• John Keene on the Life and Literary Legacy of Essex Hemphill an Early Poetic Chronicler of Black Queer Life

    In Praise of an Early Poetic Chronicler of Black Queer Life

    Throughout Essex Hemphill’s poetry, what we registered was his attentiveness to craft as well as statement, to the possibilities of performance, of form, of the line, and to the expressive content, which is to say the lives and stories, his life and story, that these lines bore and made visible. He was a lyric poet to his core, and a political poet who knew that the most devastating critique could hinge on many of poetry’s numerous resources, any of which he wielded when needed.

    What we also appreciated was how open he was to self-reflection and reassessment, and how much he anticipated and opened up spaces for an array of poetics and poetries to come. I, like so many other writers of my generation and subsequent generations, would not be publishing today if it weren’t for Essex Hemphill’s example, his courage and daring, and his fearlessness and willingness to place his art on the stage and page before audiences and readers.

    Rereading and assembling these poems took on a particular poignancy for me, because I had the pleasure, as a young writer, not only of meeting and interviewing Hemphill in 1989, as part of the Dark Room Writing Collective’s reading series, based then in Cambridge, Massachusetts, but of having Hemphill serve as one of my first editors, when he selected and then proceeded to help me refine one of my first published short stories for the anthology Brother to Brother. He was generous but rigorous in his comments, never failing to suggest striking or rewriting passages that I was wedded to, a process which, I realized on rereading, showed me the breadth of his talents as a reader and writer.

    Co-editing this collection of poems, I would not deign to change a word, but in studying Hemphill’s poetics, how he drafted, ordered, and revised his poems, I continue to learn invaluable lessons about poetic craft and literary art in general. I also believe his generosity of spirit and intellectual and artistic rigor shine through in these selected poems.

    He was a lyric poet to his core, and a political poet who knew that the most devastating critique could hinge on many of poetry’s numerous resources, any of which he wielded when needed.

    Reading Hemphill’s work reminds me not only of his remarkable individual talent and many gifts as a poet, but also that he was one of the leading and most accomplished figures in a generation of Black gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer writers and artists who came of age in the wake of the Civil Rights, Black Arts, Gay Liberation and LGBTQ Equality, Women’s Rights, Lesbian Separatist, and Black and Third World Feminism movements. His work, like that of his peers, powerfully reflected, acknowledged, assimilated, and advanced the best lessons of these movements.

    Like a number of his Black LGBTQ peers, Hemphill began publishing and performing his work as more spaces—journals, little magazines, anthologies, and small presses, many edited and published by Black LGBTQ writers and artists, along with reading and screening venues, including bookstores, colleges and universities, conferences, and nightclubs, etc.—opened up and welcomed these artists’ visions and voices. For a moment, a flowering of Black LGBTQ literary and artistic production was visible to anyone paying attention. Hemphill even started his own small press, Be Bop Books, in Washington, D.C.

    I am also reminded that within a few years, the AIDS pandemic took so many of these talented writers from us, often abruptly and before many could realize the rich promise of the work they had shared with the world; and so this selected volume stands as a tribute to Hemphill’s distinctive poetics, but also should send us back to those many poets, writers, artists, whom we lost prematurely to AIDS and other social, political, and economic depredations, especially as we witness yet more waves of anti-LGBTQ, racist, misogynistic, and classist backlash to the achievements these movements have made.

    In conclusion, co-editing this volume was a labor of deep love and gratitude and tribute. It is our sincere hope that readers will return to it regularly and seek out more of Essex Hemphill’s work and that of his LGBTQ contemporaries, who created vital and enduring artistic and activist spaces—fusing the two in ways we might take for granted today—for those who would come after them, making possible the ever-expanding universe of letters in American, African American, and African Diasporic LGBTQ writing that we appreciate today.

    –John Keene

    *

    “Heavy Breathing”

    … and the Negro every day lower, more cowardly, more sterile, less profound, more spent beyond himself, more separate from himself, more cunning with himself, less straight to himself,

    I accept, I accept it all …
    Aimé Césaire,

    Return to My Native Land

    At the end of heavy breathing,
    very little of my focus intentional,
    I cross against the light of Mecca.
    I recall few instances of piety
    and strict obedience.
    Nationalism disillusioned me.
    My reflections can be traced
    to protest slogans
    and enchanted graffiti.
    My sentiments—whimsical—
    the dreams of a young, yearning bride.
    Yes, I possess a mouth such as hers:
    red, petulant, brutally pouting;
    or at times I’m insatiable—
    the vampire in the garden, demented
    by the blood of a succulent cock.
    I prowl in scant sheaths of latex.
    I harbor no shame.
    I solicit no pity.
    I celebrate my natural tendencies,
    photosynthesis, erotic customs.
    I allow myself to dream of roses
    though I know
    the bloody war continues.

    I am only sure of this:
    I continue to awaken
    in a rumpled black suit.
    Pockets bulging with tools
    and ancestral fossils.

    A crusty wool suit
    with salt on its collar.
    I continue to awaken
    shell-shocked, wondering
    where I come from
    beyond mother’s womb,
    father’s sperm.
    My past may be lost
    beyond the Carolinas
    North and South.
    I may not recognize
    the authenticity
    of my Negritude
    so slowly I awaken.

