a transcription of the poem read on the home page of this issue

by David Mills

I’m what happens when a house breathes
out; sore, black breath in a New York throat.
Trapped caterpillar. What they think
of me—owners of these homes
and white master who hires me out

to black master sweep. Elbows, ankles
knees up zigzag chimneys: squeeze
of heat and dusk. Soot, head to toe: dirt
thick as a shirt. Palms facin’ out; stomach
up against and empty. My days a brick

wide and a brick and a half long: I could
die here. But brush above my head
I chuck soot; chip tar wit’ a scraper;
black rain, pepperin’ my neck, hot rim
of my eyes. Filth to the sides of flues,

mazes sticky with poison, hearth
to cap damper. Started prenticin’
when I was six. Now
Eighteen Flesh leathery. Ankles
swelled to black apples. Growin’:

a stunt. Can’t say which is better:
cramped heat or winter’s chill.
My cry—Soot-O, Weep, Weep!—
on the street or pinched in the flue.
My life up in nothin’ but smoke.

Poem copyright 2019 by David Mills. All rights reserved.

See more poems from David Mills on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Dear… Sincerely…,” “Up Up And… (The Speed Boy Interlude),” and  “Momentary Arizona.” 

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Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt

by David Mills

(Before the movie “Test Pilot” starts, Harry Stewart Jr. ponders what Clark Gable’s character does for work in the film.) 

Before Gable goes up, ground testing comes down  
to up-on-jacks flight simulations and swinging landing  
gear on the ground (or just a pinch above), comes down  
to propping a plane on fat air bags and sweeping  
control surfaces, checking the attitude of the aircraft  
(roll, pitch and yaw), comes down to aluminum fatigue  

and flutter tests, (flutter:: a plus) going so fast that wings tremble  
and bend so much the damper isn’t enough, so much there’s  
a gust—an up—a bend, a twist, an angle of attack attacked  
and then, the wing will swing down so low it’ll bob back up (two  
apples mashed in a tub) bend so much the wing’s yanked right off;  
best to find out on the ground not in the ether (the sky’s sometimes  

unkind to test pilots); try each system separately, power up 
the engines, check flight controls before they’re wedged inside  
the cockpit, check backup operations, the mechanical hamburger  
of subsystems (fuselage, wings, skyscraper and table-top tails)— 
remember the giddy up ‘cause they’re looking to reproduce  
the heavens in a hangar, to fling dead hens at the windshield;  

to note how the structure holds up and against 
the much more, the high-speed taxi testing, to  
know how and why before there’s sky; then, when  
Gable commands the cockpit with a flight plan,  
he’ll need a feel for odd actions, to be a lickety- 
split gone-wrong problem-solver, to share what he 

senses with the revved-up ears of engineers; see  
Gable would be the end of a production line, an above- 
average birdman who can take a plane beyond expectations  
and breaking points, maneuvering in and through  
the invisible to earn each syllable of airworthy, to 
face the strict conditions, (the flown under) the aircraft’s  

experience, a pause—six-miles high—how air knows  
to get out of the way, how the craft will handle stress  
if there’s an unforeseen argument with the atmosphere 
(a drag’s takeaway against the plus of thrust). This is  
the performance before the performance. Because now  
there’s more than just a curtain that’s about to go up. 

Poem copyright 2025 by David Mills. All rights reserved.

See more poems from David Mills on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Momentary Arizona,” and “Dear… Sincerely…”

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Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt

by David Mills

(The attack on Pearl Harbor inspired Harry Stewart Jr. to enlist in the military. The battleship USS Arizona was struck and sank on that same day in Pearl Harbor.) 

Sunday school lesson fresh in his December 
7th head, he passed huddled, kiss-close neighbors, 

their lips anchored to: the Japs attacked Pearl 
Harbor: offshore contusion for the country 

a plump pillow for his fatigued dream. Soon,  
in the Flushing High Library, he’d eye- 

ball a magazine article: Army’d 
train Negro Flying Unit. Stewart’s fuel. 

Weeks later, swaybacked ships, two thousand souls
  wallpapered Harry’s thoughts. At a recruiting
    station, he belted out he wanted in. 

   Their—seventeen is too young! —waylaid him. 
 Sunk, Harry left: not knowing his was on-
ly a momentary Arizona.  

Poem copyright 2025 by David Mills. All rights reserved.

