i have lived to discover a city, an open road,
a bucket of milk, and two gentle doves.
i have discovered in myself
two frightened birds with miles of dirt road to fly.
in the forest hills spiders and black dogs clamoured.
in the corpses of yellow flowers
a rainbow spun across a darkened sky.
i lived in a street where girls with dark eyes sang,
birds with their wings welcomed a harsh rain.
Mxolisi Nyezwa is founder and editor of Kotaz, now in its fourteenth year.
G. C. WALDREP
I am listening to the slickened sound of the new / wind. It is a true thing. Or, it is true in its falseness. / It is the stuff against which matter’s music breaks. / Mural of the natural, a complicity epic. / The shoals, not quite distant enough to unhear— / Not at all like a war. Or, like a war, in passage,
CAROLINE M. MAR
That's a reconciliation that I'm often grappling with, which is about positionality. What am I responsible for? What's coming up for me; who am I in all of this? How can I be my authentic self and also how do I maybe take some responsibility?
NATHANIEL PERRY
Words can contain their opposite, / pleasure at once a freedom and a ploy— / a garden something bound and original / where anything, but certain things, should thrive; / the difference between loving-kindness and loving / like the vowel shift from olive to alive.
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