letting the sweetness drip in deep waves. She said

she wants to know just once, if it is as warm as the dreamers say.

For my mother, I am trying to learn what freedom looks like

in this body of mine. What it tastes like in this mouth or feels like running

through the thick of my hair and the small of my hands. I am trying

to grasp freedom with my teeth, the tips of my toes. Trying to catch it

on my eyelash, for her.

She does not know freedom,

has never known freedom,

but I’ve seen it

looking good, sauntering elsewhere.

I want it.

The choice to go

where I choose when I am ready.

Michelle Tiwo

border/softer

in the new year or when i grow up or

if i live through the night i want to be

ungovernable no longer a citizen

to any of the names assigned my body

& then how boundless could i make my life

which for all its smallness still exhausts me

balancing act of all my margins all my conjugations

of cannot if i live through the night i will bleed

into all my edges until i am no longer a stroke

of some careless man’s pen after

a particularly liquid lunch churchill was said

to have created [ ] with a stroke of his [ ]

& isn’t a map only a joke we all agreed into a fact

& where can I touch the equator & how will i know

i am touching it & where is the end of my country

the beginning of the next how will i know i’ve crossed over

Safia Elhillo

untitled poem – on travel

It is a pleasant thing to roam abroad,

And gaze on scenes and objects strange and grand;

To sail in mighty ships o’er distant seas,

And roam the mountains of a foreign land.

Effie Afton

Galway Dreaming

I watch the gush of life in the May sunshine.

Galway is slow and golden syrup.

I sit outside the same café all afternoon

slowly sipping beers

watching students cavort

like the swallows above the town,

spring sun shines on my face,

I could not be more happy.

My heart leaps like the fish

in the shimmering river

and I let my gladness run free.

I imagine living here in Ireland,

how I would write another book,

a tender and poetic story and

I’d marry a strapping lad

with soft green-blue eyes,

sometimes we’d drink whiskey

and watch the full moon rise,

my cheeks would be pink

and my body a little plump

but my husband would cherish me,

he’d be faithful and steady and strong,

he’d pick me up and make me laugh like a girl.

I’d have a slower heartbeat.

I’d write poems on the beach each morning

and swim a mile in the bay at sunset.

It would be a good and happy life.

London would become a blurred fog,

a memory of bright lights, big talk and speed