Before we begin, a few things should be said: the A-Line offers itself to public scrutiny as a journal of progressive thought; after publishing four issues of the journal that focus on the enormous political crisis that confronts the United States and its citizens—the veritable inspiration for our creating the […]
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A preoccupation, if not obsession, that guides my work is how to define black feminism, how to stretch it to reach and to suit black women everywhere, how to evacuate it of unnecessarily prescriptive dogma, how to characterize its ethical commitments, how to theorize the shapes it gives to black […]
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The truth to which criticism has access fades to blur and we’re sorry for its reckless scrutiny. But the study that soils transparency, in the rightful belief that it reveals an opacity that’s always there, need offer no apology to James Baldwin since it’s he who teaches us to look […]
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I’m speaking with a white friend about white people speaking among themselves about their racism. It doesn’t happen, she tells me. Nonetheless, she believes, probably we believe, that’s how whites would learn to build stamina regarding their collusion with structural racism. The least of it is the daily infractions they […]
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the A-Line editors are excited to present this double issue of the journal devoted to the arts. The double issue gives us the opportunity to elaborate the aims of the journal in supplementary fashion by aligning aesthetic concerns with political commitment, which in times of crisis are never very far […]
Jericho first met Jablesse where all gay men meet–behind the parish church, in the shadows cast by thorned silk-cotton trees, until the shadows are layered, and thickest. When he arrived, Jablesse was drowning in tall grass, only his shoulders and head were visible above the green–he turned to stare, not in the once-up-and-down, which saw and […]
la independencia
(de puerto rico)
entré en un gran terror redondo, tierno y final.
era todos los que amé y se me fueron.
era mi soledad y su repetición.
era la crueldad potente a media asta.
entré a una torre horizontal […]
Recalling his first encounter with Martinican poet Aimé Césaire’s writing in 1941, André Breton observed that “what was said there was what had to be said,” thus placing under the sign of necessity the audacity and expressive freedom he perceived in that work. Breton quoted Césaire’s declaration, “We belong to […]
You see, when you are talking, you always have to know when to stop.
-Jacques Lacan, “My Teaching, Its Nature and Its Ends”
But someone else/ b exactly/ who you are/ new
-Amiri Baraka […]
in the morning too late too soon moon on the western horizon opal slipped over night pearl, mollusk, sunstone tear in a sea of sky after a day of last minute cooking shows visiting a dear older friend receiving but not right now says the nurse and “maybe he won’t […]
“one new york critic had accused me of being too self-conscious of being a writer / … yes / being an afro-american writer is something to be self-conscious abt” — Ntozake Shange, “my pen is a machete” I don’t remember when I first encountered Ntozake Shange’s work because it was […]
The sea rivets memory Recalling boat names, ship titles Manifests- handwritten or typed. Holds forgetting: stowaways tossed Suicides unknown. Refugees’ fabrics, heirlooms, jewels removed. ————————————– This human cargo Tongues in search of listening ears— The sea is here, the sea is there, the sea Flicks waves against a high cliff’s […]
Poetry is best that governs least. No it isn’t. Poetry and citizenship are inconsolably incommensurable, conjoined at the heart but beating time to different drummers. From time to time. Aesthetic justice is symbolic and dwells next to, not in, the world of political action. Give me a break! The politics […]
“But God, such a long journey ahead for you and me”
~ Andre Brink
i
this is a hard poem to begin.
old hopes return just piece by serrated piece,
teeth of cut glass but making way for tears-
see how my finger tip is polished with water – […]
