My flash piece “Role Play” was published in 3Elements Literary Review, just in time for Black History Month. Download the issue here. My work is on pg 24.
"to obtain a submission waiver for Black authors" published in Behemoth Magazine
My hybrid/experimental piece "to obtain a submission waiver for Black authors" was published in Issue 1.5 of Behemoth Magazine.
"best date ever" published in Tidings (2026)
he escorts her loveliness into his rusting ’84 Nissan Stanza, which—
stuck in rush hour traffic—overheats fifteen minutes after leaving
campus, twenty minutes from the first date he painstakingly planned
after she asked him out for Valentine’s Day…
“best date ever” is a college memory in poem form recently published in the latest from Tidings. Read or download the whole anthology here. “best date ever” is on page 39.
Two Poems in Wayfarer Magazine
"Won't you come and Celebrate with me" and "when asked to explain racism as a system of power, again" were published in Wayfarer Magazine.
Two school poems in The Radical Teacher
I am privileged to appear in The Radical Teacher once again with two poems:
“when asked why I don't play well with others” and “when asked why nothing surprises me anymore.” And of course these are true stories.
Read both through the link below.
"Stage Proxemics" [CNF] published in Pangyrus
The good folks at Pangyrus have published me once again. This time in creative nonfiction.
“Stage Proxemics” was a labor of love and part of a trilogy of essays (including “Type Casting,” published in ASP Bulletin).
And, my brother is still a badass.
Two poems in Star 82 Review
Happy to have two short poems appearing in the latest from Star 82 Review:
“‘what is PacMan without the ghosts?’”
&
“watching a production of The Tempest after a colleague asked about my relationship with white women” published in Terrain
My poem “watching a production of The Tempest after a colleague asked about my relationship with white women” was published in Terrain.org as part of their Letters to America series. The link includes a reading of the poem.
The poem contains research on Caliban in The Tempest from The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race by Farah Karim-Cooper.
"oh God! please stop!!" in South Florida Poetry Journal
My poem “oh God! please stop!!” now appears in South Florida Poetry Journal . Bonus: a recording of me reading the piece accompanies it. Trigger warning: historical, graphic racial violence.
Click on the link below and scroll down to my name.
“oh God! please stop!!”
from the back of the class, his cry careens
over the heads of the rest—their stricken faces, jaws slack
or furiously clenched, eyes dewy or attempting to shut out
the assailant in my words—but I refuse. continue explaining
the lynching by car of James Byrd Jr., briefly mentioned
in Rankine’s The White Card, open on their desks. the event
is presented as a turning point, character development for ‘Charles,’
a billionaire with Basquiat’s Defacement on his wall. a news story
whose horror shook him into seeing that racism still existed
in the enlightened, heady days of 1998. a details-oriented educator,
I clarify why ‘Charles’ was so troubled.
Byrd—49, disabled, Black—was walking home
when three white men—one he thought a friend,
had known his whole life—offered him a ride
in a grey Ford pickup. crushed between them,
they forced him to remote woods, kicked and punched
and baseball batted him in and out of consciousness,
spray painted his face blacker, pissed and shat on him,
retrieved a 24-foot-long chain from the truckbed,
noosed it about his ankles, and dragged him for 1.5 miles.
the FBI’s autopsy determined he was conscious―
trying to keep his upper-body off the road-rashing concrete―
until their carefree swerving swung him into a culvert,
which severed his right arm and head. undaunted,
they continued to drag his remainder for another 1.5 miles
to the cemetery of a Black church, where they mutilated
and distributed his corpse to be found in time
for the following morning’s Sunday service.
I tell my class this did not happen in a grainy, black and white photo
of the past. 81 pieces of Byrd were jigsaw-scattered through Jasper, Texas
on June 7th in 1998, two weeks before I graduated from high school,
that I was only two years older than they are now. I remind my stunned―
sobbing, silent—students that I am younger than their parents,
who may send me emails asking why I would subject their children
to these horrors from another time, who may—echoing ‘Charles,’
echoing their children, echoing James Byrd Jr—ask me to please stop.
but the truck didn’t, so I can’t.
"the first letter of Paul to the Church of [name withheld on advice of counsel] published in The New Verse News
Another poem is now appearing in The New Verse News. This time some biblical fanfiction— what the apostle Paul might say to a certain Christian denomination within the US.
“the first letter of Paul to the Church of [name withheld on advice of counsel] is about the ICE detention of Pastor Daniel Fuentes Espinal and uses direct quotes from people my publisher wouldn’t allow me to use. But I still have them. They’re still public on social media. You can do a search.
Two poems in Cultural Daily
I have two new poems appearing in Cultural Daily.: “when asked what poets should do in response” & “when asked to read a poem for the Black History Month assembly, again,” both on the power of poetry (or lack thereof).
(The second poem is a sequel to my previous poem “when asked to read a poem for the Black History Month assembly” also published by CD.).
