Many of the early-career poets that I come across in MFA programs, major publications, conferences, readings are writing in a similar fashion— first person narrative poems, left aligned, less than one page in length, tight language, controlled temperament, image centric, high lyric… Sometimes, I read these poems and spin in their artistic splendor. Sometimes, I read them and feel cold (as if I’m hugging a dead body at the morgue, a lifeless body in its finest cloths). Sometimes, I pray to Audre Lorde, Gloria Anzaldua, June Jordan, Essex Hemphill, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Rich, Tatiana de la Tierra, Akilah Oliver, Etheridge Knight and ask for their resurrection, strength.
In writing this post, I want to highlight the work of poets whose words BREATHE, rebel, are fiercely independent and politically centric. I am want to celebrate the (mostly) non-MFA poets who can give you an analysis of the relationship between poetic craft, class privilege, and white supremacy. I want to celebrate the poets who will laugh at me (for posting this article with an organization whose name perpetuates the concept of this settler-state). These are the poets who would more likely spend their money supporting social movement work then submission fees for poetry journals. These are the poets who have been and will be standing at the forefront of the next protests against police brutality. Let’s take a moment to celebrate their fearless independence (& listen to their calls).
*Also, please know that there is much overlap, nuance, amongst the two “camps” of poets that were just described. (It gets really complex when trying to distinguish collectives of poets from one another stylistically and politically). This post is not intended to be an analysis of poetic movements, rather I hope that it serves as a starting point for people interested in contemporary poets who also mobilize politically.
1. Alok Vaid-Menon is a transfeminine South Asian writer, performance artist, and community organizer based in NYC. For the past six years they have organized in solidarity with racial, economic, and gender justice movements in the US, South Africa, India, and Palestine. Their creative and political work grapples with questions of power, trauma, diaspora, race, and desire. Alok currently works at The Audre Lorde Project and is on tour with DarkMatter, a trans South Asian art collaboration with Janani Balasubramanian.
Excerpt from girls wear blue; boys wear pinkwashing
“how many words does it take to dismantle a bomb?
how many words does it take to erase a border?
how many words does it take bring back the dead?”
2. Juliana Huxtable was born and raised in College Station, Texas and currently lives in New York, NY. From 2010 to 2012, Huxtable worked as a legal assistant for the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. She is a co-founder of a queer weekly party in New York City called SHOCK VALUE and she is a member of the House of Ladosha. In 2015 Huxtable had a sculpture of her, photographs of her, and poems of hers featured in the New Museum Triennial. Huxtable regularly includes her poetry into her DJ sets and has also has recorded poetry on the song "Blood Oranges" by Le1f. Her poetry was also included in the runway soundtrack for the Hood by Air in New York Fashion Week.
Excerpt from Real Doll
“THEY HAD DEVELOPED THE MOST ADVANCED
SYSTEMS FOR MAPPING DESIRE KNOWN TO MEN
(LITERALLY). THEY ALL SEEMED SATISFIED TO
LIVE IN A WORLD OF TOPS/BOTTOMS MASC/
FEMMS DIVIDED INTO VARIOUS SIZE, SHAPE, HAIR
LEVEL, ETC AFFILIATIONS. IT WAS LESS A RESULT
OF SEXUAL EXPLORATION THAN A MARKET PLACE
THAT MIMICKED THE ARTIFICIAL VOLITION OF-
FERED BY A SHOPPING MALL. THE COMPLEXI-
TIES OF DESIRE WERE DENIED PRIMA FACIA, IN
LIEU OF THE EASY, GREASY, SLEAZY AND CHEAP
ALTERNATIVE. FUCKING OR GETTING FUCKED
FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY… POSSIBLY MORE IF YOU
COULD TOLERATE HIS BREATH…”
3. Jackie Wang is a writer, poet, musician, and academic whose writing has been published by Lies Journal, Semiotext(e), HTML Giant, BOMBlog, along with numerous zines. Her essay “Against Innocence” provides insightful analysis on penal systems and race theory. She’s currently writing a book for Semiotext(e). Originally from New Port Richey, Florida – “people call it New Port Nowhere” – Jackie moved to Cambridge, MA this fall to start a PhD program in African and African-American Studies and History at Harvard University.
Excerpt from LONELY WOLVES ON THE FLOOR OF THE WORLD
“In ‘Teinte Ban’ Bhanu Kapil writes, ‘I
wanted to write a novel but instead I wrote
this.’ She wanted to write the race riot
from the perspective of the brown girl on
the floor of the world but instead she writes
the luminous edges of the girl’s inverted
body. Ante-narrative told in color. A
delirious study of the body at the expense,
as she writes, of the event.”
4. Alan Pelaez Lopez is an AfroLatin@ that grew up in Boston via La Ciudad de Mexico, documenting his existence as an undocuqueer poet, jewelry designer, and bubble tea addict. Alan currently works at the Dream Resource Center in Los Angeles, which is a project of the UCLA Labor Center. He is a member of Familia: Trans*, Queer Liberation Movement.
