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Untitled (Mufa)

Somewhere there is a river
full of dead things, asking me
when I will be added to their
collection. My answer is
always the same, I’m waiting
to be enough soil to sprout
flowers. A garden of
geraniums bellowing from my
chest. I can’t just be a list of
black names we write on
picket signs and t-shirts,
something must grow here.
Surely I was not put on this
earth simply to die.

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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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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sonnet for the black body turn ghost

We give black boys so much grief for their bones
Rip the teeth from the gum and let them hang
What body of melanin does not drown?
Search for a life raft to rescue the skin,
the mouth, the eyes, the hair, the culture lost
Don’t love songs still end in a funeral?
We sing the songs about our children gone
The dust in an empty room left behind
The marching on stolen soil last so long
And yet those children never return home
We chant/and chant/and cry/and chant/and chant
and chant/and chant/and chant/and chant/and chant
And still the boy stays in the ground all bone

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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Untitled (Teagu)

nikki say
ain’t no black like

a sunday dinner at big mama’s house
where everyone opens a container of come here

and is fed for the summer
big mama cooks from the heritage of open house
where every mouth has a spot at the table
a neighborhood of kin whipped dark
linda always used to talk about the celebration

we would stir into the pot
a boiled heep of unfiltered laughs

seasoned and held in the bottom of the jaw
ain’t nothing else ever been that baked into us
and ain’t nothing else ever will be again

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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Dairy Queen

As kids, we used to mix every flavor at the
Slurpee Machine. Didn’t matter if it was
Coke, melon, blue raspberry, and apple.
We’d drink until our tongues turned a dull
purple and laughed at the first person to get
a brain freeze. Every Friday, we begged to
go down to Dairy Queen for a large cone.
Mama always got hers dipped in chocolate,
rolled in nuts. Ryan and I would race to see
who could finish our ice cream first, cone
and all, then complain that nothing was left
for us to enjoy. We never even gave it time
to melt on my mama’s backseat. See, that
was my childhood, understanding
everything would be temporary. The boy
who became my best friend from down the
street, until he moved and we moved and I
watched him change. Started to only get the
cherry slushies and somehow the tongue
came out pink. I tucked everything about my
old block in my toy box, left it at the house
when I moved away. Ain’t nothing sweet
left for me in that hood. Where the ice
cream stays temporary, time keeps moving
until it’s gone.

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.