Porsha Monique Allen is a resident and native of Richmond, Virginia. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in Scene & Heard Journal, Apricity Press, Obsidian, Scalawag Magazine, and Rattle. She was selected as a semi-finalist for Naugatuck River Review’s 12th Annual Narrative Poetry Contest.
Burning
My father didn’t know
his children were burning
the night he slept on the roof
of our worn-down house
drunk as any man would be
after coming in at 2am
the last of his liquor spilling
through the cracks
my mother screaming
my father’s name
and shaking the soot
from her hair.
