Morgan Parker’s tonal shifts bulldoze past the merely implicative towards an exuberance without safety net. The poet’s humor, rage, depression and lust pour out like a molotov cocktail. Where do we position ourselves among these declarative rushes that explode irony? With a laugh or wince, with a fist or moan? Inside Parker’s affective demolition park all tones of psyche become possible even as none, in isolation, are quite sufficient to contain her multiplicity. The boldness of this poet’s wits is nothing short of invincible. –AF

All They Want Is My Money My Pussy My Blood

I am free with the following conditions.

Give it up gimme gimme.

Okay so I’m Black in America right and I walk into a bar.

I drink a lot of wine and kiss a Black man on his beard.

I do whatever I want because I could die any minute.

I don’t mean YOLO I mean they are hunting me.

I know my pussy is real good because they said so.

I say to my friend I am broke as a joke.

I am Starvin’ Like Marvin Gaye.

I’m so hungry I could get it on.

There’s far too many of me dying.

The present is not so different.

Everybody looks like everybody I worked with.

Everybody looks like everybody I’ve kissed.

Men champion men and animals.

Everybody thinks I’m going to die.

At the museum I tell the school group about Black art.

I tell them the word contemporary.

I have a nose ring I forget about.

I have a brother and he is also Black.

I am a little modern to the fault.

I say this painting is contemporary like you and me.

They ask me about slavery. They say Martin Luther King.

At school they learned that Black people happened.

The present is not so different.

I’m looking into their Black faces.

They do not understand that they exist.

I’m Black in America and I walk

into a bar and drink a lot of wine, kiss a white man on his beard.

There is no indictment.

I could die any minute of depression.

I just want to have sex most of the time.

I just want my student loans to disappear.

I just want to understand my savings account.

What is happening to my five dollar one cent.

I am free with the following conditions.

What is happening to my brother.

What if I do something wrong.

My blood is so hot and wet right now.

I know they want it.

I do everything right just incase.

I don’t want to give away my money but here I am.

It’s so stupid I have to say here I am.

They like to be on top.

I am being set up.

I am a tree and some fruits are good and some are bad.

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Morgan Parker, author of Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback Books 2015), selected by Eileen Myles for the 2013 Gatewood Prize, and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé. A Cave Canem fellow and Editor for Little A and Day One, Morgan also co-curates the Poets With Attitude (PWA) reading series with Tommy Pico. She lives in Brooklyn and at www.morgan-parker.com. Featured image: The Mountain of Crystal and Concrete/Meteor Mountain, by Yashua Klos, 2009.