Through, still

kept porch of wet sand

did not make it through

though swept and washed with reminders

stuck in obscured sightlines

air flows through

still, breezed back on backs

creaked by Sunday leanings

still, yard sparrows and bassed out trucks

bumping backs on backs

still, hair day and braided bars

keep porous in suns haunt

they sit still through

~

There’s a genetic component to memory

Sankofa set me free

Like the way my hair coils and plumes like poetry

Puffs enlaced in love, each strand doused in Blue Magic and my mama’s voice hallowed that hummed

Mr. Water? Mr. Water?

Why ya ticklin’ my head?

Mr. Water? Mr. Water?

Did you hear what I said?

My granny’s hot comb sizzles. I sit, a singular inversion of my peers reflected.

In isolation, I pray for the bluest eyes,

that each strand of my hair becomes taught

from God’s soft hands because

the whole world lays at the center of them.

The hot comb sizzles as my ear shapes itself to the tongue

of the gullah geechee boy that weaves roses on the corner,

I buy six of them and inhale

because I have found a piece of home

Ana Rucker (b. South Carolina) is an interdisciplinary artist working across lens-based media, sculpture, and per-

formance. In 2026, she will receive her Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts with a fully funded fellowship at Rutgers

University and attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Her work has been presented

in several solo exhibitions in New Jersey and South Carolina, including Blue Magic (2026) and Sankofa (2024) at

Mason Gross Galleries and The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House (2022) at Avery Research

Center for African American History and Culture.

△

Chase Irvin (born 1991 in Los Angeles) is a visual artist and architectural designer. She received a B.Arch from

Syracuse University in 2014 and is currently pursuing her MFA at Rutgers University. Her practice is rooted in the

Black body’s pursuit of home. She has exhibited at Icebox Project Space; Philadelphia, Hashimoto Contemporary;

San Francisco, The deYoung Museum; San Francisco, Bakersfield Museum of Art; Bakersfield, Root Division; San

Francisco, Richmond Art Center; Richmond.