What goes into a poem? The cover of our third annual Lit Issue–with art from Keara McGraw–offers one recipe for a poem, while its contents offer recipes of several other kinds. You’ll find in these pages not just the work but what comes before it: the emotional ties and engagement with place that render these words so vivid.
From E’mon Lauren to Dan Sullivan, the original poetry that opens the issue grasps onto the warning Haki Madhubuti offers in his interview with Kevin Coval: “If you don’t know who you are, anybody can name you. And they will.” The need to name is predicated on self-knowledge; you’ll find the same instinct in poems from Brighton Park middle-schoolers and budding Young Chicago Authors. Their language does not narrow but rather breaks open the gridlines of power, intimacy, and lived experience to touch all at once. They share this generosity of knowledge with reprinted zines, which let you peer into a carefully crafted world you can hold and hear.
The interviews and features that close the issue do what journalism always should: they give access to worlds that you can step into fully. Like the other pieces, they open what it means to have written—what it takes, and where it takes you.
POETRY & PROSE
Out South, On Drowning, 75th | Immanuel Sodipe
Coltrane Ain’t This Blue, Colonel Sanders | O.A. Fraser
Black Boy Brown, Nostalgia | Chirskira Caillouet
A Perfect Little Girl | Stephen English
Where Do Brown Boys Go To Die? | Sarah Gonzalez
“What’s it Like Working in a Gallery?” | Charles Daston
Bricks in the Yard (for Diane Latiker) | Dan Sullivan
Crossing the Desert | Nicole Bond
Black Magic | Onam Lansana
“Are There No Workhouses?” | Diane O’Neill
Kerry Wood | Jack Murphy
Speak | E’Mon Lauren
See Me | Sharon Dukes
The Dragon Slayers | Poems from Brighton Park Elementary Schoolers
Write to the City | Poems from Young Chicago Authors
ZINES
The Sick Muse | Sasha Tycko, Noah Jones, Jol(ene)isha W/e
F.E.M.M.E.: Queer Theories of Silence | Amber Sollenberger
How to Stay Alive! at Lakeshore Psychiatric | Anonymous
Brown & Proud: Knowing Your Worth | Sarah Gonzalez & Rich Gutierrez
FEATURES
Every Person is a Philosopher | Darren Wan
In Your Neighborhood | Sarah Claypoole interviews Eve Ewing and Nate Marshall
On the Block | Maha Ahmed
Confronting Evil | Kevin Coval interviews Haki Madhubuti
A New Take on YA at the Library | Natalie Friedberg
To Be Free | Anne Li