los Angeles who became a Los Angeles poet laureate, is there anything you feel outsiders would be surprised to learn about the city? I’ve heard visitors and transplants to the City complain that its citizens can be unfriendly. While the geography of the City—and thus the opportunity to find true community—can be difficult to navigate and that difficulty may contribute to negative perceptions, I think, given the chance, Angelenos can be quite friendly and ready and willing to welcome those who are new to the City.  What’s a topic you feel like you could give a TED talk about with little to no preparation? Transitioning from the practical career of a lawyer (or similar profession) to the (some would say) impractical career of a writer (or similar creative endeavor). What’s the kindest thing someone has ever done for you? The kindest act has nothing to do with poetry. It was the decision of my immigrant parents, who already have four sons, to adopt me. I often think of who I might have become if they had not made that decision. It was life-altering and I’m forever grateful. How can people support you right now? Here’s a shameless self-promotion: buy my new collection, Blue on a Blue Palette , preferably from your local independent bookstore or from www.bookshop.org  or from Amazon. Name another Black woman writer people should follow. Tough to choose just one but I’m going to shout out California poet, Nikia Chaney ( https://www.nikiachaney.com/ ) who is not only a wonderful poet but a publisher as well. She’s doing the hard, important work. Check her out!! ### 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.

Photo credit : Aishvarya Arora  Esther Kondo Heller is a poet, literary critic, and experimental sound and filmmaker. They are a Barbican Young Poet, an Obsidian Foundation Fellow, a Ledbury Critic, and an Image Text Ithaca Junior Fellow. They have an MFA in creative writing from Cornell University. They are currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Harvard University, where they are working on transnational Black poetics. Heller's writing has appeared in the Georgia Review , BOMB , Modern Poetry in Translation , the Guardian amongst other places, their debut poetry collection, Ar:range:ments is forthcoming with Fonograf Editions in March 2025 . DANCING Tonight I want to go dancing in the streets. The votes are in and dancing is all that’s left.  I want to shake ass. Titties free in a sheer blue  dress like Chloe in 1974. Ecstatic, fist pounding  the air full of beat. I will be dancing for no one,  for no party, apart for movement. I will be twirling revolutions. Tonight, I am gasping in my bed my  beating heart sweats my bones out. I dreamt  myself dancing in silence, I dreamt my body  shaking at the top of my lungs. My sound cast in the street. Cast in a casket. Cast in a class room. Electric slide with all present and past I wake up, my mouth knows the steps, tells me  we will dance tonight. We will. We will. We must.   ### 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.

