Prayer Circle
By Sa Whitley
“Miss Mary, she say, God is good, and Jon gonna be alright. My late Grandma / Dorothy in my dream say, Jon Boy, he alright, and her hands covered high / yellow in batter from frying us”
Sa Whitley
Sa Whitley is a black queer poet and postdoctoral scholar who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. They teach courses on feminist theory, financial subjectivity, and critical black urbanism in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Whitley currently holds poetry fellowships with Cave Canem, the Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley (2023-24). Their recent writing is published or forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Antipode, and Indiana Review. Whitley has also received literary fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (2022) and the Community of Writers, and in addition, invitations for poetry fellowships from Tin House and Anaphora Arts. Recent honors include the 2024 Indiana Review Poetry Prize and a semi-finalist honor for the 2023 Sewanee Review Poetry Contest. In their spare time, they go to queer dance parties, plan desert hikes, and watch sci-fi shows that imagine liberatory and postcolonial futures.