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 […]
Dis/Place In this place, we swear and sing and hail and honk. This is a noisy little island, loud in color, exuberant in sound. We paint our houses the colors of flamingoes and goldfish, vivid indigoes, mints, saffron and coral. Even the sunsets are washes of hasty undiluted color, quick […]
Betty Jean Owens, an African American woman who was raped by four white men—Patrick Gene Scarborough, David Erwin Beagles, Ollie Odell Stoutamire, and William Ted Collinsworth– in Tallahassee, Fl; May, 1959. The trial was a landmark case, covered at the time by the BBC and international news outlets. This was […]
Stay Lit The day after Charlottesville was lit with tiki torches, not lit like parties making night shine like Hennessey, but lit like crosses or a man’s eyes before rope tightens. I found myself with no tears available, all rage exhausted. I walked to my kitchen and concentrated on tearing […]
I’m a leaning tower of 8-track tapes, Dust-sparkled in the living room sun, Gleaming against burnt coffee table Ash before an altar of plastic slipcovers, A 72-inch of James Brown singles—Say it Loud, I’m black and I’m proud—Baby- Baby-baby baby-bay-beh screams crackling Static into the air, ricocheting off […]
Specter Sometimes I dream him but he is not beating me with his words telling me how to fix my hair my clothes, my laugh, telling me not to touch him. He merely hovers on the edge of everything, reminding me I am not good enough, and in the midnight […]
Darkest Before Dawn?August 29, 2021
To Outwit HistoryAugust 29, 2021
“An act of survival and a strategy to heal:” Suné Woods Interview and PerformanceAugust 29, 2021
Dred Scott’s Blues: Three MeditationsAugust 29, 2021