CANNIBAL

by Indran Amirthanayagam

On 9/11/2001 guns were turned 

on us as aeroplanes Noam Chomsky 

explained before a crowd 

at the University of Madras. 

Now, twenty-four years later 

guns are again pointing at us, 

dropping down from 

the Blackhawk hanging in the sky 

over a building full of citizens 

and migrants, brown-skinned, 

shivering in the night air, ziptied, 

naked, in bedclothes, stolen from 

sleep and asked to produce birth 

certificates, passports, doors 

to their apartments bashed in 

by three hundred masked

and camouflaged men showing

no search warrant, wearing 

Infrared shades, an operation 

to neutralize a migrant, deliverer 

of food, driver, store clerk,  

runner for the exchange of milk 

and eggs, not the gang member 

the Department of War Propaganda

deems reasonable cause for 

the night raid on the South Side 

against bona fide Americans

in these United States.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes a Substack. His publications include El bosque de deleites fratricidas ( RIL Editores), Seer (Hanging Loose Press),The Runner's Almanac (Spuyten Duyvil), Powèt Nan Pò A: Poet of the Port (Mad Hat), and Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (Broadstone Books). He is the translator of Kenia Cano’s Animal For The Eyes (Dialogos Books) and Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.

BROWN STONED BITCHIN

by Danielle Cowan

Top 5 Stories on Brownstoner This Week: A Bed Stuy Church Faces Demo for Apartments

Yo, bro can I codeswitch
And just bitch bout the comparatively rich
Cuz I high-key think this piece in the Brownstoner utter bullshit
Tell me why it cost the community a whole ass church for a Bedstuy block of expensive ass apartments
Maybe these canceled fried fish feasts where coconut cake recipes written in cramped  handwriting come through as a gentler form of generational wealth
ain’t mine to count
But this bum ass journalist out here jacking the space’s
Jeopardized pre-Civil War story
Like she finna bless the block
With some of that good grant-funded participatory placemaking glory
Like a  revolting remix with  alternate universe anything NOT for the culture Kendrick
Her bars broken up by
Compelling add copy, counting clout as
Antique crown molding, and picture rails which I never peeped
And probably wouldn’t know how to work
Pulls me back to my own crib
with the claw-foot bathtub that could be beautiful
Them thick ass prewar walls whose spackles put sharp ends to 10 year old skipping and 20 something Pilates pumping
We got a goofy ass Zillow page gassing up original gas fixtures
They been tryna buy us out
For some bread we would’ve bled
In  two years of local living 
Wising up with Newly rent unstabilized doubt
Shit started around the same time
Someone sued cause they seen
That unnecessary ass door knocking for landlords
instead of Power tight knocking out kingpin antics
Got Breonna Taylor dead.
Rest in peace Breonna and come back bro
My bad if you thought it was all bad
See they built these breakfast bars in the apartments upstairs
and now they be going for 5000 a pop
So I swear it was a scene
straight up from one of them papers with positive statistics
Paying respect to that low-income colored social capital
Legacies of beastie bachelors degree and first car funds lack
Sis who stay
holding 5K for them rent checks
But can’t hold doors
Switched up damn quick 
When she needed the Super’s number

Danielle Cowan is an NYC born and based, blind, queer and Blackarican native New Yorker dabbling in organizing, poetry and performance. Her work is fascinated with what it means for bodies and places to hold multiple, sometimes culturally conflicting identities and playing with ways to write and perform within shared histories and trauma. She has had poems published in Causeway Lit’s revolution issue, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and elsewhere. She has read in The Rally Reading Series and received fellowships from More Art and Office Hours Poetry Workshop.