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Five Poems and Photography by Leslie King
We. The(m) People.
They killin us. Dead.
My Mama is dead.
Killed her, too.
Them CIA drugs.
Them “projects.”
Them homeless shelters.
I am an experiment.
Black life in America is a science project.
Like welfare.
No acres. No mule.
No real liberty.
But plenty-o-methadone
laced with signatures
on bills that act.
Soothe them with
pseudo freedom.
Kill ‘em with
Black claustrophobia.
Black desperation.
Black plagues.
Black plaques
for Corrupt Cop of Year!
Slaughter the best of ’em. -
In Remembrance of Summer by Gina Chung
Above: Standing Girl, Back View by Egon Schiele
Of all the things that I’d like to be doing now, instead of waiting for things to get better, waiting until there are no longer sirens haunting my neighborhood every hour with their banshee wails, waiting until it feels safe to no longer feel so afraid—I’d like to be wearing a light cotton dress on a hot summer day here in Brooklyn, on a rooftop that’s really just a glorified patch of silver-painted asphalt but feels like something holy in the orange glow of a July sun.
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Black Is Over (Or, Special Black) by Tressie McMillan Cottom with Artwork by Merav Kamel
Above: from the Sketchbook of Merav Kamel
I’m looking for a mixed girl Asian, Jamaican
I’m looking for a mixed girl Puerto Rican, Haitian
I’m looking for a mixed girl
Cuban and White
I’m trying to get mixed up tonight like
Excuse me miss, what’s your name, where ya
from, can I come—T-Pain, “Mix’d Girl”
“Black people are over.” That is how it was said to me once.
