The Village

I Think I’m Going to Raise Hell: In the Depths of Texas with Denita Jones

On a Tuesday in Neptune Beach, Florida, at a polling site, the air was thick with humidity. The enduring heat lingered alarmingly through the South’s November as Election Day loomed. A much more tangible and immediate theft of air awaits Americans driving past Orange Air Pollution Watch signs that line highways. A suffocating environmental threat expands with every new road lane that is painted. When Florida’s imprisoned population of 157,000 people sit behind bars in the sweltering heat, a drive to a polling site just ain’t been doing it.

By Yumna Elhdari

The Self

to mama

Matrilineal bonds and girlhood is on my mind, always. This poem came to be after reflecting on my relationship with my mother and the gaps in our lineage that I may never come to understand. Growing up, my mother would consistently recall her childhood home and a number of fruit trees her mother pruned, one being a cherry tree. In this poem, I allow myself to reflect on my grandmother’s backyard—a woman I never got to meet in a setting I will never see. Though in reality I play the role of estranged queer child, in this piece I allow myself to reimagine a relationship with both my mother and grandmother, one that is still touched by the rotting of time, but also softened by motherly love.

By Atarah Israel