See more poems from David Mills on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Dear… Sincerely…,” and “Up Up And… (The Speed Boy interlude)”

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Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt

by David Mills

Dear… Sincerely…  

(These epistolary poems are in conversation with actual letters between Tuskegee Airman Cecil Peterson and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who was instrumental in getting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to integrate the Tuskegee Airmen into the military.) 

I 

May 28, 1942 

Mr. Cecil Peterson 
Recruit Detachment 
Air Corps Advanced Flying School 
Tuskegee, Alabama 

Dear Mr. Peterson: 

As I am a board member of the young men’s vocational foundation, Miss Ilma provided your address and name, certain you would appreciate some ink and an occasional joy box from the First Lady. I am keen to know how you are faring at Tuskegee’s Wing School, as I have witnessed it—as well as you a year prior at Quoddy Village, Maine. As I recall, you were, after study-up, in zero temps, conducting tree surgery in a mackinaw off a slag-surfaced road. Enclosed please find hard candies and hard covers: The Moon is Down and The Screwtape Letters. Ink me your interests, and I will be a consistent correspondent. 

Wishing you unclipped wings, I am very sincerely yours, 

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt 

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III

83 Interceptor Control Squadron
Southeast Air Corps Training Center

July 7, 1942

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt,

The honor of your correspondence and your endless Christmases have encouraged me to be, always, a worthy soldier. I have, three times, since your last letter, had the fortune of a four-leaf-clover. I was adopted by a new squadron, promoted to Airman First Class and given a small group of soldiers. My lips are sealed, (as are your letters before I open them) but my squadrons’ wanderings would impress you. I hope, one day, to be free to tell you about the tall talk of war. And while in the service, I pray to serve G-d, country, and my Uncle Sam. Please tell Mr. President, there’s an airman in Alabama who is a member of his Negro pom-pom squad.

For now, though, I must go. A shortwave radio calls.

Very sincerely yours,

Airman First Class Cecil Peterson

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IV 

July 16, 1942 

Dear Airman First Class Peterson: 

My eyes engaged every letter in your letter and I applaud your promotion. Here, finally settled in Hyde Park, after having had so much to and fro between Washington, New York City, and Dutchess County, I cannot say whether summer has even mumbled. While here, I relish the London plane trees and English oak braiding the Val-Kill. Two little girls staying with me like to gallop and splash. (My old horse, Emily Spinach, can’t even canter; grazing, her muzzle elbows the fields near the footbridge.) Thinking of you boys—like everyone—we pinch our Esso octane and Goodyear tires; so, I tend to my errands and itinerary by pedaling my Western Flyer. Rest assured, your hopes will be hand delivered to the President.  

With good wishes for your good wings, 

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt 

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VI 

(Cadet Harry Stewart Jr. reading the letters between Eleanor Roosevelt and Cecil Peterson) 

Came across these letters between Red Tail Peterson and First  
Lady Roosevelt who, in a high-wing two-seater J-Piper,  
ascended with Charles Anderson from Kennedy Field, 

a grass strip beside Union Springs Highway—in the  
devil’s direction—from campus, outside Emery Dormitory  
where, because I lacked the earth to study the air, I  

took CTDs in equations (quadratic), laws (like Ohm’s) 
the world (in-depth) paragraphs (their anatomy) and History I  
(Columbus to the Constitution). Anderson was the first Negro  

to escort a President’s relations aloft. Heard said, theirs was a ride 
of sky-wide smiles. Ms. Roosevelt with a tea rose pinned to her cart- 
wheel hat. But on my virgin voyage, I lost my air cherry in a J-Piper  

Cub. Knocking me about. Warm air nagged my craft. My stomach a sky  
butterflies fluttered in. Monarchs, maybe? (Colonel Parrish once shared how,  
in September, monarchs tickle the air at close to 20,000 feet. Instinctive  

and risky, they wing it from Canada to Zacapu, he said—and cling to  
memories of Joe-Pye weed and thistle, mud-puddling and chrysalis.) In  
my soaring tureen it had also been September when my instincts flew  

out the window and I lost all notions of exactly where where was. 

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VII Skies over Tuskegee 
(Cadet Harry Stewart Jr. writing an imagined letter to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.)  

September 7, 1943  

Dear Mrs. Roosevelt, 

You lucked out with (who we call) Chief. The one, the only, Charles Anderson, flying you around in a Cub. But this must be my toughen up, ‘cause, sobbing in the cockpit, I got “Wash Out” Smith barking: Stewart you’re a baby! Oh, Madam First Lady, I want to bury my head in my trembling hands but angling for the final approach, they are now otherwise occupied. I pray you write back. I’m enclosing six-cent stamps, so you can reply directly to the heavens. Via airmail. 

