Major Jackson’s collection of poetry, Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia Press, 2001), a Cave Canem Poetry Prize selection, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has appeared in Callaloo, Grand Street, The New Yorker, Triquarterly, among other literary publications. He has garnered recognition with a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, Whiting Writers’ Award, and Witter Bynner Fellowship […]
Off from a double at McDonald’s, no autumnal pinata, no dying leaves crumbling to bits of colored paper on the sidewalks only yesterday, just each breath bursting to explosive fog in a dead-end alley near Fifth, where on my knees with my fingers laced behind my head and a square barrel 9MM prodding my left […]
Freddie Hubbard’s playing the cassette deck Forty miles outside Hays and I've looked at This Kansas sunset for three hours now, Almost bristling as big rigs bounce and grumble Along I-70. At this speed cornfields come In splotches, murky yellows and greens abutting The road's shoulder, the flat wealth of the nation whirring by. It's […]
What of my fourth grade teacher at Reynolds Elementary, who weary after failed attempts to set to memory names strange and meaningless as grains of dirt around the mouthless, mountain caves at Bahrain Karai: Tarik, Shanequa, Amari, Aisha, nicknamed the entire class after French painters whether boy or girl. Behold the beginning of sentient formless […]
for Cornelius Eady I. One summer night I learned the art of Break-dancing from a guy I'd only known As Moon in exchange for algebra lessons On Mondays. A member of the Pop-Along-Kids, Moon taught me how to flick my wrist & make a wave. “Check out The Electric Boogie.” he said & worked […]
That moment in church when I stared at the Reverend’s black kente-paneled robe & sash, his right hand clasping the back of my neck, the other seizing my forehead, standing in his Watch this pose, a leg behind him ready to spring, his whole body leaning into the salvation of my wizened soul, I thought […]
Sun Ra & His Year 2000 Myth Science Arkestra at Grendel's Lair Cabaret, 1986 Skyrocketed— My eyes dilate old Copper pennies. Effortlessly, I play * Manifesto of the One Stringed Harp. Only This time I'm washed Ashore, ship-wrecked * In Birmingham. […]