And We Live Here

for Flint, Michigan.

 
The orange

stuff pours

from every

pipe here

and I

wonder if

it is

something I

can drink

and I

want to

know if

I am

safe and

I just

close my

eyes and

bless it

drink it

’cause still

they tell

me water

be best

thing for

me but

here I

am wondering

if they

think it

best that

I die

I die

I die

 

 

 

Candice Iloh is a first-generation Nigerian-American creative writer and teaching artist residing in Brooklyn, New York whose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Fjords Review, The Grio, For Harriet, Blavity, No Dear Magazine and elsewhere. She is a VONA fellowship recipient as well as a Home School Lambda Literary Fellow. An MFA candidate in Writing for Young People and Poetry at Lesley University, Candice is currently working on her first young adult novel in verse. You can find her at becomher.com or @becomher.