#the missing slate

[lifeinpoetry]

i am tired in the new dark

& ready to confirm whatever he decides i am for a moment of quiet      moment to rest

my loosened hair smells of coal floats over the backseat like smoke

— Safia Elhillo, from “On Eid We Slaughter Lambs & I Know Intimately the Color,” published in The Missing Slate

[themissingslate]

For the longest time I thought the night was furred, a mass of soft hair fallen each dusk.

Meg Reynolds, from ‘Vigil’. Published in The Missing Slate.

[wordsdancemag]

The Missing Slate publishes fiction, poetry, essays, reviews and criticism weekly and quarterly from around the globe.

“When Wee surprises, she does so with astonishing clarity.” —from the lovely review of @natalieweepoetry's Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines by Pratyusha Prakash up on The Missing Slate, thank you so much!

[themissingslate]

Didn’t I adore you harder than silence?

Nathalie Handal, excerpt of ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’. Published in The Missing Slate’s special issue: Poems Against Borders.

[themissingslate]

We were tangueros of the same tile, tropical byway, creek mist, and love’s insomnia under Venus.

Sergio A. Ortiz, from ‘Invitation to Dust’. Published in The Missing Slate.

[themissingslate]

this sorrow-of-home-girl this river-of-bees-girl this blood-honey-girl this night-singing-girl this throat full of ghosts

Sarah Lubala, from ‘Portrait of a Girl at the Border Wall’. Published in The Missing Slate’s special issue: Poems Against Borders.

[themissingslate]

there was something worth seeing through the mist that wouldn’t clear – a boy, a word, a note, a deer.

Helen Bowell, from ‘Note from Orchestra’. Published in The Missing Slate.

[themissingslate]

The word crumbles with the arrival of its other half       the word of nothingness and the placeless is the staple of my people they cannot ensure a clean death for me they cannot ensure my reincarnation back to those lands for my heart will start calling others — when the breath is crystalline

Elif Sezen, from ‘The Word’. Published in The Missing Slate.