fellowship/publication submissions: 3 fellowship/publication acceptances: 0 fellowship/publication rejections: 3 books: This is embarrassing and unacceptable (not a book title, by the way). Secret Shame: No, mofo, I ain't over it, ain't getting over it, and...woo-sah. And no matter how many years go by, I cannot seem to tire myself of this song: I Call Your Name - [...]
Category: poetry
When Crumbs Don’t Bring Them Home
how much can we love them before we armor ourselves against the rocks they will duck, dive, and still not miss; can we give them enough to share and if we do how do we assure that it does not meet the folly of a fickle hand that claims it suspicious, unlikely, and without merit?
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Gettin’ Loose
Go into the village where you'll find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them to me. If anyone asks what you're doing, tell them to let them go; I have need of them. And all this was done so that the prophecy would be fulfilled. Matthew 21:2-4 Every Sunday [...]
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rethink: The Politics of Black Self Love
elf-aggrandizing is a familiar response to the systematic stripping of Black manhood, a familiar vestige of slavery and oppression. The arrogant and/or hyper-masculine posturing response to this stripping is pervasive not just in hip hop music, or even reggae toasting from which hip hop was born, but in black communities. Watch pastors, pimps, leaders in those communities and you will note the same material excess and self importance that young people learn to emulate.
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Goals, or Justifying My Crazy
Goals are a fairly new phenomenon in my life. I avoided them, not for fear that I couldn’t reach them but because I saw them as a definitive and absolute marker of Success. Which is not how I’d like to picture Success. That definition is just too absolute and that alone makes it daunting. Which [...]
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A Little More Than What’s Left
I will not die with blood on my hands nor on discarded panties; not on the sheets a spot on the basement floor; under your nail & the stories chortled, drowned in beer; not buried in the front yard; not speckled the color of brick across every opportunity that comes for love; will not wear [...]
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Monthly Meter: May
fellowship/publication submissions: 7 fellowship/publication acceptances: 0 fellowship/publication rejections: 1 books: __________________ Secret Shame: I'm a bully. (To myself). If I said the stuff I say to myself to other people, nobody would like me and I'd probably being fighting everyday. Mantra of the Moment: Pay attention. & I will and I can. I can and [...]
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Things I’ve wanted to be in no particular order
The Boy’s Girl A Delta flight attendant Valedictorian An Alvin Ailey dancer— Soul Train would do Stokely Carmichael's concubine (shh) The subject of a song, a nice song 21 That sigh Mama Cover Girl A broadcast journalist on Walden Pond Finally A missionary Carnival Queen The Black Madonna Damn In long skirts Dramatic Always Marva [...]
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The Great Mythology & Other Hyperbole
Heaven rolls its carpet for you; has not been the same since you. Harlem of the Mind—all dandies and magical as first kisses and a tree stump felt up like hips figure eight-ing in summer midis you are its spell. And there is no place to fit the smoke gathering, rising, and absorbing like fingertips [...]
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Breathing Lesson 101
This is your liver on Heinekin and when the Boy’s buying: Guinness. The body can turn itself Legend without permission, requisition, or even permanence which you learn in second grade after Greg’s accident left his hands unable to work the arithmetic; his loping gait plastered by seatbelts for every part, even his ankles. This is [...]
darlene anita scott 