I wore low-powered glasses before. I could see myself in the mirror, but not clearly.

For once, I befriended the night's darkness and calm, realizing even the dark carries a light.

It was side of stage I stood, counting breaths, readying for the lights to fade and come up again

as surely as the sun would rise and set

Anything is un-trans-lateable

if you are a bad enough trans-lator

From the 200 billion trillion stars in the galaxy, 

my father gripped one

To this day, most of what we actually know about sex is from Netflix shows, or The Notebook.

Everything we know about ourselves is relayed by sources outside of us.

"Who are they?" Roshni asked her aunt as she poured the chai into different cups

With plates of food in hand, you are forced to greet vaguely familiar faces.

The story my grandfather told continues to shape me today. 

Dr. André studies the intersection of identity, race, identity—and opera. 

It is our job to be allies and fight alongside Black Americans for equality. 

Discrimination on the basis of class is illegal. Yet it exists and blooms in this environment of hate. 

We often forget how Black communities and Asian communities have stood up for each other. 

"For many of us, this is not a new moment in time," says the young Māori activist. 

As early as nine years old, I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, poking and prodding at the skin above my eyes to create double eyelids.

I knew Chinatown best on Saturdays, 

the November kind

Why does the sky appear black from the airplane

even though its sweltering noon on the ground?

Jeepney Smoke seeps through the iron rail

to keep him bloodshot. He burrows in the neck

for two cents, the man 

answering will reach into the ocean

They tell us to put our hands up. Then, they ask us why we moved. Sister, that is why they shoot. Because we move.

As a Haenyeo, a Korean sea-woman, her day was just beginning, even before the sun rose in the bitter oceanic cold to ready herself to dive for her day's catch.

When my mother and father had left for the west, they brought few things with them. 

In the jungles of Aklan stands a statue of a man I've never met.

Stands a monument to a face I've never seen.

Mathematics: prove me

with your trig identities

My words can be a sense of comfort, a feeling of being understood, a thought, an awakening. 

Shirk your sense of responsibility. 

Leave your guilt at the door of progress. 

When I arrive home, there are men outside our cottage. But these are not my dada's friends. 

You have never known those shores or those 

people or those words that sound like a memory

Throughout my many travels, to all sorts of exotic lands, never before have I seen a diet so extraordinary as that of the snamuh.

Don't you swat at a fly. 

Don't you mindlessly shoot that harmless creature to the ground.

you have learned there is both good and bad about where you live.

you have learned the stubbornest people on the planet are Southern. 

I am an American boy

with a Mexican twin. 

In the thousand faceless poems I've read

the moon has never been named a "him."

Negro Swan allows Devonte Hynes to address his struggles as a young black man in the UK.