Black Poetry Tuesdays (August 22, 2023 Edition): "Sanctuary” by Donika Kelly

The week’s Black Poetry Tuesdays piece is from Donika Kelly. Donika Kelly is a Black American writer, poet, and Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa, specializing in poetry writing and gender studies in contemporary American literature. Kelly is the author of the chapbook Aviarium and the full-length poetry collections Bestiary and The Renunciations. Bestiary is the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the 2017 Hurston/Wright Award for poetry, and the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was longlisted for the National Book Award in 2016 and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a Publishing Triangle Award in 2017.

The following piece is called “Sanctuary.” In this piece, Kelly draws parallels between womanhood, the ocean, and its inhabitants, all strong yet mistreated and shackled by societal norms. The tones of liberation and the turn of phrase to act as if her words were fumbled when referring to the ocean and woman make this poem resonate on multiple levels.

Sanctuary

The tide pool crumples like a woman

into the smallest version of herself,

bleeding onto whatever touches her.

The ocean, I mean, not a woman, filled

with plastic lace, and closer to the vanishing

point, something brown breaks the surface—human,

maybe, a hand or foot or an island

of trash—but no, it’s just a garden of kelp.

A wild life.

This is a prayer like the sea

urchin is a prayer, like the sea

star is a prayer, like the otter and cucumber—

as if I know what prayer means.

I call this the difficulty of the non-believer,

or, put another way, waking, every morning, without a god.

How to understand, then, what deserves rescue

and what deserves to suffer.

Who.

Or should I say, what must

be sheltered and what abandoned.

Who.

I might ask you to imagine a young girl,

no older than ten but also no younger,

on a field trip to a rescue. Can you

see her? She is led to the gates that separate

the wounded sea lions from their home and the class.

How the girl wishes this measure of salvation for herself:

to claim her own barking voice, to revel

in her own scent and sleek brown body, her fingers

woven into the cyclone fence.

You can learn more about Donika here.

Black Poetry Tuesdays (August 8, 2023 Edition): "Bullet Points” by Jericho Brown

Trigger warning: anti-Blackness, hate crimes, murder.

The week’s Black Poetry Tuesdays piece is from Jericho Brown. Brown is a Black U.S. American poet, writer, and professor. Brown's first book, Please, won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament, was named one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal and received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection, The Tradition, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for many awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The following piece is called “Bullet Points.” In this piece, Brown focuses on the reality of police brutality in Black communities in the United States. This piece is partly in response to the suspicious deaths of multiple Black people while in police custody in 2018 and 2019, but also a dissertation on Black bodies murdered by the police with no justice and accountability. Jericho weaves a message to his Black friends and family, asking them to fight for justice if he dies in police custody because his demise will not be self-inflicted. “Bullet Points” is heavy, genuine, honest, and brutal and generates, sadly, familiar feelings of powerlessness in the face of constant danger, wearing a veil of public safety.

Bullet Points

I will not shoot myself

In the head, and I will not shoot myself

In the back, and I will not hang myself

With a trashbag, and if I do,

I promise you, I will not do it

In a police car while handcuffed

Or in the jail cell of a town

I only know the name of

Because I have to drive through it

To get home. Yes, I may be at risk,

But I promise you, I trust the maggots

Who live beneath the floorboards

Of my house to do what they must

To any carcass more than I trust

An officer of the law of the land

To shut my eyes like a man

Of God might, or to cover me with a sheet

So clean my mother could have used it

To tuck me in. When I kill me, I will

Do it the same way most Americans do,

I promise you: cigarette smoke

Or a piece of meat on which I choke

Or so broke I freeze

In one of these winters we keep

Calling worst. I promise if you hear

Of me dead anywhere near

A cop, then that cop killed me. He took

Me from us and left my body, which is,

No matter what we've been taught,

Greater than the settlement

A city can pay a mother to stop crying,

And more beautiful than the new bullet

Fished from the folds of my brain.

You can learn more about Jericho here.

