black like
i am black like all things black
wanted for everything but the flesh
noise to anything arrhythmic
an ankle of gold shackled to an ankle of gold
the skin rubbing to flake off ash
letting something of the name be free
but ain’t all skin dead once left homeland
ain’t all tongues a north star until dimmed
a boy with a taste for the river
but yet in fear of any body of water
that he can’t spit out
This selection comes from Summertime Fine, available from Variant Literature. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.
| JASON B. CRAWFORD (He/They) is a black, nonbinary, bi-poly-queer writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. In addition to being published in online literary magazines, such as High Shelf Press, Wellington Street Review, Poached Hare, The Amistad, Royal Rose, and Kissing Dynamite, he is the Chief Editor for The Knight’s Library. Jason is a cofounder of the Poetry Collective MMPR, a group of poets who came together for laughs, bad memes, and nerd culture. He is also the recurring host of the poetry section for Ann Arbor Pride. Crawford has his Bachelors of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University. Nilsa Rivera Castro writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe and the Non-Fiction Editor of Doubleback Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Selkie Literary Magazine, and Writing Class Radio. She’s currently an MFA Nonfiction candidate at Vermont College of Fine Art and lives in Riverview, Florida. |
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