By Arleen Williams

I am a white woman in her mid-sixties. Spurred by the murder of George Floyd, I embarked on a journey of personal education and became deeply engrossed in social justice reading, devouring the works of Michelle Alexander, James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, Kiese Laymon, Wesley Lowery, Ijeoma Oluo, Mychal Denzel Smith, William Still, Isabel Wilkerson, and others. I read to make sense of the growing violence in our streets and growing discord on the college campus where I had taught for decades. I thought I had a decent understanding of the history of racial injustice and the roots of police violence against people of color in my country. I was wrong.

By Abiola Regan

His innocence, a yang to the yin of devastation

Warm, dark eyes blinking love and acceptance.

A desire to preserve childhood until he’s grown,

Weighed against the need to keep him informed,

Knowing there’s too much beyond our control.

His brown skin draws in those leading with light

And sends out a flare for those seeking to harm.

His beauty poses a threat. His curiosity, an offense.

But we can’t live on eggshells. Not every moment.

By Catherine Harnett

Of course the world is not the same since the pandemic began; 600,000 people died, families are bereft, we have no idea how the interruption will affect children in the long run. And first responders’ lives will never be the same.

Now, in this sudden return to freedom, I am more afraid. Sadder. Less hopeful. I don’t want my life to be the same: aimlessly shopping, eating out, content with the day-to-day. My life was safe and full this last year; no luxuries, no pampering, thoughtful. Part of a world-wide community of hope: millions of strangers who saw and felt the same things, despite distance or borders.

I thought about each person who delivered food, cared how their families were faring, felt thankful they had jobs. Peoples’ stories, good and wretched, touched me. It was easy to be empathetic; Covid made my heart expand.

By Phillip Shabazz

a bloody bandage from a regime 

a rag revolving the red cross 

an old bleach in the eye

a tumor bloated infection 

a badge on hairless skin 

a spit poisonous sucked by the tongue

a torch to incinerate a black Jesus 

a fire on the sepulcher come resurrection 

and not the hidden self-portrait 

at some picnic, but the public crucifixion by

By Lewton Thomas Jones

On our 2020 pandemic viral reboot

A year moved like flagella in a butcher’s sink

days incubated  into 2021

June one we convened the backyard

gazing @ my douglas fir  

lifted vertical in sight sense and sound

on a pillow gazing frenetic heat

don’t need to book shows from half wits

anymore

By Russell Willis

Is it that we must,

or that we can, dream

that we can know

and understand, that

prods us, sometimes

sweeps us into the next?