Song of my softening / Omotara James.

Author/creator James, Omotara author.
Format Book
PublicationNew Gloucester, Maine : Alice James Books, [2024]
Copyright Date©2024
Description138 pages ; 23 cm
Subjects

Contents Part One: the sacrifice. I. Brass. Having no grief to speak of - Half girl, then elegy - Twice a month on Sundays with Maxine, my tender head and the truth - Autobiography of Thud - Untouched - My father remark that I prioritize my Nigerian heritage over my Caribbean side - Wall - Haircut - Markers - Ceremony - Promise - Things I know to be true, but will never prove - My mother's nerves are shot - More - Proverb - a little tenderness - First kiss / under capitalism - Ice sculpture - Mama Wata - Whereas - On repetition - Moose / Leaving Philadelphia - Rufus, I never met you, but I want to tell you - Dissociation in a time of cuffing season - Equilibrium as the day after - Bang and a whimper - II. String. A mother can see more sitting down than a child standing up -- Homosexual - Triolet - Exhibition of the queered woman - The butcher: a love poem - Sonnet of the bull - While cliffs of Dover - Fruit flies - Mirror talk - Shame - Morbid subtraction - Heaven be a sturdy chair - The only rooms I occupy are empty - When I said I had Obamacare, what I meant was Medicaid - Biopsy - You are not brave: a female utterance - Closure - You call Ky in the middle of the night, -- In lieu of ode - The good news - I am resistant to trust - Proper fat - A flair for language - Moving to Brooklyn during the peak of a pandemic - Three women / Two transfers and a token / One reincarnation - Part two: The feast. I. Drum. Said sorrow to joy - Bodies like oceans - Poem to watch over you - Tides - Pier 52 - Black art sonnet in which lines were shuffled and glued - Portrait to an uncaged child on Easter - Tripartite - What we leave undone - Ars diaspora with drinking gourd - To the mother of the boy found floating asleep on the lake - Ode to extinction - II. Wind. Got 'til it's gone - Body image - Museum of what is owed - Mixed media portrait with hard subjects and my mother's soft tendencies - Black woman gets a message: has discourse with God - After the last calorie of the Apocalypse / Prayer for the clinically obese - Direct objects - Allahu Akbar: for my body under the rule of white supremacy - Notebook full of thirst for the New Year - Poem to the body - Trash day - Flower embroidery / Womxn's work - When I dream of escape, -- Found God poem - III. Piano. Dark hallelujah - Kiese says, black people deserve beautiful sentences, but a fragment is the best I can do / Songbook for the names I have been called - Dear reader, -- Last days of summer - Constraint - Self-portrait as a queer block party.
Abstract "A profound and intersectional text, Song of My Softening is a queer, fat, love song of the interior. Poems study the ever-changing relationship with oneself, while also investigating the relationship that the world and nation has with Black queerness. This book is a window into what perseverance looks like, ungilded, a mirror for anyone born into a culture outside of their identity, who has survived alienation, violation, depression, and systematized oppression. Unspoken truths about the body and soul are mused with openness, candor, and tenderness"-- Provided by publisher.
Bibliography noteIncludes bibliographical references.
Issued in other formOnline version: James, Omotara. Song of my softening New Gloucester, ME : Alice James Books, [2022] 9781948579483
Genre/formpoetry.
Genre/formPoetry.
Genre/formQueer poetry.
Genre/formPoetry.
Genre/formPoésie.
Genre/formPoésie queer.
LCCN 2022009297
ISBN9781948579247 (trade paperback)
ISBN1948579243 (trade paperback)
ISBN(epub)

Availability

Library Location Call Number Status Item Actions
Joyner General Stacks PS3610 .A4498 S66 2024 ✔ Available Place Hold