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Against heaven : poems / Kemi Alabi.

Van Pelt Library PS3601.L323 A43 2022
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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Alabi, Kemi, author.
Contributor:
Rosengarten Family Fund.
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
African American women--Poetry.
African American women.
Trans people--Poetry.
Trans people.
Lesbians--Poetry.
Lesbians.
Transgender people.
Genre:
poetry.
Poetry.
Physical Description:
82 pages ; 23 cm.
Place of Publication:
Minneapolis, Minnesota : Graywolf Press, 2022.
Summary:
Kemi Alabi's transcendent debut reimagines the poetic and cultural traditions from which it is born, troubling the waters of some of our country's central and ordained fictions--those mythic politics of respectability, resilience, and redemption. Instead of turning to a salvation that has been forced upon them, Alabi turns to the body and the earth as sites of paradise defined by the pleasure and possibility of Black, queer fugitivity. Through tender love poems, righteous prayers, and vital provocations, we see the colonizers we carry within ourselves being laid to rest. Against Heaven is a praise song made for the flames of a burning empire--a freedom dream that shapeshifts into boundless multiplicities for the wounds made in the name of White supremacy and its gods. Alabi has written an astonishing collection of magnificent range, commanding the full spectrum of the Black, queer spirit's capacity for magic, love, and ferocity in service of healing--the highest power there is.
Contents:
Machine generated contents note: How to Fornicate
Against Heaven
WE WOULD HEX THE PRESIDENT BUT
Love Poem - 1: Chicago (CST) to Bangalore (GMT+S:30)
Black As
Voice Clear As
The Lion Tamer's Daughter Learns the Rules
Sunday Closet
A Financial Planner Asks about My Goals, or Golden Shovel with Cardi B's "Money"
Mr. Hotep Says #BlackLivesMatter and He'd Kill a Dyke
Love Letter from Pompeii
The Lion Tamer's Daughter vs. the Whip
No more white girls, or what I learned from Father
44 Questions to Ask While Bingeing
Catatonia mercy / or what I learned from mother
The Virus
Excerpt from The Book of Oceans
Theory of Plate Tectonics
Prayer in child's pose
The oldest song
After We Ruin My Love's Heart, the God of Annihilation Prays Back to Me
The Lonely Dream in Fevers
The Lion Tamer's Daughter vs. Full Moon in Leo
Soft & Beautiful Just for Me Relaxer, No-Lye Conditioning Creme, Children's Regular
At H&M, When Another Black Girl Asks If I Work Here
Undelivered Message to the Sky: November 9, 2016
Depression Proposes to Me Again
The Lion Tamer's Daughter vs. the Ledge
You must believe in spring
Eulogy for the Voice in My Head
The Lonely Sleep through Winter
Dendrochronology of This Want
Polyamory Defense #324
Goodbye Letter to My Lover's Wife
A Wedding, or What We Unlearned from Descartes
Free Fucked
Planet fka the lion tamer's daughter, mapped.
Notes:
Winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award, 2022.
Local Notes:
Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Rosengarten Family Fund.
ISBN:
9781644450826
1644450828
OCLC:
1246142577

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