Summer 2021

Beside the Rivers
by Semein Washington
For five minutes, 
I linger on the news
long enough to see Daniel Cameron,
Kentucky’s State Attorney General,
one of those men 
Black grandfathers tell their Black grandsons 
to mind before they run out to play ball—
a sepia success, stand in front
of a press conference to explain
how no officers involved
in Breonna Taylor’s killing 
were charged in connection with her death,
but with reckless endangerment, 
because every civilian marching downtown 
in Louisville
doesn’t understand local procedure,
though some of them recall, as I do,
police officers at my door, 
in search of someone 
who didn’t live there, demanding entry
and fearful even to allow a child
to put on his pants.

An Excerpt from “Migration”
by Elsie Platzer

There came a time where there were no more days. Each one was the same as the last, and so the meaning of the word dissolved like sugar into water, until the girl could not remember it. Outside, it was light until it was dark, and then dark until it was light. These oscillations held no real significance for the girl, beyond the introductions and ablations of new shadows along the fence line in her backyard. 

The girl slept, woke up, and slept again. All throughout her sleep, no one came and no one went. Time meted itself out by the appearance of needs. If she was thirsty, she poured herself a glass of water. If she was hungry, she ate in lazy conglomerations of ingredients, reclining on a chair on the patio—a hunk of bread, a round of salami, the inner scoopings of a pomegranate, slowly extracted with a pointed spoon. She had taken to buying fruits with sheddable skins. Bananas, mangoes, clementines, kiwis.