"A snapshot of any given Saturday of my childhood, this slick little poem tries to hold all the wonder & power my 4-year-old self witnessed watching the women of my family shapeshift. Toggling between world-class fisherwomen one moment & humble churchfolk the next, the title evokes a conversation on classic(al) conjurations of gender performance & holiness, asking not 'What would Jesus do? (WWJD)' but imagining further possibilities for rural Black femme existences."
Willie Lee Kinard III on "What We Wayward Do" |
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What Sparks Poetry:
David Blair On W. H. Auden's "Petition"
"Naturally, I enjoyed the subtle rhymes so much that I did not even notice them, nor the poem's sonnet form, a perfect spell working on my barely conscious mind because here, in the last line and a half of the poem, was a sentiment so sudden that I could, without embarrassment, sport around with it typed and taped to my binder on a strip of paper, a fortune cookie fortune, a restaurant's first dollar: 'look shining at / New styles of architecture, a change of heart.'" |
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