By Solmaz Sharif
Studies suggest How may I help you officer? is the single most disarming thing to say and not What's…
Explore Poems: Race & Ethnicity
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- By Rita Dovelate, in aqua and ermine, gardenias
scaling her left sleeve in a spasm of scent,
her gloves white, her… - By Kemi AlabiI used to pray to a man-faced god.
Kept his whip beneath my bed.
Set alarms for daybreak lashings.
Pressed white cotton to the flay.
Made flags of the bloodsoak.
Raised them from my window.
Called this worship.
Dreamt heaven a jury small as a county
where nobody... - By Jericho BrownAster. Nasturtium. Delphinium. We thought
Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning
Names in heat… - By Remica Bingham-Rishera man is killed in Mobile, Alabama. It is 1981, nearest what some will call the last lynching in America…
- By Cornelius EadyI’m here
to tell you
an old story.
This
Appears to be
my work.
I live
in the world,
Walk
the streets… - By Karisma PriceThe Realization of a Negro's Ambition requires melatonin & the soft dying body of a monkey face orchid.
The brilliant strangeness of watching everyone not you grow comfortable with themselves.
Trying to rehabilitate one or multiple racists.
Learning death does not fear you.
I... - By Toi DerricotteWhen relatives came from out of town,
we would drive down to Blackbottom,
drive slowly down the congested… - By Cornelius EadySome folks will tell you the blues is a woman,
Some type of supernatural creature.
My mother would tell… - By Bettina Juddi
You can abstract anything
if your psyche needs it. Anything
can be turned into a past to forget—
embittering thoughts that need exorcising.
When you read the words of your relative
who had been enslaved, the New Black
starts to act real old, don’it? Starts to... - By Cheryl ClarkeMother
Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church Nine
Senior pastor state senator
Name meaning “merciful”
Church eldress, oldest to be shot
Great grandnephew tries to shield her
First and youngest shot
College administrator and pastor
Doctor her last name not a title
Sunday school teacher
Track coach and pastor
Librarian
Church sexton
Seventy-four-year-old pastor
Two played... - By Letta Neelythis concrete here
is where my brother’s
last breath left
his body began
to circulate
elsewhere; some people
will tell you there’s nothing
poetic
about
black boys murdered
but i have to think
of it this way,
to understand - By Frank X. Walker...walk into a bar in America.
Butterworth says, I’m being repackaged.
Ben says, I’m being rebranded.
Jemima says, I remember
when they branded my mama on her back.
The bartender says, I could stand in the middle
of Main Street and kill somebody
and I wouldn’t... - By Isabela AgosaMy mom and I don’t spend
all day talking about the white
priests who raped Great Grandma
Marie, unless it’s a poem. Suffering
is boring. Do you know how big
the word genocide is? How long.
I’m taking a class on Indian
temporalities. I tell my mom... - By John MurilloFor me, the movie starts with a black man
Leaping into an orbit of badges, tiny moons
Catching the sheen of his perfect black afro.
Arc kicks, karate chops, and thirty cops
On their backs. It starts with the swagger,
The cool lean into the... - By Sally Wen MaoIt is natural to live in an era
when no one uttered––
and silence was glamour
so I could cast one glance westward
and you’d know what I was
going to kill. Murder... - By Cyrus Console
Rotor wash, or the downward-flowing
Air by which our helicopters formed
Imprints in the jungle grass beneath
Now stands effectively for Vietnam
Because our understanding of that war
Omitted many things but not the wind
We bowed our heads and fled. In this case we
Refers effectively... - By Haki R. Madhubutisuper-cool
ultrablack
a tan/purple
had a beautiful shade.
he had a double-natural
that wd put the sisters to shame.
& his beads were imported sea shells
(from some blk/country i never heard of)
he was triple-hip.
his tikis were hand carved
out of ivory
& came express from the... - By Richard BlancoQue será, el café of this holy, incorporated place,
the wild steam of scorched espresso cakes rising
like mirages from the aromatic waste, waving
over the coffee-glossed lips of these faces
assembled for a standing breakfast of nostalgia,
of tastes that swirl with the delicacy... - By Walela NehandaCrip (noun): slang for a disabled person/the whole of
the disabled community/
a school of thought
Example: “I’m on crip time”
Meaning: Time bends differently when the universe that is
my body dictates it
Crip (noun): a Black gang that originated in...