Reading Ellison on Ellison Avenue by Chrysanthemum
"Our language, only explicit
in books off her shelf.
I carried them home.
To gift me Giovanni means
she had to know: I needed
escape—new rooms to enter
in exchange for my name on record."
I Too Have Been the Girl by Topaz Winters
"Nothing canyon in me. I keep
time in subway stops, scoff at
the aeons between flesh
& its consequence of plastic.
Everything I eat runs
through me as pity.