Love Poem, Prefaced with an Ode to Tostones

Malcolm Friend is the author of Our Bruises Kept Singing Purple (Inlandia Institute, 2018), winner of the 2017 Hillary Gravendyk Prize, and mxd kd mixtape (Glass Poetry Press, 2017). His work has appeared in Vinyl , The Acentos Review , Connotation Press , and Pretty Owl Poetry . He was awarded fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and CantoMundo and won the 2016 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize. He received his MFA from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a poetry editor for FreezeRay and is a member of Black Plantains, an Afrocaribbean poetry collective, with JR Mahung. Photo by Ananda Lima