Telepathologies

by Cortney Lamar Charleston

Overview

Cortney Lamar Charleston’s debut collection looks unflinchingly at the state of race in twenty-first-century America. Today, as much as ever before, the black body is the battleground on which war is being waged in our inner cities, and Charleston bares witness with fear, anger, and glimpses of hope. He watches the injustice on TV, experiences it firsthand at simple traffic stops, and even gives voice to those like Eric Garner and Sandra Bland who no longer can. Telepathologies is a shout in the darkness, a plea for sanity in an age of insanity, and an urgent call to action.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780998053448
Publisher:	Saturnalia Books
Publication date:	03/01/2017
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

CORTNEY LAMAR CHARLESTON completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and has earned fellowships from Cave Canem and The Conversation Literary Festival. His poems have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, the Journal, Pleiades, River Styx and many other publications. He is originally from Chicagoland and currently resides in Jersey City, NJ.

Table of Contents

How do You Raise a Black Child?
Pool Party
Blackness as a Compound of If Statements at Gunpoint
Melanphobia: Fear of Black
D.W.B.
Facing the Music
SuICIdE, iT'S a SuiCIDe
Meditation on the Casual Use of Hands
Meditation on Black Death Ending With an X-Ray
Memorandum
Spell Check Questions the Validity of Black Life
Po-Po Postlude
Ghazal on the Cusp of Rage
Feeling Fucked Up
In Case I Still
Aviophobia: Fear of Flying
Praise Song for the Black Body Ending in the Throat of a Swallow
Charleston
State of the Union
Kids These Days
Meditation on Wings and Meeting Gabriel in a Philadelphia Prison
Tupac Shakur's Last Words
Bibliophobia: Fear of Books
The Hood
BLK-on-BLK
Making a Fist
You're Only as Healthy as You Feel
American Terrorism in Seven Acts
Where Brooklyn A?
Exhibitionism with a Drop of Blood
White, as Told by Black
Artfully dodging the Subliminal and Obvious
The Melanin
Miley Cyrus Presides Over the Funeral of the Twerk
I'm Not a Racist
How Did They Justify the Shooting?
Telepathologies
Ghazal for the Bathing Ape
Six Shots on Ferguson, Missouri
Mama Speaks of Profiling
How Did Your Mother Die?
Meditation on Sunday Traditions After the Video Leaks
Gynophobia: Fear of Women
Keeping JELL-O
A Boogie Night, Age 12
Ghazal of the Code
The Barbershop
Homophobia: Fear of Sameness
I Think I Know One When I See One
Working Definition of a Prefix: Trans-
Autophobia: Fear of Self
Katrina
I Will Show You Fear in a Handful of Dust
Hydrophobia: Fear of Water
“. . . Everyday Something Has Tried to Kill Me and Has Failed
The Melancholia
Water Cooler Talk Ending With the Colors of an American Flag
Unmaking a Fist
How Do You Forgive?
Ode to Black Love
In Theory, We Are All Human
Notes

What People are Saying About This

D.A. Powell

“Cortney Lamar Charleston's poems testify in the eternal court of history; he speaks, as Aime Cesaire once did, "for miseries that have no mouth" and to liberate "those who languish in the dungeon of despair." Sandra Bland, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner and nine slain members of Mother Emanuel AME Church—voices silenced through institutionalized racism and the unchecked power of hate—form the nucleus of this powerful indictment of an America still suffering the legacy of its slave-trading past. Timely, immediate, imperative; this is poetry from inside the center of the storm; an urgent and articulate call for change.”