The following piece was presented as “5 Poems and 3 Notes” in the panel “Post Black? Culture, Craft, and Race in Verse” at the 2013 AWP Conference in Boston, Massachusetts.
“Stone Cold Jane” is one of the tracks from Cornelius Eady’s new chapbook from Kattywompus Press, Book of Hooks. I say tracks because these are as much songs as poems.…
The American Dream Visits While I Clean It wasn’t part of me, only something I listened to, like radio music or dialogue on the evening news. I was cleaning the…
Café Space Here comes backwash from apocalypse gamey as last night’s monastery potluck. Did you have the goat bleating from the roof of a floating house, its song as old…
Swim Lesson No. 3 Syracuse, New York June 2012 I can’t find my bearings in this landlocked country, riverless and briny. Not waterless exactly but curveless and motionless, a chlorophyll…
Tar Baby Given that Tartarus stands undisputed As the very bottom of Hell, where even The bones of the damned are scattered By Hector’s dogs and the Gorgons weep Blood…
Marilyn Nelson, today’s featured poet, wrote a series of ghazals to accompany some images by illustrator Philippe Lardy, who gave us permission to include a copy of the painting which…