Table of Contents
Final First Poem 1
Of the Question of Self and How It Never Quite Gets Answered 2
Final Poem for the "White Students Next Door Who Say "Nigga" When Singing Along to Rap Songs Loud Enough for Me to Hear 3
Final Poem as Request for Maskot for White-Ran Journal, or "They sure do love them some Black pain." 5
Order of Events 7
Final Poem for a King 9
And Now Upon My Head the Crown 16
Tabula Rasa 17
Final Poem for War During War 19
Interlude: Sasa and Zamani 20
Final Poem for Amiri Baraka 21
The Flying African 22
Mushmouf's Maybe-Crown 24
Final Poem for the Crow 28
Final Poem for the "Black Body" 30
January 1, 2018 31
Final Poem as Tidalectic Elegy 32
Herald 36
The Field 37
Hunter 39
Final Poem for the Deer 40
Final Poem as Nocturne into Aubade, or Sonrise 41
Final Poem for the Biography of a Black Man as Animal and His Enforced Embrace of a Human Praxis 42
Black Joy 45
Judgment 49
Final Poem for the Famous Poet 51
January 28, 1918 52
Final Poem for the Bullet 58
"Ne Me Quitte Pas": I Put a Spell on You: Nina Simone: 1965 60
Final Poem for the Moon 61
The Void 64
Final Poem for My Father Misnamed in My Mouth 67
Final Poem for the "Field of Poetry" 68
The Asphodel 70
Shame 71
Final Poem for Grandma Elizabeth's Cancer 74
Final Poem of Persona 76
Mastery 77
In the Beginning 84
Notes 87
Acknowledgments 91
