The Esu of Forgiveness or Black fatherhood takes the long way round
The Esu of Forgiveness or Black Fatherhood takes the long way round My father married at 19, emmigrated to Canada with his new wife. By 22, he had three children – his marriage floundering. He met...
View Articlefrom a collection in progress: Brooklyn / Ghost: gone poems on...
Citation, or safe in Bed-Stuy Maybe it was the absurd sight of a helmeted man pissing on a fence. Maybe, that it was a fence separating the sidewalk from a playground. Maybe it was because it was 4AM...
View ArticleApril 2 - 2nd entry for National Poetry Month - a note on the prose of Louise...
“…When the birds descended, both Indians and whites set up great bonfires and tried driving them into nets. The doves ate the wheat seedlings and the rye and started on the corn. They ate the sprouts...
View ArticleApr 3 - third entry for National Poetry Month - Ocean Vuong's 'Homewrecker'...
Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet who spent his teenage years in Hartford, CT. He is, even as a man still in mis mid-twenties, preternaturally wise. If my grandfather were gay and Asian, he’d...
View ArticleApril 4 - Two Bottles of Rum and The Roaring Lion (recording) National Poetry...
For the fourth day i feature a piece of my own from the collection Bury My Clothes. This bit of narcissism comes via the Society of Midland Authors which today awarded Bury My Clothes their prize...
View Article#5 for National Poetry Month - Interview with Patrick Rosal
Patrick Rosal is a Filipino-American writer, author of 3 collections of poems and Assistant Professor of creative writing at Rutgers-Camden. He is also a dear friend and I credit him with much of the...
View Article#6 for National Poetry Month - first draft offering - On Nina's climbing stairs
On Nina’s climbing stairs The little one is climbing stairs. Today for the first time I call her strong girl I call her young homie I do not call her pretty or even beautiful I call...
View Article#7 for National Poetry Month - Roger records Negores with Guns by Nikki Finney
Nikki Finney’s work (and her mentorship) has been re-casting my sensibility of my own voice for many years now. Her poems stay steeped in personal and public history in a way that won’t let us forget...
View Article#8 for National Poetry Month - On Hiking the Smoky Mountains - First Draft
On Hiking the Smoky Mountains, Tennessee I keep thinking about the Cherokee on their land some 40 odd miles away – the word reservation – as in something reserved for. I keep thinking about this...
View Article#9 for National Poetry Month - claim - for the ocean by Roger Bonair-Agard
a recorded poem of my own for #9. claim - for the ocean, which appeared in the journal Drunken Boat earlier this year. get it. https://soundcloud.com/rogerbonair/claim-for-the-ocean-dec-9-by To...
View Article#10 for National Poetry Month - one turn around the sun by Tim Seibles...
Long Poem by Tim Seibles recorded by Roger Bonair-Agard w/ cameos by Nina Jane Merrill Bonair-Agard To be perfectly transparent, Tim Seibles is a mentor of mine. I love his work. I love the...
View ArticleNumber 11 for National Poetry Month - National Botanical Gardens, 1986 by...
https://soundcloud.com/rogerbonair/national-botanic-gardens-1986 For my last entry for National Poetry Month, i indulge my own poetry. This is the closing piece of my most recent collection, Bury My...
View ArticleLadies First 2014 - Sports and Music
Ladies First 2014 - Sports and Music These days, on the eve of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil I am gearing up, as I have every World Cup since 1974 to spend countless hours behind a television screen...
View ArticleWhy we watch(ed) Brazil or Why the score doesn't Always Matter
is in this literary sports journal Some Call it Ballin. Read it here. Read a host of other amazing sports pieces as well. http://www.somecallitballin.com/why-we-watched-brazil-bonair-agard To...
View ArticleOf Ferguson and a Black American Future
Of Ferguson and a Black American Future Roughly a year and a half ago, I sat in a South Side Chicago bar with two white friends as the travesty of the Zimmerman verdict was read. I was floored,...
View ArticleNew York 2014 – the police refuse their jobs and turn their backs on policing...
New York 2014 – the police refuse their jobs and turn their backs on policing Finally the police won’t patrol and we are left alone to walk while black, or decide upon school instead of jail or put...
View ArticleThe Year We Burst Into Flame - first draft
The year we burst into flame How many rivers do we have to cross Before we can talk to the boss? All we have it seems we have lost We must have really paid the cost That’s why we gonna be Burnin’ and...
View ArticleFlip it and Reverse It: an essay-poem riffing on how Missy Elliott got you...
Note: I first wrote this essay about 2 years ago. I put it in the world now for those whose introduction to Missy has been the Super Bowl half-time show; for the young-uns who I'm hearing hadn't heard...
View ArticleNational Poetry Month - 2 of 30
An excerpt from the Elegba interviews Love is all I bring / inna mih khaki suit an ting… Althia & Donna – Uptown Top Ranking I tell it like this –...
View ArticleNational Poetry Month - 3 of 30
excerpt from the Elegba interviews - origins Nah pop no style, I strickly roots / nah pop no style. I strickly roots… Althia & Donna –...
View ArticleNational Poetry Month - 6 of 30
An excerpt from the Elegba interviews – punking the interviewer And who that cap fit, let dem wear it / I say I throw meh corn, but mih nuh call no fowl…...
View ArticleNational Poetry Month - 7 of 30
What hasn’t met you – Elegba soliloquy 1 I drove the 15 hours to see my daughter born, to hip her to the wind that that buoys sails before – presumably – I’d drive back and give her bridges to cross...
View ArticleNational Poetry Month - 12 of 30
Ambition I want to make Chicago the city of Romance to blast all the working class ennui into today’s brilliant sunshine. I want to sit in the heat with a woman and drink from a brown bag reading...
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