“There Is No God-Damned Metaphor Here” published in New World Writing Quarterly [CNF]
What started as an interesting physical writing prompt during my Kenyon Workshop Residency, turned into this creative nonfiction piece.
Poetry, the movie Sinners, the Duvalier regime in Haiti, The Cleaning Lady tv show, and more wrapped into this small package.
“There Is No God-Damned Metaphor Here” now appears in New World Writing Quarterly.
Three poems in Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age
I have three poems appearing in Record of Dissent: Poems of Protest in an Authoritarian Age, a free digital chapbook from The Chaos Section Poetry Project. Record of Dissent features 44 poems of protest, resistance, survival, and hope in response to the rising authoritarianism of the Trump era in America.
My three poems are:
“misstra know-it-all” (p. 9),
“when asked for help writing a satire” (p. 38), and
“say what you mean” (p. 58)
"The Quiet Part" [creative nonfiction] published in In Short
My micro-creative nonfiction story “The Quiet Part” no appears in In Short : A Journal of Flash Nonfiction.
victuals and victim do not share a Latin root published in The Prose Poem
The Prose Poem has published another of my ekphrastic works, “victuals and victim do not share a Latin root.”
It is after Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller’s Slave Ship, wax, 1954.
"breach" published in The Prose Poem
My ekphrastic poem “Breach” is after the Alison Saar sculpture by the same name and was recently published in The Prose Poem.
Click image for more details
“Okonkwo returns to Umuofia” at Menino Arts Center
My poem “Okonkwo returns to Umuofia” was on display as part of the Menino Arts Center’s exhibit Images Then Words (January 9 – February 14, 2025), which featured the work of 53 Word Artists responding to 61 pieces by 47 Image Artists. Images juried & curated by Sasja Lucas. Words curated by Holly Guran. View the virtual 3D gallery here.
“Okonkwo returns to Umuofia” is a doubly ekphrastic work, responding both to Sasja Lucas’ The Wrestling Match (pictured below) and Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart.
Sasja Lucas
The Wrestling Match
120mm film photography
8 x 10 in (h x w)
Okonkwo returns to Umuofia
seven years was a long time to be away from one’s clan,
but he would return to his fatherland and fan his fame—
a bush-fire beneath the stiff harmattan wind. he had a plan:
reclaim his land, rebuild his compound, regain his titles and place
among the egwugwu. but Okonkwo was not prepared
for what he found. his motherland was good to him in exile,
kind. but Mbanta was not filled with warriors. they were weak.
how else could they fall from the grand, old ways—the bonds
of kinship—and allow an abominable religion to fester
like an un-lanced boil or an untreated bout of iba? his Umuofia
was feared by her neighbors, known for her power in war
and in magic. her priests and medicine men possessing
the most potent rites and fetishes, the shrine of agadi-nwayi
among them. thus Okonkwo could not believe Obierika’s reports
of home. but by the second market week back, he began to see
the truth. how his brothers strut across the village square
in white shirts and dusky trousers, abandoning the loincloth
and wrappers worn since the founder of the clan engaged a spirit
of the wild for seven days and nights. how his kinsmen drink
palm wine tapped in Umuru from glass bottles, their gourds
and skulls gathering dust on their obi walls. how titled men
allow themselves to be dragged by kotma to the white man’s court,
to be beaten by his perverted justice. how even some elders dance
to the rhythm of the white man’s religion, deaf to the ekwe
and ogene talking across villages, across the clan’s history.
how supposed men stride—hatted heads held high—to and from
their abomination, their church, in the Evil Forest, believing
their Jesu Kristi will save them from the wrath of Ekwensu and Ani,
Amadiora and Chukwu. it was easier when the converts were only
efulefu—sheaths taken into battle, machetes forgotten at home,
the excrement of the clan lapped up by this mad-dog faith. but now
even Ogbuefis have severed their anklets, become as agbala, to join
the Christians’ meager feast of their god-man’s murdered body.
something must be done. but surrounded by so many such as these…
as cold water poured on a roaring fire, he stifles a sorrow, a grief
he has not known since the last days of the son whose name will not
be remembered in the clan and the one who will. his fist aches,
reflexively clenching around the machete resting inside his obi door.
he will shake out his smoked raffia shirt, examine his feathered headgear
and shield to satisfaction. he turns for home as if on springs, heels
hardly touching the ground. as the elders say,
whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight,
know that something is after its life.
Two poems in Lily Poetry Review
I am very proud that two of my ekphrastic poems were published in the latest issue of Lily Poetry Review , guest edited by Anthony Walton and Heather Treseler.
"The Most Dangerous Game" is after a poem by Candice Kelsey (and the short story) of the same name
“La Voix du Silence" is after a painting by Rene Magritte of the same name.
"...could abash the little bird" in The New Verse Review.
My poem “…could abash the little Bird” was published in the inaugural issue of The New Verse Review.
It’s an ekphrastic poem based on Emily Dickinson’s '“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers…”., with a MEH twist.