4270 Search results for "story"

by Jari Bradley During the peak of the pandemic in 2020, there were numerous online poetry readings being held for the public to attend. I was just finishing my Master of Fine Arts program after three years on the East Coast, and with all the calamity that the world felt comprised of at that time, […]

Throughout my work creating collages, and scouring the web for meaningful art, I have found thousands of images of unidentified Black people. These photos of Black women, children, men, and their families, are all with unknown origins. The archives show blank faces that stare at the camera, remaining still because the slightest move will ruin […]

By Sherronda  J. Brown Seems like every year I learn some new factoid about how plantations operated during the time of chattel slavery of African peoples in the Americas. I inevitably come across another unfortunate piece of knowledge that I wish I never had to know. At the same time, I always understand how it’s […]

We’ve already been taught LGBTQ history. Unfortunately, too many of us don’t even know that we have been. We’ve already heard countless lectures about icons who happened to be queer—learned about their lives and work, read their words, recited their speeches, seen them remembered through art and poetry, and heralded them as some of the […]

I imagine that I would be a historian, a social librarian of sorts, whenever Black liberation is realized, and I imagine that my role wouldn’t look much different from the work I am already doing: Helping to keep Black histories. For as long as I’ve been aware of my Blackness as a threat to whiteness […]

CW: Mention of child loss Everything is a cult. All flesh is bound to shift. Religion is a cloak, pockmarked with heartache, torture, and selfishness. These are the facts of my world, its edges stacked on top of each other and topped with salty syrup. Life is an ever revolving door of orange desert sand […]

by Vernon  Jordan, III She sat in the back of the joint, eyeing him. From over the shoulder of his bass, he noticed her fingers around the rim of a glass, miming the bass notes. He was the player, but so was she. Rooted, was their first glance, she minded him the way trees mind […]

by Janyce Glasper Hannah Bledsoe loved Linda Crawford. Yet Hannah desperately needed a quiet, isolated place to paint alone. One simply could not crash on a college friend’s couch forever. She found salvation in the good neighborhood— a drafty basement converted into a studio apartment. The tightly jarred windows and cracked ceilings poorly congealed together […]

The ghost in the wall knocked loudly above the girl’s head and she sprung from her sleep, getting her foot tangled in the clutches of her sheets before landing on her knees with a thud. A long wail escaped her throat as she winced, pushed herself up, and limped out of the room as fast […]

We search for the body of the ghost’s sister underneath what is left of the fifteen level building. It’s mid morning and the sky is black, its marine layer covered in thick fog and ash. All around us the packed city spreads open like a gate, beckoning. The world is quiet now, with everyone huddled […]

by Dom Alexander Rummaging through a dead man’s possessions is, perhaps, the strangest thing I’ve ever done. I sit on the floor in his room. The setting, orange sun seeps through the window. I breathe in the pungent cologne, still clinging onto curtains. The carpet sinks, coinciding with the dancing footsteps of a ghost, stepping […]

Editor’s Note: This month at BYP, we will be exploring the US Elections & Family/Parenting issues, and we are interested in publishing works that address these topics. How has our political system been working for and against us? What dynamics are different today? How should we prepare for the presidential election, and what is the […]