Sinceairily yours, 

Private Harry “Stick & Rudderless” Stewart 

Poem copyright 2025 by David Mills. All rights reserved.

See more poems from David Mills on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Momentary Arizona,” and “Up Up And… (The Speed Boy interlude).”

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Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt

a transcription of the poem read on the home page of this issue

by Tawanda Mulalu

Everything I like is like that man who first thought to take that picture of that starving black child waited for by that black vulture in that Sudan. I like what I write. I’m hurting myself by liking things. My words are maybe taking pictures of myself starving me. I tell myself stories in order to clutch my throat. My throat is clutched. Please make me pretty, I don’t want to die. I want to sleep now. I know I am holding this so tightly with sleep. I know I am screaming towards this with my sleeping. People are not asking of us because they are busy. I am not asking of us because I am simulating being busy. What should we ask of in a world whose only word is work? This is the best deal. This is the unasked-for gift. If I saw a starving black child, my first thought would not be to take this picture of myself. Or wake. Everyone is dying. There are such pretty words for this.

Poem copyright 2022 by Tawanda Mulalu. All rights reserved.

See more poems from Tawanda Mulalu: “Child,” “Dal Niente,” “Sheffield,” and “Libido”

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by Tawanda Mulalu

Starling, I form you in a mirror of my eye
before this cascade of thought and pictures
of thought. Allow myself this weather, empty skin
against glittering sky. Allow further a mother’s umbrella
to surface you against glittered sky. To drift in
and out of the wake of my heart, larger now than
the tiny, thrumming fingers it still fills with blood: drift, drift,
self, drift… And whose other’s skin, blanketed
against myself this morning, not unlike your very first light
but so unlike any light after except
in the naive whispers remaining from dreams?
Softening keys towards a repeat,
slurred my fingers at the bar meeting hers: your name
lost not on my tongue, but within
the loss of my tongue, blanketed by another.

 

Poem copyright 2025 by Tawanda Mulalu. All rights reserved.

See more poems from Tawanda Mulalu on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Sheffield,” “Dal Niente,” and “Libido”

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Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt

by Tawanda Mulalu

Dark percussion of silence: the otherwise unnoticed ringing
in the ears. Night’s perpetual choral notes, day’s covered-up void—
beneath the vibrant light of cars, wind, leaves and chatter—it rings
between my window and the ground, patiently. Remember them beneath.

In other words: in other worlds: see their shadows dance beneath black.
As sun-traced branches shimmer into your eyes. As dimming pupils will
know your face where you return. When you return bleaches under time.
Cup your eyes with their lids: the absence sparks with silent, broken light.

In other worlds: in other words: hear their shadows sing beneath black.
As taps drip heavier crevices into your hands. As your eardrums
lose their tautness when your bedframe limps. Where this earth will rotate.
Cup your ears with your hands: the absence roars with shivering amnion.

Midnight’s perpetual choral notes: after my headphones fail again
to intercede between thoughts—too many cannot even be touched,
too many blacken in contemplation of the final black—this
music fades in from day’s hidden void: dark percussion of silence.

 

Poem copyright 2025 by Tawanda Mulalu. All rights reserved.

See more poems from Tawanda Mulalu on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Child,” “Sheffield,” and “Libido”

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Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt

by Tawanda Mulalu

I want to know why people choose to live:

whatever it means to say, let alone mean
a whisper like this, as if there is a choice
in any such thing as this, as if you chose that night
or more likely: a series of too complicated ruptures
of nerves castrated all desire you once
possessed to hold on to whatever it is
I still feel compelled to, to keep breathing. What air.
To breathe the late Austin night without you—
no: you would not have been here—but without you—
breathing the cool dark American early spring,
where I flew away to, away from the winter bleak
of New England. How dark was it in England

when your brain chose to—was made to—
vanish you. But to separate brain from
self… Today’s literalism resurrects Spirit as
“mental health.” A ghost of an idea of us.
Perhaps you chose against further withdrawals
from light: if you could not choose mood then
you chose lack of mood, forever. Perhaps
you loved yourself enough to die. Is melody real.
Is reality within a voice. But a voice is patterned
within air: and so must be real, like any particulate

happening to and from one another: so is not totally random: but is
too complicated in our feeling of it: and so must feel random, and so: is

brittle to our ears—unless reduced to its barest notes.
Is melody real. Asks my mirror. Again in the too early morning
now. It interrupts whatever poor singing I’ve made with the shower’s
fog. It imagines you there. Again in your hotel room. Imagines you
singing. Tenderly a last time. As years ago
tenderly we sang to one another—a little, but a little—
in my bedroom when we first met—or was it over voice notes,
phone calls—but a little, a little. I don’t remember.

