Reginald Dwayne Betts Q&A on how he came to poetry
Reginald Dwayne Betts talks about how he became interested in writing poetry.
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Reginald Dwayne Betts Q&A on reading his work aloud
Reginald Dwayne Betts talks about reading his work aloud as he writes.
What We Know of Horses
1. & when my brother says Swann Rd. is the world, he ignores boarded vacants, broken windows – this place’s shattered glass? He tells me “believe the world is tenement house, a pocket full of stones, a world of ghosts, & what’s left of ash & smoke after each inhale.” I visit now that […]
The Invention of Crack
I. Dark alliance. Crack smoked over this backdrop: CIA seal, Contras. So much heavy weight. How birds fly? How millions turn into guerrilla props: AK-47s, & all else. White smoke. Rocks. The dead & dying. Gary Webb’s tale of two horrors: Contra & crack. Mr. Speaker, what is most frightening about crack is […]
Elephants in the Fall
for Micah and Miles 1. Micah Michael Zamir Betts November’s flame in that year of hard sunsets, of winter’s plangency & days when my insomnia courted cognac. All our thoughts were beginnings, & you became the roundness that grew to a moon above your mother’s hips. We […]
For the City That Nearly Broke Me (In streets that grieve)
In streets that grieve our silence, children die, they fall to bullets & asthma, they fall into each other’s arms as mother’s watch on. & there is a secret to why the small boy can step into the street & no one notices as it swallows him whole, a mathematics for the hold that Newports […]
For the City That Nearly Broke Me (A woman tattoos Malik’s name)
A woman tattoos Malik’s name above her breast & talks about the conspiracy to destroy blacks. This is all a fancy way to say that someone kirked out, emptied five or six or seven shots into a warm body. No indictment follows Malik’s death, follows smoke running from a fired pistol. An old quarrel: crimson […]
Ars Poetica With Vulture
Diclofenac, prescribed for gout or arthritis, wends into the poem to explain the thousands of vultures—long- & slender-billed, oriental white-backed & griffin—& owls who carrion-clean what the vultures of northern Indian skies leave on skinned cattle shot full of the drug, & I find myself speaking another poem’s tongue, saying something about rosemary […]