#ISaidWhatISaid2016
My favorite pieces I’ve had published this year:
yo, i’m v proud of the work i’ve been able to publish this year. gonna link my 10 faves below, no particular order.
1. The Impossible Outside (Or, A Zumbi’s Autopsy)
The question of “Where is it safe to be Black & alive?” haunts the diaspora. If the answer remains unfound what ways can we make of ourselves, caught here & subjective. The contemporary Black body a post-slavery, post-colonial subject exists in all-consuming duality. [..] The Black body now holds that tension. The simultaneous articulations of own joy & suffering provides a grammar for our capacity to exist in a world that speak us extinct or only living for labor.
Nominated for a Pushcart Prize via Awst Press
2. Gender Non Conformity as Peak Blackness
This gender construct was forced upon us. White people used their own bodies as basis for humanity — white men using their junk as the arbiter of power. The Black woman body was made Mammy, or Enraged, or Seductive. The Black Man’s body was Insatiable, Simple, or Breakable. The earliest vernacular for Black people’s body in this country was written by white fear. Black people’s notions of masculine & feminine roles consistently puzzle the white lawmaker, neighbor, TV viewer, etc.
for SlayTV
3. Why I’m Scared Of White Women
It is dangerous to use white women as the only measures of public safety, particularly in this time of abject public violence against Black people. This narrative of “the terrifying Black man” has fueled decades of legislation, while establishing credibility for any white woman’s testimony of indiscretion.
4. “ars poetica”
5. “Hyel’s Zumbi”
6. “Ode to Junk, My Own”
7. Physical Education
8. “Black Philosophy #3”
9. “white. savior. black. messiah.”
10. “Knowing Good & Well”
published by Platypus Press (publisher of Mannish Tongues // Feb 2017)
