Beauty by Warsan Shire Beauty My older sister soaps between her legs, her hair a prayer of curls. When she was my age, she stole the neighbour's husband, burnt his name into her skin. For weeks she smelt of cheap perfume and dying flesh. It's 4 a.m. and she winks at me, bending over the sink, her small breasts bruised from sucking. She smiles, pops her gum before saying boys are haram, don't ever forget that. Some nights I hear her in her room screaming. We play Surah Al-Baqarah to drown her out. Anything that leaves her mouth sounds like sex. Our mother has banned her from saying God's name. Poet: @War...

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"The Children," by Donald Revell The Children In three directions are two storms. I instruct the edges of my hands to become irises, to shatter in that way, in three directions. There's nothing behind me. Viols claw beneath our fences at the elevation of sound to pure unsanctity, the moment of simultaneity: airplanes seeming to collide and not colliding, the crow alighting in the manner of a seabird, the carbomb a more than momentary poppy. The bad total of death points one direction. It moves at the edge of my hand at the memorial service, viols useless now laid acr...