Quincy Scott Jones is a Black American poet and the author of How to Kill Yourself Instead of Your Children (C&R Press, 2021). A Cave Canem Fellow, Jones is a professor and lives in New York City.

Red slippers in a shop-window; and outside in the street, flaws of gray, windy sleet! Behind the polished glass the slippers hang in long threads of red, festooning from the ceiling like stalactites ...

Bob: Can I be your lazy eye, your wander- lust, your grave without a headstone, your bleeding gums, your buck teeth and your walk bowlegged at the knee? Can I be your fortune hunter, your glimpse of ...

White in the moon the long road lies, The moon stands blank above; White in the moon the long road lies That leads me from my love. Still hangs the hedge without a gust, Still, still the shadows stay: ...

to repeat it. For a while—no, for a long while—it was like a prayer, rising to the skies, morning after morning, like a siren that wouldn’t quiet. And then I remembered other things: the way I walk ...

At loyalty and love’s command, And that was the case to carry it in.

Margaret Widdemer, born on September 30, 1884, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was a poet, novelist, and children’s writer.

Jealousy. Whispered weather reports. The lure of the land so strong it prompts gossip: we chatter like small birds at the edge of the ocean gray, foaming. Now sand under sand hides the buried world, ...

to be benefitted by it,” wrote Brigham Young.

As due by many titles I resign Myself to thee, O God. First I was made By Thee; and for Thee, and when I was decay’d Thy blood bought that, the which before was Thine. I am Thy son, made with Thyself ...

begin long before you hear them and gain speed and come out of the same place as other words. They should have their own place to come from, the elbow perhaps, since elbows look funny and never weep.

To what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I ...