Quincy Scott Jones is a Black American poet and the author of How to Kill Yourself Instead of Your Children (C&R Press, 2021). A Cave Canem Fellow, Jones is a professor and lives in New York City.

Ariana Reines is a poet and playwright from Salem, Massachusetts. She holds degrees from Barnard College and the European Graduate School, with additional graduate work at Columbia University and ...

Red slippers in a shop-window; and outside in the street, flaws of gray, windy sleet! Behind the polished glass the slippers hang in long threads of red, festooning from the ceiling like stalactites ...

whether we’re looking or not.

1 My mother always called it a nest, the multi-colored mass harvested from her six daughters’ brushes, and handed it to one of us after she had shaped it, as we sat in front of the fire drying our ...

“That’s a smart pair of pumps you’re beading there. Who are they for?” “You mean?—oh, for some miss. I can’t keep track of other people’s daughters. Lord, if I were to dream of everyone “Two weeks ...

to repeat it. For a while—no, for a long while—it was like a prayer, rising to the skies, morning after morning, like a siren that wouldn’t quiet. And then I remembered other things: the way I walk ...

Jealousy. Whispered weather reports. The lure of the land so strong it prompts gossip: we chatter like small birds at the edge of the ocean gray, foaming. Now sand under sand hides the buried world, ...

And all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you, I engraft you new. William Shakespeare, regarded as the foremost dramatist of his time, wrote more than thirty plays and more than one ...

As due by many titles I resign Myself to thee, O God. First I was made By Thee; and for Thee, and when I was decay’d Thy blood bought that, the which before was Thine. I am Thy son, made with Thyself ...

begin long before you hear them and gain speed and come out of the same place as other words. They should have their own place to come from, the elbow perhaps, since elbows look funny and never weep.

To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I ...