Morgan Parker
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Poems of Body Positivity
These poems are of the body, toward body positivity. They acknowledge what many other poems hide, and they often times celebrate it. “Years ago, a teacher said never to use the word ‘poop’ in a poem,” writes Chen Chen just after the speaker of his poem “Winter” describes “smelly bowel movements.” This is not a poem that approaches this subject matter to shock or startle the reader; instead the poem makes a case for the whole embodied experience, from the labor of excretions to the tenderness of queer love. Morgan Parker demands autonomy, and Katie Condon develops a enraptured reverence for a woman’s body. Jenny Johnson invokes the desired self-image, Nicole Sealey candidly shares details of one’s bodily experience relevant to medical professionals, and sam sax celebrates a butt plug, whereas Rachel McKibbens explores an early sexual experience. These poems call the body forth, insist that it “Come glistening” into the light.
View playlistIn Praise of Black Weariness
I think of Black weariness as a specific condition born from the Middle Passage and ongoing genocide, a continual state of being that is distinct from resolvable feelings like "sleepiness." Black weariness is both intentional and environmental, a technology of survival in a world which has never left us any other choice. It is found in the procedural, grief-laden repetition of M. NourbeSe Philip's "Zong! #14" ("the truth was/the ship sailed/the rains came/the loss arose") and the directness of jay dodd’s "In the Age of Audacity" ("i don’t want a Solution/i want People to know/Everything hurts"). It's the flippant, sacred feeling writer Morgan Parker gestures towards in "Magical Negro #217: Diana Ross Finishing a Rib in Alabama, 1990s" (“Since I thought I'd be dead/by now everything/I do is fucking perfect"). Black weariness is the creation of luxury and time under impossible conditions. It's a balm, a speculative tradition, a freedom practice
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