Excerpt from Speak
“Open your mouth
Go ahead, I give you permission to call me a jota
Una marica
And a faggot
Tell me I’ll never be like you
Call me ese negro pendejo
That nigger
Spick
And illegal
Teach me to beg my mom to get me contacts
But not clear contacts
You know, those that’ll keep me safe from harassment
The blue ones”
5. Stephen Boyer is the author of Parasite (2013), Ghosts (2010), and was a lead compiler of the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology. Currently, they're diligently working on a series of nature-related poems. Their work can be found online, in many zines and an assortment of publications.
Excerpt from In my past lives I must have met everybody
“wandering around Strand Bookstore in a miniskirt flirting with staff
yes I’ll have sex for money
I thought for sure I had been a renegade 1960’s visionary gay pornstar
or Frank O’Hara or Sylvia Plath sans husband
but Ariel keeps suggesting my interpretations are self involved
that I was a girl, then a boy that died alone of AIDs”
6. Jos Charles is a white, genderqueer, femme, queer, dyadic, able bodied, neurodivergent, thin, natural born US citizen, native english speaker, lower middle class person, with access to education, piece of shit. Jos Charles is the founding / editor of THEM (a trans literary journal). Jos Charles has published poetry with BLOOM, Denver Quarterly, Feminist Wire, and more.
Excerpt from I INTERNALIZED UR MISOGYNY AND THEY CALL ME DYSPHORIC
“male flesh: a fiction we can’t afford
and yet i swallow.”
7. Lara Lorenzo is a poet and human services worker based in Brooklyn. In her writing and political work, she explores connections between misery, interpersonal violence, and systemic violence, with the aim of developing strategies for resisting and dismantling all three. Her writing has appeared in Nepantla, Toe Good Poetry, October, and Third Text, among other places. Follow her on Twitter @babaylanti.
Excerpt from WHAT CAN I DO TO DESTROY AMERIKA?
“a big god voice boomed false start!
& maybe it was but i wasn’t sorry
we had no other way to begin
under empire a person is always
choosing to be wrong
go to hell said the god voice
history chimed, its blue mind rhyming
across a field of wild energy & i prayed
let us not be deceived by what passes
for life in this place”
8. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist love evangelist, a prayer poet priestess and has a PhD in English, African and African-American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies from Duke University. Alexis was the first scholar to research the Audre Lorde Papers at Spelman College, the June Jordan Papers at Harvard University, and the Lucille Clifton Papers at Emory University, and she is currently on tour with her interactive oracle project “The Lorde Concordance,” a series of ritual mobilizing the life and work of Audre Lorde as a dynamic sacred text. She has several books in progress including a book of poems, Good Hair Gone Forever. Alexis was named one of UTNE Reader’s 50 Visionaries Transforming the World in 2009, was awarded a Too Sexy for 501-C3 trophy in 2011, and is one of the Advocate’s top 40 under 40 features in 2012.
Excerpt from Prophecy Poem (impermanence after Phillis)*
“black bodies disappearing into death, state-sanctioned choke-holds.
it will not always be this way
the impossibility of breathing.
it will not always be this way.
I listen to my ancestors when they say
it will not always be this way
to steady my steps I have to pray
it will not always be this way
it cannot always be this way
it will not always be this way
it will not always be this way,
i will continue to say”
* Poem was written collectively at Bright Black Webinar Series for Brilliance Remastered.
9. Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan/Guam. He is the co-founder of Ala Press, co-star of the poetry album Undercurrent (Hawai’i Dub Machine, 2011), and author of three collections of poetry: from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008), from unincorporated territory [saina](Omnidawn Publishing, 2010), and from unincorporated territory [guma'] (Omnidawn Publishing, 2014). He is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, where he teaches Pacific literature and creative writing. Perez’s poetry focuses on themes of Pacific life, immigration, ancestry, colonialism, and diaspora.
Excerpt from understory
“how do
new parents
comfort a
child in
pain, bullied
in school,
shot by
a drunk
APEC agent?
#justicefor
-kollinelderts--
nālani gently
massages kai's
gums with
her fingers-
how do
we wipe
away tear--
gas and
blood? provide
shelter from
snipers? disarm
occupying armies?
#freepalestine— ”
10. Margaret Rhee is a feminist poet, new media artist, and scholar. Her research focuses on technology, and intersections with feminist, queer, and ethnic studies. She has a special interest on digital participatory action research and pedagogy. Her scholarship has been published at Amerasia Journal, Information Society, and Sexuality Research and Social Policy. As a digital activist and new media artist she is co-lead and conceptualist of From the Center a feminist HIV/AIDS digital storytelling education project implemented in San Francisco prisons. As a poet, her chapbook Yellow was published by Tinfish Press/University of Hawaii. She co-edited the collections Here is a Pen: An Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press) and an online anthology Glitter Tongue: Queer and Trans Love Poems.
Excerpt from I love Juana
“Is there a queer of color Jesus? Is there a queer of color Queen?
And a queer of color Bible titled disidentifications?”