What can I say of myself since America.
Since having not the desire, but the need for what
I have come to know as poetry was, is,
based on the belief that to sing was, is, to reify
life: life itself: to reify it against this indefinite
darkness that comes to know us from
within: your hands will vanish you. Your voice

insists itself. Breathe in to carry the song then
breathe out to hear it without you. After your body,
too complicated music: brittle to my ears, unending
unless reduced to its barest note. There is nothing
to forgive you for. I am still in possession of sunlight,
meandering dumb and bright through every window.
Do not imagine the hotel room where you last breathed had
windows. Do not imagine that that glass lengthens
your breath into something louder than what
is heard. A news site recites the room number.

We are in the room, cast and crew after a completed scene:

your cousin lifts the boom—its stretched foam hangs
shadows across us. You lie in bed, staring into the white
ceiling. I am cross-legged on carpet, fingering the white
sheets. Our camera imprisoned by tripod. Quiet now.
Record room tone. Our lungs, breathing
nothing; our tongues, singing nothing; our mouths, ululating
nothing; these sheets unrustling, uncomprehending;
the grey glare of the room’s actual windows, unwitnessing,
unimagined. Exit news sites with the same picture of you
from your Facebook. Translucent skin. Switch off the mic.

I saw your cousin after four years, in Gaborone, finally.

He had called me two years ago to tell me how
you happened to yourself. What I heard were the birds
from home, swallowing his voice. What I heard was
the sunlight behind him, the warmth it left all over
the Earth which remained during the first night I met you,
your hands above our faces in my bedroom, signaling
the motions of planets. You wanted to study astronomy.

Two years before your cousin called me, you called me.
Your family had moved to Sheffield. The day passes. Already
the stars start settling in my window. When I saw
your cousin, we laughed. Then we talked about you. Then
day passed. The stars passed. The news sites said you would
study geology. My first year in college, I switched from physics
to psychology. Your cousin’s laughter would vanish.
We would be talking. Then you’d come up—then room tone.

Listen. The earth sings, or the mind imagines the earth sings,
whatever. None of us survive that uncompromising sound. 

Poem copyright 2025 by Tawanda Mulalu. All rights reserved.

See more poems from Tawanda Mulalu on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Child,” “Dal Niente,” and “Libido” 

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Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt

by Tawanda Mulalu

Again to open our eyes with the light against us: this
window now a rhombus on the carpet. It is the sun.
It is no longer in space. It is not even alive. My eyes are—
and attend to each brightened thread of carpet as sprouts
splitting earth. The sky is so good today, so good that even
inside here, it makes itself by our feet. Step in it. Escaping
our sky under exhausted flames would only reveal more sky,
all around us, everywhere, with only a little bit of us within.
Some nights, the moon is unavailable to be made by the sun.
Mirrors being unreliable, much like our skulls to ourselves,
are light-thieving liars—No, don’t eye us. Touch me here.
As on a warm night, another’s eyes make you with their touch.
As one warmer night, they stop looking. You disappear.
As one summer night, you made your mother after flooding
from her. Your foamy eyes cried light, and she appeared.

 Poem copyright 2025 by Tawanda Mulalu. All rights reserved.

See more poems from Tawanda Mulalu on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Child,” “Sheffield,” and “Dal Niente.”

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Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt

a transcription of the poem read on the home page of this issue

by Nate Marshall

wild hundreds

starts with a tire’s squeal
at getaway. broken whistle
of the coffee kettle
because work is waiting.
                    while.

next part is a clan, a wild
bunch on the outskirts of civil.
the name she calls you
when she loves you casually.
                    hun.

the end, a beginning.
what we say when we name
ourselves. a dropped
letter to save time.
                    its.

wildhundreds
wilhundreds
wilhundeds
whilehunits.

Poem copyright 2014 by Nate Marshall. All rights reserved.

See more poems from Nate Marshall on The Fight & The Fiddle: “Nate Marshall is a white supremacist from Colorado or Nate Marshall is a poet from the South Side of Chicago or i love you Nate Marshall,” “another Nate Marshall origin story,” and “another Nate Marshall origin story.” 

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Read more in this issue: Interview | Critical Essay | Writing Prompt