henry 7. reneau, jr.
this poem is my Black voice → → →
any resemblance to a person , or persons , living or dead
is not an echo
→ → → but the pressure point by which all things
pivot → → →
[a fulcrum] , as in e pluribus unam , but in[di]visible
the weight of just a discarded sliver of existence
on the cosmic scale , a dread
that rests its wide haunches in my lap
, is insignificant , but
profoundly and destructively consequential
in the now
if i am free , why does it feel so small ? so
in[di]visible
→ → → is not an emotion
but a state of be-ing
on the hem of society
: a Negro problem
is a purple echolalia of bruises
Black and blue[s] from within
is a decay- / ing an atrophied momentum
that retards all we wish to do / acquire / or overcome , as if
discombobulated , and spun into the gyre
of a maggot’s hunger
race– / ism → → →
like you know a thing by how it is itself on the inside
a traditional
a cultural
a legislated
absence of our presence a redaction
of worth [⅗ of . . .]
the whole → → →
minus the sum/ some
the exclusionary distancing
of post-racial → → → away from
a further that seems forever
farther . . .
and we mitigate as if turning consequence
over in our palms → → →
like we had been in great danger
and were maybe still in it
until the air is made of trepidation [mud and bone]
and there’s nothing else to breathe
as if
we were incrementally
be-ing e-race-d → → →
‡‡
HENRY 7. RENEAU, JR. writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience & a barb-wired conviction that prequels the spontaneous combustion that blazes from his heart, phoenix-fluxed red & gold, like a discharged bullet that commits a felony every day, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press.) His work is published in Superstition Review; TriQuarterly; Prairie Schooner, Notre Dame Review; Punt Volat; The Ana; and Oyster River Pages. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Union Spring Literary Review 