Black Voices

  • A photograph of someone pouring cream into coffee in a cup

    on meeting mark’s grandmother

    By Adrienne Christian
    November 8, 2021 Adrienne Christian
    Photo by Luke Porter / Unsplash Series editor’s note: Sometimes it is good to go back to our old rituals; sometimes even conversations slim with anxiety are welcomed into a home, into a body…
  • A photograph of a tree on a savannah with a blue sky above

    Elegy for Tree

    By Tamara J. Madison
    November 2, 2021 Tamara J. Madison
    Photo by niko / Unsplash Series editor’s note: The tree in Tamara J. Madison’s poem is one that holds a blemished beauty, both life-giving and life-taking. The speaker addresses the tree rig…
  • A black and white photo of a woman's unclothed upper torso, her arms folded across her chest

    POV

    By Ashaki M. Jackson
    October 25, 2021 Ashaki M. Jackson
    Photo by Darian Wong / flickr Series editor’s note: In Ashaki Jackson’s new poem, the Black woman is at the center of the speaker’s attention, which the poet holds in her own imagining, a ra…
  • A photograph of a winged figure looking upward into a perfectly white sky

    Icarus Asks Basquiat to Paint Him

    By Nick Makoha
    October 11, 2021 Nick Makoha
    Photo by J. Triepke / Flickr Series editor’s note: The speaker in Nick Makoha’s poem is an unexpected one: Icarus, coming back to reclaim his narrative, approaching Basquiat with a simple re…
  • A soft-edged painting of a landscape under moonlight with stars or fireflies hanging in the mid-ground

    Fireflies

    By Kamilah Aisha Moon
    September 28, 2021 Kamilah Aisha Moon
    Photo by Parée / Flickr Editorial note: WLT mourns the loss of Kamilah Aisha Moon, whose poem, “Fireflies,” was included in the Black Voices series this year. We hope her light will…
  • A photograph of mature plants in a wheat field, under a cloud-dotted blue sky

    Letters from Exile

    By Romeo Oriogun
    September 23, 2021 Romeo Oriogun
    Photo by Igor Karimov / Unsplash Series editor’s note: In this week’s poem, the speaker finds himself to be on the outside, looking in with an ever-watchful gaze, pondering all the water in…
  • A pregnant woman standing in profile, mostly in silhouette, in front of a draped window

    The Mothers

    By Arao Ameny
    September 16, 2021 Arao Ameny
    Photo by Mulyadi / Unsplash Series editor’s note: The poem this week, “The Mothers,” by Arao Ameny, is less of a poem and more of an offering, a wanting; here is a space where the speaker ha…
  • A photograph of a forest with the sun just barely coming through the canopy

    Two Poems

    By Ariana Benson
    August 25, 2021 Ariana Benson
    Photo by Simone Dalmeri / Unsplash Series editor’s note: With the opening poems of the 2021 series, Ariana Benson resurrects vivid, fleshy worlds, in which Black boys are immersed in fawnhoo…
  • Spray painted words adorn the side of a boarded up building. Text reads: Stop killing black people. Black Lives Matter. No justice. No peace.

    Black Voices 2021: A Series Introduction

    By Mahtem Shiferraw
    August 25, 2021 Mahtem Shiferraw
    Photo by Mahtem Shiferraw When the social uprisings shook the country last summer and reverberated throughout the globe in an astonishingly collapsing wave, we had already been cut a thousand ways, a…
  • A photograph of an orange hued landscape as seen through a rain-swept window

    Ritual Is Journey

    By Chris Abani
    October 9, 2020 Chris Abani
    Photo by Nebojsa Mladjenovic / Flickr Series editor’s note: In Chris Abani’s poem “Ritual Is Journey,” the black man has been laid bare on the page, his histories refocused, and though he or…
  • A surreal collage of human hands grasping hair with flesh like appendages hanging down from the cluster

    mothersline

    By Aracelis Girmay
    October 2, 2020 Aracelis Girmay
    Detail from a photograph of the author’s great-great-grandmother and a photograph of her mother, age eleven. Image courtesy of the author Series editor’s note: In Aracelis Girmay’s new poem,…
  • A close-up detail of Nina Simone's eyes

