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September 2023

Cover artist: Tré Seals

what if poetry isn’t enuf?
watchu gonna do then?

Ntozake Shange
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  • Ntozake Shange
  • Zakaria Mohammed
  • Brandon Shimoda
  • Rachel Mennies
  • Harryette Mullen
See Table of Contents
From this Issue
    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Tartarean Sun

      By Kara Krewer
      Under which she pruned
      the peach trees and a tiny gateway
      opened in her spine. That pain
      distilled there like a drop
      of molten glass. And was the first of many
      chambers to form.

      There was her bedroom,
      where she bloomed
      in the white fog of sleep
      and so...

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    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine From “Spring and All”

      By Cathy Park Hong
           mak is the touch
      of the potter, the thumbprint
      on clay
      the unfinished warp of wood
      and braille
      of grain

      and knob
      of rope that hangs
      the squid that is dried
           for days
      then eaten

      with wine
      fermented from
           dredges
      of rice—

      the Joseon potter
      adjoins two hemispheres to make
      a white
      lopsided moon

      exalt in these
      imperfections

                       the act
      of creation...

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    • poem

      Appeared in Poetry Magazine Self-Portrait as Out-Fighter

      By Camille Rankine

      a man I’ve never met tells me to open
      like a flower      but a flower cut

      too soon won’t soften
      into bloom       it stays

      like a fist     so like a fist
      I leave a mark

      and all the heart I have
      inside this tidy vessel    I’m disruption

      the...

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Table of Contents

Poems
MY NAME BACK TO ME: NTOZAKE SHANGE
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