The first time that I heard the word “otolith” was in a brief video from the Natural History Museum (NHM) in London. In it, their “curator of fish,” James Maclaine, demonstrated the new scanning technology that would allow him to examine the undigested stomach contents of the Museum’s rare, preserved […]
As in the United States and England, statues have been toppled and street names debated in Canada. The statue of John A. Macdonald came down in Montreal on August 29, 2020. Ma(d)Donald you ask? Well, in this case, the first prime minister of Canada (1867–1873, 1878–1891), associated with completion of […]
I remember reading Black feminist scholar Audre Lorde’s essay “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference,” and I was captivated by her use of the capitalization of Black, Color/ed, Black women, Black lesbianism, and Black men throughout the essay, while at the same time demoting “white” and “america” to […]
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 – […]
Jeff Nuttall (1933-2004) was a British artist, poet, critic, actor, and musician. The author of almost forty books, Nuttall was involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) from the late 1950s, and then played a major role in the British counter-cultural scene. During the 1960s, Nuttall edited My Own […]
last night while I was dreaming two of my dearest friends (old loves) visited me (needing a place to stay they said as had once always been so) […]
Cringe
That’s how the earth wore you, bent,
Crushed by the sky, too,
As if the blue
Had always been too
Heavy with rain, scent
And chance, but not the chance […]
Look carefully, describe what you see. Choose a landscape provoking interest. Mull that carefully again and again. Concoct an assumption: what have you pursued, how does it work? Gather evidence, examine its relevance. Calibrate each fragment’s adequacy. Dissatisfied, pursue a new assumption. If clarity seems possible, push […]
Introduction I am excited to introduce the readers of the A-Line: a journal of progressive thought to the work of the Furious Flower Poetry Center. Furious Flower, the very name speaks to the literary activism and agency that birthed the nation’s first academic center dedicated to African American poetry. Our […]
In Praise of SeditionNovember 22, 2020
Notes to Self and Other PoemsNovember 22, 2020
from Where Here Were WeNovember 22, 2020
from A History of the Bitch (AHOTB)November 22, 2020