Red Clay Suite

As I read through Red Clay Suite, I felt the struggle of being a woman of color. As a woman of color myself, some of the lines really struck a chord within me. She talks about loss of history, not belonging, and domestic violence even. How do we keep moving forward after so much pain and trauma? The poems felt like a way of healing. Trying to process all of these situations she has been through, maybe not even just her, but her ancestry.

In Let Blood Go, she speaks to this history writing:

Should I feel afraid driving here

When I know this dystopia,

can name the sins of familiars?

And goes even further to say that there is comfort in seeing a Confederate flag. Because we know this pain. This narrative. We’re so used to it, it no longer becomes a sign of painstaking fear, but just “this is how it is.”

We further see it in her poem The Blues I Don’t Want to Remember vs. What is Written for Me. The contrast between her father abusing her mother, to a man then abusing her. What we know then becomes what we are used to. It’s a cycle of these wounds continually being passed down and around. It never ends. But these words on a page are a start, a start to ending the cycle because she is processing and healing.

Roll my neck, flex my blackness,

hope that sassy stays in style