Articles

My first sense of the sea was that briny scent, the waves teal and tinged with white froth, and they hurled themselves into this pristine white sand. As far as a child can have a transcendent experience, this was it.

Like you, I’m on a journey, though where I’m going / changes with each moment.

The snake contorts and / stiffens grapples for a foothold Its body / becomes letters scrawled in shingled light

But it unfolded itself, and, like a long-held secret, its wings swelled wide enough to span her palm. Then she saw the color it had been keeping close: hind wings emblazoned with what shone like blue eyes, rimmed with gold and mounted on a concentric field of black.

On my prow, the dove; / from my brow, every animal paired.

At three, I saw the shade of living light. / At eight, I was enclosed as an oblate. / The universe is an egg, I said, / and the nuns promoted me.

A poem for lost love. “If I wash myself / where will you go?”

You are not here. / Just this precious, flawed body, briefly home / to your soul.

Jon Henry photographs Black mothers and sons across America.

Hunger is what drives, / unloveliest of urges, most / appealing to the gaping grave.