• Art and Photography,  Poetry

    Five Poems and Photography by Leslie King

    We. The(m) People.

    They killin us. Dead.
    My Mama is dead.
    Killed her, too.
    Them CIA drugs.
    Them “projects.”
    Them homeless shelters.
    I am an experiment.
    Black life in America is a science project.
    Like welfare.
    No acres. No mule.
    No real liberty.
    But plenty-o-methadone
    laced with signatures
    on bills that act.
    Soothe them with
    pseudo freedom.
    Kill ‘em with
    Black claustrophobia.
    Black desperation.
    Black plagues.
    Black plaques
    for Corrupt Cop of Year!
    Slaughter the best of ’em.

  • Corona Chronicle,  Nonfiction

    In Remembrance of Summer by Gina Chung

    Above: Standing Girl, Back View by Egon Schiele


     

    Of all the things that I’d like to be doing now, instead of waiting for things to get better, waiting until there are no longer sirens haunting my neighborhood every hour with their banshee wails, waiting until it feels safe to no longer feel so afraid—I’d like to be wearing a light cotton dress on a hot summer day here in Brooklyn, on a rooftop that’s really just a glorified patch of silver-painted asphalt but feels like something holy in the orange glow of a July sun.

  • Art and Photography,  LIVE with LIT,  Prose

    Black Is Over (Or, Special Black) by Tressie McMillan Cottom with Artwork by Merav Kamel

    Above: from the Sketchbook of Merav Kamel


    I’m looking for a mixed girl Asian, Jamaican
    I’m looking for a mixed girl Puerto Rican, Haitian
    I’m looking for a mixed girl
    Cuban and White
    I’m trying to get mixed up tonight like
    Excuse me miss, what’s your name, where ya
        from, can I come

    —T-Pain, “Mix’d Girl”

     

    “Black people are over.” That is how it was said to me once.