    Windfall

    By Jamaica Baldwin
    September 23, 2020 Jamaica Baldwin
    Nina Simone Sings the Blues (RCA Victor, 1967) Series editor’s note: In Jamaica Baldwin’s “Windfall,” the self is buried beneath layers and layers of internalized memories, becoming…
  • A girl holds a taut wire above her head with deep space in the background

    Dark Matter Girls

    By Ladan Osman
    September 11, 2020 Ladan Osman
    “Girl and a Margin” Image: Ladan Osman. Collage: Joe Penney. Series editor’s note: In Ladan Osman’s piece “Dark Matter Girls,” the poet quietly asks herself, and by extension us, how we see…
  • A photograph of a stained glass window from inside a darkened room with the color and light through the window projecting on to the floor

    Notes from the Field

    By Jehan L. Roberson
    August 26, 2020 Jehan L. Roberson
    Photo by Daniel McCullough / Unsplash Series editor’s note: What happens in the aftermath of a long, ravaging war? What happens to folks whose country is always at war with them? These are t…
  • A colorful photograph of deep space

    Think of Me, Laughing

    By Major Jackson
    August 19, 2020 Major Jackson
    Photo by Jeremy Thomas / Unsplash Series editor’s note: In Major Jackson’s new poem, “Think of Me, Laughing,” we meet a speaker who is well-acquainted with the habits of sorrow of inhabiting…
  • A black and white photograph of a person jogging toward the camera on a long suspension bridge

    Running

    By Ashia Ajani
    August 13, 2020 Ashia Ajani
    Photo by Jo / Flickr Series editor’s note: In Ashia Ajani’s poem “Running,” the Black body finds itself outdoors, not as a means of escape, rather as a place of exodus, where it can stay mov…
  • A close up photograph of the texture of a teal cloth

    There Is No Scar, Only Absence

    By Saddiq Dzukogi
    August 5, 2020 Saddiq Dzukogi
    Photo by Mitchell Luo / Unsplash Series editor’s note: In Saddiq Dzukogi’s new poem, the speaker observes as a snake shows up unannounced, unsummoned, and sluggishly inserts its head into a…
  • A closeup photograph of a head of kale

    Ode to Kale

    By Hope Wabuke
    July 22, 2020 Hope Wabuke
    Photo by Erda Estremera / Unsplash Series editor’s note: What does it mean for a body to remember its feeding, to have to reckon with its darkest days, days spent eating weeds in the afterma…
  • A photograph of a bright yellow flower with a florescent blue center

    A Memory of Us

    By Safia Elhillo
    July 15, 2020 Safia Elhillo
    Photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash Series editor’s note: I’ve always thought of poetry as a sacred ground to think and write about things we wouldn’t normally do. And in the case of Safia Elh…
  • A painting of two tall cliffs, rendered in yellow

    Seeing

    July 8, 2020 Matthew Shenoda
    "Abstract Yellow Cliffs," Acrylics, 73x50cm by Kazuya Akimoto. Used with permission from the artist. Series editor’s note: In Matthew Shenoda’s new poem, “Seeing,” the writer turns to poetry…
  • A black and white photo of a masked protestor with his hands up

    Before the Riot

    June 24, 2020 Kwame Dawes
    Photo by Koshu Kunii / Unsplash Series editor’s note: Kwame Dawes’s poem is a powerful piece to start off the Black Voices series, and one that fits perfectly into the outrage of the most re…
  • Spray painted words adorn the side of a boarded up building. Text reads: Stop killing black people. Black Lives Matter. No justice. No peace.

    Black Voices: A Series Introduction

    June 24, 2020 Mahtem Shiferraw
    Photo by Mahtem Shiferraw In the aftermath of the senseless deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, and many others before them, it is difficult to think we can still cont…