home does not have a door

Sarah Hopkins

A wooden cabin filled with mahogany floors. The exterior is driftwood crafted with nails and salt. Floorboards bear prints from favored paths. Splinters have worn out as the sea air is unforgiving to foreign violence.

Nestled in the delta, the grass grows through the slats.

Green and yellow catch the secrets of the willows. The reeds graze scarred knees in carbon-soaked earth. Faint frogs grace the dew. Between the trees, the fog lies heavy.

Eucalyptuses and firs rest taller than this morning was willing to.

I stand barefoot on the porch before the air guides me into the rocking chair. My tea steeps in a chipped ceramic mug. The natural dialogue of creaking joints and rustling leaves is a comfort few can afford.

Pan-Africa, Borders, Personality, and Diasporic Pains #1

Inioluwa Aloba

I often forget people are soft things

When I press my lips together they are stiff

So I forget that I am a soft thing

Full of life and blood from the clay of the earth

Molded by a porous land

Where bodies flowed across each other like rivers

Where stories transmuted before your ears

But the truth of it was fixed

Where everything living was a permeable substance

But blood has birthed borders soaked deep in dirt,

Around the rivers

And diffused deep into the sea

The same deep dark earth that made me

Is in kin I know and love

And more I will never meet

We were from a mass of Earth

Now fixed with more shapes

Than just bodies

Defined by sharp and jagged lines,

Hot tears bubbling and spilling over the surface,

And a couple dollar signs

This continental illness has attached itself to me

What was once a soft malleable thing

Is now a body forced to become

Evicted from becoming

Now a constant stiff lip

Weed: a dandelion speaks, my thumb and pointer on his hips

Josh Nkhata

To be unearthed is to be unbirthed.

Did you expect something more?

If I’m invasive then let me up your nose.

Isn’t that where fathers sit,

quietly, hypoallergenically?

When you sneeze I will come forth

Pappus unbound. The bitten cattail.

Cotton mouth surprise. Hiss. Hiss. Hiss.

Since you do not call me you probably do not know

I float on the wind.

That is how I got here.

You float too, boy.

Who taught you the world was omnidirectional?

You do not get to drift, listlessly back.

You do not get to flit and flutter yourself home.

The trade winds blow from darker continents to light.

That is why it is so wonderful to be in the ground.

Eyelids ruddy. Teeth muddy.

So dumb, unfounded, you think the hand is a hug.

Have you ever been hugged with fists clenched?

The pull is like a cramp in your thigh.

If you can be rebirthed now is as good a time as any.

That blow is like a kiss

They wish your memory away.