Many of my poems begin with hearsay, and incorporate things I hear people say in everyday speech, which is often unbelievably poetic. This is true of "Age of Miracles" as well: someone once told me a famous poet said that poetry, to him, risked becoming outdated technology. That phrase has stuck in my mind ever since, and it appears in this poem too.
"I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South. If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument."
Resources for Supporting and Uplifting the Black Community
Black Women Radicals: "Black Women Radicals (BWR) is a Black feminist advocacy organization dedicated to uplifting and cultivating Black women’s radical political activism."
Movement for Black Lives: "The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) seeks to reach millions, mobilize hundreds of thousands, and organize tens of thousands, so that Black political power is a force able to influence national and local agendas in the direction of our shared Vision for Black Lives.""
The Atlanta Solidarity Fund : "This bail fund in Atlanta is dedicated to those who have been arrested for protesting political injustice."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"It was not the first poem I loved but it was one which reshaped the foundations of what I thought poetry could be—abstract elliptical essay, sensuous discourse on aesthetic form, history, and a strange kind of oblique confession all woven together into a sprawling imagistic song."