Black Poetry Tuesdays (August 1, 2023 Edition): "Grief #213” by Saeed Jones

The week’s Black Poetry Tuesdays piece is from Saeed Jones. Saeed is a queer Black U.S. American writer and poet. His debut poetry collection, Prelude to Bruise, was named a 2014 finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Saeed’s second book, a memoir, How We Fight for Our Lives, won the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction in 2019. Jones's work centers on the intersections of the Black and queer experiences in the United States in relation to the world around us. His work speaks of liberation, introspection, trauma, and joy.

The following piece is called “Grief #213.” In this piece, Jones walks through being the token friend, the only Black person in a white person’s life. He talks about being seen yet being invisible in the eyes of white supremacy and anti-Blackness, going through the motions while realizing that your white “friend” will never understand how much of yourself you sacrifice in your relationship with them. As someone who has had these interactions with white “friends” up until 7 or so years ago, I felt this poem in my bones.

Grief #213

I grieve forced laughter, shrieks sharp as broken
champagne flutes and the bright white necks I wanted
to press the shards against. I grieve the dead bird of my right
hand on my chest, the air escaping my throat’s prison,
the scream mangled into a mere “ha!” I grieve unearned
exclamations. I grieve saying “you are so funny!” I grieve
saying “you’re killing me!” when I meant to say “you are
killing me.” I have died right in front of you so many times;
my ghost is my plus-one tonight. I grieve being your Black
confidante. I grieve being your best and your only. I grieve
“But you get it, right?” Right. I grieve that I got it
and I get it and I am it.

You can learn more about Saeed here.

Black Poetry Tuesdays (July 25, 2023 Edition): "Karenge ya Marenge” by Countee Cullen

The week’s poem is a piece from Countee Cullen. Cullen was a queer poet, novelist, children's writer, playwright, and one of the prominent voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Countee’s work was heavily influenced by the concept of Négritude, a framework of critique and literary theory developed mainly by Black and African American intellectuals, writers, and politicians during the 1930s. It aimed at raising and cultivating a renewal of "Black consciousness,” a (re)discovery of Black values and awareness of the world and its view of Black bodies. This showed in the focus of his work, which was at the intersections of Blackness, racism, trauma, sexuality, finding identity, and self-expression.

The following piece is called “Karenga ya Marenge.” In this piece, Cullen explores language, its applications, and how racism, colorism, and anti-Blackness play a part in how Western culture absorbs words from melanated people, especially when seeking support and community in the face of oppression. It’s an interesting critique of Western culture’s adherence to the “proper” use of language and its response to those who are seen as less than, a struggle that we are still pushing through in 2023.

Karenge ya Marenge

Wherein are words sublime or noble? What

Invests one speech with haloed eminence,

Makes it the sesame for all doors shut,

Yet in its like sees but impertinence?

Is it the hue? Is it the cast of eye,

The curve of lip or Asiatic breath,

Which mark a lesser place for Gandhi’s cry

Than “Give me liberty or give me death!”

Is Indian speech so quaint, so weak, so rude,

So like its land enslaved, denied, and crude,

That men who claim they fight for liberty

Can hear this battle-shout impassively,

Yet to their arms with high resolve have sprung

At those same words cried in the English tongue?

You can learn more about Countee Cullen here.

Black Poetry Tuesdays (July 18, 2023 Edition): "dream where every black person is standing by the ocean” by Danez Smith

The week’s poem is a piece from Danez Smith. Danez is a queer-identifying, non-binary poet, writer, and performer. In 2014, Danez won the Individual World Poetry Slam and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry for their book [insert] Boy. Their poetry collection Don’t Call Us Dead was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2017. Danez’s work as a poet, writer, and performer lies at the intersections of Blackness, queerness, societal definitions of masculinity, desire, gender identity, trauma, and joy.

The following piece is called “dream where every black person is standing by the ocean.” In this piece, Danez focuses on the generational trauma of the ocean, to those Black lives lost through kidnapping and chattel slavery as Africans were shipped to sales hubs via boat. This piece, while brief, is layered with the weight of generational trauma and loss with melancholy hints of rebirth.

dream where every black person is standing by the ocean

& we say to her

what have you done with our kin you swallowed?

& she says

that was ages ago, you’ve drunk them by now

& we don’t understand

& then one woman, skin dark as all of us

walks to the water’s lip, shouts Emmett, spits

&, surely, a boy begins

crawling his way to shore

You can learn more about Danez Smith here.