BLACK WARRIOR REVIEW ONLINE
BOYFRIEND VILLAGE
THE UGLY BOYFRIEND
THE UGLY
BOYFRIEND
Welcome to the Village with All of the Boyfriends
by Brandi Wells, 2018
Working from Home
Kanak Kapur
The curtains buzz like wet white sugar. Outside, past the bald neighbor’s garage, past his school-bound children, the morning sun moves on a set of leaves.
Ode to the Cupboard Filled with Plastic Bags
Huan He
The strange thing about apartments is that their kitchens look the same: elementary school wood, a jury of cabinets, the same years of plastic bags my mother keeps tightly wound as her hair bun.
Best Believe This is Free
London Pinkney
Best believe I’m only alive in places
where women-and-the-gurls laugh freely.
Their joy in the Key of Safety
signals that this
is one of the few places we are free.
Webcam: A Manual
Chloe Martinez
Page 1: Know your product
1. The eye of god.
2. Insert message to the beyond here.
3. A shape contains us / we are shape containers.
Our Rustbelt Hometown Has Been Shrinky-Dinked
Clancy Tripp
We’re children of the dent corn & the
bonafides atop our bestsellers declaring our lives “stark!” and “bracing!” come two to a pack like toothbrushes & yes we have those.
Poem About Only Beauty
Zefyr Lisowski
My beauty, I learn, is the kind
that suppresses things.
I suppose most people must see
their notings of it
as a benevolent affirmation.
Two Poems
Oak Morse
I’m a hot ass thing, but Love, you play these dangerous games and my empty years are stacking up fast like memes.
Because the world is trying to kill you, have some tonic herbs
Lucy Zhang
matured, aged, we only want the sweet inners, protection deshelled, demembraned, discarded.
Editor and Designer Jiaming Tang
Editorial Team Josh Brandon & Kelsey Nuttall