Chess

Poetry, Alicia Brown

Let me tell you how bad it is.

I wrote about mangoes one time and received backlash.

Overstepped my black path

Furrowed brows or blank stares had never infuriated me more.

And that’s this place for you,

Midwestern America

You say I don’t fit, that I’m missing my mark.

Let us not forget

That Africans are some of the most profound artists

There are,

Let it sit.

Chinua Achebe

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Namwali Serpell Zambia

My people accomplish so much more than

You are willing to admit.

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Alicia Brown is a Creative Nonfiction poet and writer. She is pursuing a BA in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. Growing up as a quiet child in an impoverished neighborhood in the city, she always had a passion for writing romance and nonfiction stories as an outlet, a way to tell her story through characters, as well as depictions of life through her eyes.