I don’t watch or read the news as much as I should. Probably because this is my mind goes when I do. That said, my poem “the Blue Envelope Program” was just published by The New Verse News
For those who want the footnotes I cut out of the poem:
I don’t watch or read the news as much as I should. Probably because this is my mind goes when I do. That said, my poem “the Blue Envelope Program” was just published by The New Verse News
For those who want the footnotes I cut out of the poem:
I keep writing creative nonfiction and (for some reason) people publish it. “How to Tell a Pure Rage Story” pays homage to Tim O’Brien's “How to Tell a True War Story,” but is a tale all its own.
It's now published in Mayday Magazine.
In seminary, I wrote a narrative about a modern prophet through poems. Hopefully, some version of that collection will see the light of day. Until then, one of those poems— “YHWH breaks the forth wall”— has found at home in the latest issue of The Windhover.
I have a guest blog post for A Game for Good Christians’ Card Talk series entitled “God Planning Your Pain to Make A Point.” It employs one of my theological sonnets that appears in The Third Renunciation.
I previously had the privilege of editing AGFGC’s literary anthology This Present Former Glory: An Anthology of Honest Spiritual Literature.
If you don’t know A Game for Good Christians, imagine what you get if you crossed Cards Against Humanity with the Bible.
I was honored to have Kai Coggin and Maya Williams read their amazing poetry as a part of the night. You can watch the recording through the link below.
“the Prophet confronts his attacker” was published in New York Quarterly latest issue. This is one of my theological sonnets that also appears The Third Renunciation (from New York Quarterly Books, 2023).
CW: themes of sexual assault.
I am working on a series of poems I am calling midrash qatan, or “a little story/exposition.” They are expositions, retellings, and reimagings of stories from the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament. The name pays homage to Rabbinic genre of Midrash Rabbah (“a great midrash”).
Two of these poems have just been published in Vita Poetica Journal:
“found” (a midrash qatan on Luke 15)
and
“subtlety: an assay” (a midrash qatan on Genesis 3)
Both pages include an audio recording of me reading these poems.
I’m happy to have another one of my poems, "...believes all things", appearing in 3 Elements Literary Review. Read the full issue below
My first publications of the new year are from the Decolonial Passage. Each is an ekphrastic work, which will likely be a part of the collection I am slowly putting together. Read them here.
“reflection” is after James Barnor’s Self-Portrait with a Store Assistant at the West African Drug Company, 1952
“Black Men and Women in a Tavern,” is after the painting by the same name from workshop of David Teniers the Younger (1650)
“casually and casualty share a Latin root” draws from Jackie Sibblies-Drury’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, Fairview.
Today is the 250th anniversary of The Boston Tea Party. My poem, “on watching a reenactment of the boston tea party” was published in The New Verse News.
My poem “dispatches from the desk of Danel: the self-designated disciple and messianic anger-management translator” was published in the latest issue of Pensive Journal out of Northeastern University. Click on the link below and turn to page #77.
Have you watched the Key & Peele sketches involving President Obama's anger translator Luther? That’s the vibe here.
Note: Here are the passages the speaker is … “interpreting”
Terrain.org has published both "when asked what might finally lead me to drink or abuse schedule 1 narcotics" & "white History Month" as a part of their Letter to America series.
Both are accompanied by a “dramatic reading.” Click below to read/listen.
My poem "Invisible Man (Two Views)” was shortlisted in Alan Squire Publishing Annual Poetry Contest and is now in ASP Bulliten’s latest issue.
This is a doubly ekphrastic poem, inspired by Glenn Ligon’s canvases (by the same name), who in turn took his inspiration from Ralph Ellison’s novel of the same name. Both Ligon and my work represents the opening paragraphs of Ellison’s work to great effect.
So I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. Black excellence.
My poem “American Civics: 2056” was published in River Heron Review’s Poems, For Now issue.
This is an erasure poem from American Civics: A Text Book for High Schools, Normal Schools, and Academies (1906), employing the only mentions of Blacks (“Negroes” or “slaves”) in the whole textbook.
It’s pretty much what you would think and has implications for our collective future.
Once again faculty meetings can be a source of inspiration. This time the intersection of fire drills and school shootings. A big thank you to The Worcester Review for publishing my poem “curriculum development.”
My creative nonfiction piece “Being Present” was just published in Porcupine Literary. It stands on the shoulders, pays homage to Jamaica Kincaid (and Maurice Carlos Ruffin).
Functionally, it’s a love letter to my kids: past, present, future.
As a few people are aware, one of the projects I'm currently working (yes, I said “one of…"“) is a collection of ekphrastic poems: I’m expanding Dust & Ashes into a full-length collection.
To that end, I've spent a good part of the summer visiting a bunch of art museums in three different states (so far) to balance the literary art responses with some visual art. Some fruits of that labor were published today in Fevers of the Mind. Here is the link to the poems:
Below are the links to the works they are based on (each opens in a new window).
Well I can finally announce that my poem “the Banjo Player explains” was chosen by A Van Jordan as the Solstice Literary Magazine Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize winner!
The poem is an ekphrastic narrative based on Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting The Banjo Lesson: the painting which was the cover art for my first collection, Teaching While Black.
It’s a joy to present the selections for the 2023 Stephen Dunn Prize for poetry. The winning poem is “the Banjo Player Explains,” by Matthew E. Henry, selected by our poetry judge for this issue, A. Van Jordan. He writes:
In one of the most assured ekphrastic poems I’ve read in some time, ‘the Banjo Player Explains,’ grants a wish I’ve had since I first saw this Tanner painting: ‘I wish I could hear this lesson played out.’ The poem goes beyond the canvas and the framing of the two figures by “striking a balance between two worlds,” indeed. There’s also the perspective of experiential knowledge of the boy as man, an old man, looking back on a moment he will never forget, yet not initially knowing the significance of it in the moment. There’s great wisdom and a life lesson here.