Description
51 achingly eloquent poems from a young Cave Canem fellow: W. J. Lofton's verses explore Black queer Southern identity, grief, love, and intimacy while enduring and witnessing unfreedom in America
W. J. Lofton writes vivid, accessible poems that channel the energy, urgency, ambitions, joys, and sorrows of a young Black queer artist. They are about love and flirtation, sweet tea and hot sauce, God and family, life and death, police brutality and extrajudicial killings. His verses honor some of the young lives extinguished by these killings—Breonna Taylor, Kendrick Johnson, Ahmaud Arbery. He also pays tribute to some of the towering figures of Black culture who have come before him—Richard Pryor, Assata Shakur. His style is endlessly propulsive, informed by some of the Harlem Renaissance greats—Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks—but also transforming that rich tradition for the present day.
Table of Contents
Preface
here today, gone today
after each death
dreamhouse
gravity reports:
we report:
Mama reports:
to know touch better
many things
property
for Cadarius, Keith & Miles
to keep the flies away
for Tae
using
dominium
pig
petting the dog
when your touch went
missing i remembered
first time we met
sweet
right hooks
language
half brutal
counting
dark
polka dots
fire eats
a mighty long time
double u, double d
for Kendrick
the flower will make its
debut when everyone is dying
would you kill God too?
boy falling
adjust your hips
ain’t dying
begging
fragile things
water we share
already flesh
the leash
between boys
that one uncle we all know
asking for miracles
baby’s breath
jellyfish eye
lady day visits glynn county
butcher shop
aint neva
as long as the dying
die without dignity
danger dodge
little brown bat
leaving kessler
& oceans
Acknowledgments
Notes