Adriene Cruz is a textile artist based in Portland, Oregon who has exhibited work locally and internationally. Photographer: Romney Mueller- Westernhagen Harlem native Adriene Cruz creates brilliantly colored fabric art embellished in rhythmic improvisational arrangements of cultural beauty. Her creative vision has garnered invitations to create beyond fabric to public art in Portland allowing her imagery to flow from textile creations to concrete fabrications. Adriene has exhibited her textiles internationally in Brazil, Costa Rica, and South Africa and Nationally at the Smithsonian, The Folk Art Museum, NY, American Craft Museum, NY, The Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, The National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, and the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA, to name a few. She’s included in collections at the Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, Haborview Medical Center, Seattle, Portland Community College, Reed College, and numerous private collections. Learn more @thedreamerswindow and www.adrienecruz.com . Power Prayer for the Community , 2024, textiles; mixed media; beads; shells; dried lemongrass sachets preparing work for exhibit at The Guardino Gallery in Portland, 2015 Threaded Rituals Daydreaming Again , 2023. The Interview This interview was conducted between Jae Nichelle and Adriene Cruz on October 21, 2024. Thank you so much for sharing photos of your process! I’d love to learn more about “Threaded Rituals.” How did these pieces/ installation come to be? Thank you so much for your interest in my work! “Threaded Rituals” is very much about appreciating the journey or channeling the flow of energy and spirit that happens with the push and pull of needle and thread. It was created summer of 2021 outdoors in my yard as I was feeling connected to many generations of stitchers. I was inspired to begin by the remnant of an appliquéd piece from India I found at a studio sale.    You studied art in high school and college, so it seems like you developed an interest in an art career at an early age. If you could give your teenage self inside knowledge about your future career, what would you say? I did have an early interest in making things but a career never entered my mind. What I’m doing now is completely different from what I was doing in high school which was stone and wood sculpture and college was still three-dimensional work. Honestly, I never thought of it as an art career, creating has always been about being in a safe place to be and feel free. What I would tell my teenage self? Probably to enjoy life and have some fun! Be comfortable in my skin! I was painfully shy and missed out a lot on just living.    The way you sew objects into your quilts is incredible. What types of objects are resonating with you at present?   I love collecting textile remnants, beads, and talismans that have a tribal feel especially if it’s mirrored or embroidered. I also love using cowrie shells and sequins. In the piece I created honoring my mother, I used her rings and other bits of her life like the tiny silver key to the 66th-floor ladies' room of One World Trade Center.  You've completed various public art installations around the city of Portland! Which has been the most memorable experience? The one I couldn’t imagine myself doing, the interstate Max Lightrail station! My first and second response to the project was NO! It took more than a minute to wrap my head around how I could apply my textile designs to a hardscape environment. Thankfully I was guided by a veteran public artist Valerie Otani who suggested applying my ideas to concrete, steel, glass, and bronze. Once the materials were chosen I was free to design as I wished. It was definitely a learning curve!   What are your favorite places in Portland to spend your time?  I’m very much a homebody so my favorite place in Portland is home! If we broaden it, my favorite place to spend time in Oregon is the ocean! Broaden it further and my favorite place to spend time is Cuba!   I'm curious to know what your workspace is like. Do you create from home or in a studio?  My studio is up in the attic of where I live and in the warmer months I set up in the backyard, nothing beats natural light.   What's uplifting you these days? I’m blessed with beautiful circles of creative women. Some are very much younger than me and the others are my peers. The energy shared with them is always uplifting. Also my doggie Bindi! She’s a three-year-old rescue I’ve had for a year, my anti-depressant after losing my Mom in 2022.  Do you have a specific process for titling your pieces, or do the titles just come to you?  Sometimes it’s from a phrase or poem I’ve heard that gives me a feeling I want to see. Sometimes I’m creating and the piece tells me its name. I wish I could remember the name I originally had for “Threaded Rituals," it slips my memory now. While creating I was feeling good, totally immersed in the process when it let me know the name I was working with was not its name. I’m like, what? “That’s not my name!" Several nights I spent dreaming what the name could possibly be. Ritual came up first and then after a few days of threading needles, fabric, beads, shells, sequins, and whatever it became so obvious “Threaded Rituals!”  Of course! From then on the piece really flowed.   How can people support you right now?  Oh wow! That’s a big question! Lots of love and encouragement! Help me get my book going, places to get away, beach house, or whatever! Money is always helpful, too! Ha ha, I can dream!  Name another Black woman artist people should know. Easily my mentor of 30 years, Valerie J Maynard who also left us in 2022 at 85. She was amazingly prolific and encouraged many creatives to challenge self-imposed boundaries. Another stellar, prolific artist among the living is Xenobia Bailey. A beautiful soul conjuring soulful creations. ### 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.

Jacquese Armstrong (she/her) is a writer/speaker/poet who educates, motivates, and inspires from her lived mental health experiences and interprets the pain etched on her mothers’ wombs provided for her reading as a balm for healing to aid in battling the illusion. A 2022 Black Fire—This Time Anthology Summer Fellow with Aquarius Press, author of birthing yourself naturally: motivational reflections on a mental health journey (2022), and blues legacy (Broadside Lotus Press, 2019), Jacquese was the recipient of the 2019 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and a 2015 Ambassador Award from the State of New Jersey Governor’s Council on Mental Health Stigma for promoting wellness and recovery and reducing stigma through the arts. In addition, she creates mental wellness/self-care workshops from an artistic lens and has received training from the Arts & Healing Initiative as a SEA (Social Emotional Arts) Facilitator. Follow her on her website. stuck in jackson ms tryin to understand (2023) (with the help of basquiat) i hear jean-michel “jim crow” and all he said was ms with a blue-black river mississippi invadin a black man’s head makin his eyes fire/ yeah makin his eyes fire i feel this force-field here people yell over it they laugh loud they stare you down in righteous indignation for breathin their air i feel this force-field here said it was a stronghold ‘cause i thought to myself satan’s been busy here like for centuries buildin that chasm buildin that chasm buildin that chasm that orchestrates the indignities forced into a predicated mind like a bullet interrupts regulary scheduled dna but i just feel this force-field here it settles somewhere about the neck ### 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.