Gossypiin : poems / Ra Malika Imhotep.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Imhotep, Malika Ra, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poetry.

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (99 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Los Angeles, California : Red Hen Press, [2022]

Summary:

"gossypiin is a Black feminist hypertext that registers the feeling of an experience of the world in which the self is an unstable plurality continuously unmade. It is a story marked into the flesh of the poet, transferred onto the page through a process of distillation. It is an enactment of Black feminist poetic utterance that tends to the inside parts. This harvest of poems is inspired by the plant medicine latent in Gossypium Herbaceum, or Cotton Root Bark, which was used by enslaved Black women to induce labor, cure reproductive ailments, and end unwanted pregnancies. Through an arrangement of stories and memories experienced, read, heard, reimagined, and remixed, the poet reckons with a peculiar yet commonplace inheritance of violation and survival. gossypiin performs an interruption of the narrative silence around sexual harm and the mark it makes on Black femme subjectivity"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Contents

Gossypium herbaceum

What We Gathered Here to Do

Sow

My daddy says I've misremembered

Copresence II

_____'s Rape

Ma Dear

Lil Cotton Flower births themself out of the forced togetherness of a quiet wound

Obscure Origins 2: The Player

Obscure Origins 1: The Sculptor

Lil Cotton Flower sings / them self a song

Seedling

The first time I heard the story

after mama sighs

exile in pursuit of the New South

Grandma Sarah's maiden name was Moody

Wild Wimmin Don't Worry

My mother dreams

Grandma Sarah ain't finish the seventh grade

earth bound

A Question of Attunement

Flower

I ain't know when I laid down on the floor crying

endurance

the hermit-woman takes a lover

Some nights talking to god

"somebody forgot to tell somebody something"

amenorrhea

anovulatory or fugitivity at the meeting place of my thighs

the poet stares longingly into a black queer elsewhere and feels themself unravel

madrigal para las vientres negras

Notes toward the integration of a traumatic event or the scene of my own subjection

Miss Graham tells my younger self a blue joke

mammy-made potion

Fruit

Da Peach Squad

One of Four Women Walking Down Peachtree Street Licking Herself

Lil Cotton Flower Tells a Story

Mammy Councils Her Kin

Home is a mouth full of spit for your tender heart

Harvest

my mama tells a story

Second Trimester

Grandma Sarah mourns her only son

Copresence I

grief-borne power

When prompted I remember

Overstimulated

Dispatch from a writing workshop in 2015 in which I am the only nigga alive

all the blk things cry sometimes

Copresence IV

This ain't quite memorial

rememory

Lil Cotton Flower's First Will and Testament

Credits.

Gratitude

Chorus

Back Cover.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Other Format:

Print version: Imhotep, Ra Malika gossypiin

ISBN:

9781636280264

OCLC:

1263251764