About the Feature

Photo by Kyla Duhamel

My ma

said agony

said hurt

said she’d be

damned

if pain

ain’t the one

thing all folk

say’s true

says all folk bow

when pain

huck

her elbow

across they neck

all folk

kneel

when pain

bite

dog-sure

at the belly

of old knees

when pain

rolls through

this town

even the trees

burst

at the seams

she said.

About the Author

Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley is currently the Tickner Writing Fellow and recipient of a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellowship as well as scholarships from Kundiman, Tin House, Sewanee, and VONA. He belongs to the Onondaga Nation of Indigenous Americans in New York. Peep his work from 2017 in Best New Poets (ed. Natalie Diaz), Boston Review, Iowa Review, Narrative, Ninth Letter, Pank, PEN America, the Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and Tin House, among others.