How to Not Get Killed by the NYPD

  How to Not Get Killed by the NYPD Metta Sáma   When you see the pitch-perfect black 4-door shaded windows roll up on you, don’t grip your wheel. Casually look over your shoulder as a shaded window slips down. Don’t think drive-by. Don’t remember history. It’s only the police. Keep your hands on the wheel. In plain view. It’s the police. Keep your hands on the wheel. The light will turn in your favor. Don’t drive off. Keep your hands on the wheel. Wait, with your left foot pressed hard on the clutch, right foot pressed lightly on the brake. Hands on the wheel. Raise an eyebrow when the police officer raises a question: what’s the speed limit in New York City? Note: the correct answer is 30, no matter the street, no matter the avenue, no matter the faster moving highway traffic, the answer is 30           30. Don’t ask him to clarify. Don’t smile. You are anxious. You will smile. Don’t explain when asked why you’re smiling. Don’t explain your explanation when asked why you’re explaining. Don’t say: we’re blocking the road. Don’t say: we’re triple-parked. Don’t ask them to clarify the infraction. You are the infraction. Don’t...
Read More

Two Poems to #StandWithFerguson

    CONVERGENCE Nancy Bevilaqua For Gaza, for Ferguson   Back behind the barricades they’re saying what the looting means. Call it full-stop mercenary. Manholes steam. Fortune for the one who finds me opened like a can of combustion, thrown down for the last time at a stoplight where it goes like this; future nixed behind the station, soda cans and broken bats, my heart on ice this time. You’ve seen my necklace; it is mine and just to die for in a yard beside the candy store, my longest finger ticking off the sounds of heat.     *     ELEGY FOR THE WOMEN D.M. Aderibigbe   Let us not pretend the sky Is always plaited with beauty, Even the gods are not too perfect. Like Staten Island, the sky Of Ferguson is clouded With police uniforms; Like Garner, teenage Brown Is swallowed by a cop’s fingers. A schoolboy’s body Empty like a soda can Is found at the doorway Of his grandmother’s house. All the women in his life gather Around what the police’s anger Has left of him; each calling His name, as though death Is a disease noise could cure. Each calling his name, Their hearts driven...
Read More

Introducing Nepantla

The Inaugural Issue of Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color launched this morning. Read the Issue here. And join Apogee Journal and Our Word in celebrating tonight at Columbia University, Dodge Hall 413 from 7-9.