by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | Apr 25, 2026 | Featured, Poetry
This poem is a secret after Elma Mitchell It doesn’t trust paper. It writes itself in my head where no one can reach it, laugh, tear it to shreds, or call it a waste of space, a disgrace. A poem is grace, a prayer, my longing for more than I am....
by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | Apr 24, 2026 | Featured, Poetry
The Day Nothing Happened It was a quiet day— no bad news, no sudden loss, no reason to hold my breath. I didn’t notice it at first, how rare that is. The sky stayed where it was, the ground didn’t give way, my phone remained silent in the best...
by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | Apr 23, 2026 | Featured, Poetry
Lot’s Wife I think today of the boy in choir class who closed his eyes when we sang about Jesus. Who swayed, as if the Lord himself was in the room. I sat in the back row and braided my girlfriend’s hair. Men are allowed to worship each other. To...
by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | Apr 22, 2026 | Featured, Poetry
‘Attention, after all is prayer’ (Jo Bell) We saw a kingfisher threading the bright needle of his body along the river. We saw a shag, stamping her prehistoric shadow on the sky. We saw a hobby, compact, fierce, not a sinew out of place, alert and...
by Zakia Carpenter-Hall | Apr 21, 2026 | Featured, Haibun, Tanka, Haiku & Haiga, Poetry
Pipeline We walk from cane fields, cotton in our nightshirts, sweet sugar on our teeth. My peoples chant strong magic. My peoples beatbox in jail. Roger Robinson won the T.S. Eliot Prize (2019), the RSL Ondaatje Prize (2020), the...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 20, 2026 | Featured, Poetry
The Double My double sits before me now. I stare deep into her, as I do every day after midnight. When I raise my hands, she raises hers. When I wink with my right eye, she winks back. My childish braid sticks its tongue out at us both....