    Silence continues
    dismantling chromosomes.
    Tampering with genetic codes.
    I am sure of this
    as I witness Washington
    change its eye color
    from brown to blue;
    what kind of mutants are we now?
    Why is some destruction so beautiful?

    Do you think I could walk pleasantly?
    and well-suited toward annihilation?
    with a scrotal sack full
    of primordial loneliness
    swinging between my legs
    like solid bells?

    I am eager to burn
    this threadbare masculinity,
    this perpetual black suit
    I have outgrown.

    At the end of heavy breathing,
    at the beginning of grief and terror,
    on the X2, the bus I call a slave ship.
    The majority of its riders Black.
    Pressed to journey to Northeast
    into voodoo ghettos
    festering on the knuckles
    of the “Negro Dream.”

    The X2 is a risky ride.
    A cargo of block boys, urban pirates,
    the Colt 45 and gold-neck-chain crew
    are all part of this voyage,
    like me, rooted to something here.

    The women usually sit
    at the front.
    The unfortunate ones
    who must ride in the back
    with the fellas
    often endure foul remarks;
    the fellas are quick to call them
    out of name, as if all females
    between eight and eighty
    are simply pussies with legs.

    The timid men, scattered among
    the boat crew and crack boys,
    the frightened men
    pretend invisibility
    or fake fraternity
    with a wink or nod.
    Or they look the other way.
    They have a sister on another bus,
    a mother on some other train
    enduring this same treatment.

    There is never any protest.
    No peer restraint. No control.
    No one hollered STOP!
    for Mrs. Fuller,
    a Black mother murdered
    in an alley near home.
    Her rectum viciously raped
    with a pipe. Repeatedly
    sodomized repeatedly
    sodomized before a crowd
    that did not holler STOP!
    Some of those watching knew her.
    Knew her children.
    Knew she was a member of the block.
    Every participant was Black.
    Every witness was Black.
    Some were female and Black.

    There was no white man nearby shouting
    “BLACK MAN, SHOVE IT IN HER ASS
    TAKE SOME CRACK! SHOVE IT IN HER ASS,
    AND THE REST OF YOU WATCH!”

    At the end of heavy breathing
    the funerals of my brothers
    force me to wear
    this scratchy black suit.
    I should be naked
    seeding their graves.

    I go to the place
    where the good feelin’ awaits me
    self-destruction in my hand,

    kneeling over a fucking toilet,
    splattering my insides
    in a stinking, shit-stained bowl.

    I reduce loneliness to cheap green rum,
    spicy chicken, glittering vomit.

    I go to the place
    where danger awaits me,

    cake-walking
    a precarious curb
    on a comer
    where the absence of doo-wop
    is frightening.
    The evidence of war
    and extinction surround me.
    I wanted to stay warm
    at the bar,
    play to the mischief,
    the danger beneath a mustache.
    The drag queen’s perfume
    lingers in my sweater
    long after she dances
    out of the low-rent light,
    the cheap shots and catcalls
    that demean bravery.

    And though the room
    is a little cold and shabby,
    the music grating,
    the drinks a little weak,
    we are here
    witnessing the popular one
    in every boy’s town.
    A diva by design.
    Giving us silicone titties
    and dramatic lip synch.
    We’re crotch to ass,
    shoulder to shoulder,
    buddy to buddy,
    squeezed in sleaze.

    We want her to work us.
    We throw money
    at her feet.
    We want her to work us,
    let us see
    the naked ass of truth.
    We whistle for it,
    applaud, shout vulgarities.
    We dance like beasts
    near the edge of light,
    choking drinks.
    Clutching money.
    And here I am,

    flying high
    without ever leaving the ground

    three rums firing me up.
    The floor swirling.
    Music thumping at my temple.

    In the morning
    I’ll be all right.
    I know I’m hooked on the boy
    who makes slaves out of men

    I’m an oversexed
    well-hung
    Black Queen
    influenced
    by phrases like
    “the repetition of beauty.”

    And you want me to sing
    “We Shall Overcome?”
    Do you daddy daddy
    do you want me to coo
    for your approval?
    Do you want me
    to squeeze my lips together
    and suck you in?
    Will I be a “brother” then?

    I’m an oversexed
    well-hung
    Black Queen
    influenced
    by phrases like
    “I am the love that dare not speak its name.”

    And you want me to sing
    “We Shall Overcome”?
    Do you daddy daddy
    do you want me to coo
    for your approval?
    Do you want me
    to open my hole
    and pull you in?
    Will I be “visible” then?

    I’m an oversexed
    well-hung
    Black Queen
    influenced
    by phrases like
    “Silence = death.”

     

    Dearly Beloved,
    my flesh like all flesh
    will be served
    at the feast of worms.
    I am looking
    for signs of God
    as I sodomize my prayers.

     

    I move in and out of love
    and pursuits of liberty,
    spoon-fed on hypocrisy.
    I throw up gasoline
    and rubber bullets,
    an environmental reflex.
    Shackled to shimmy and shame,
    I jam the freeway
    with my vertigo. I return
    to the beginning, to the opening of time
    and wounds. I dance
    in the searchlight
    of a police cruiser.
    I know I don’t live here anymore
    to witness.

    I have been in the bathroom weeping
    as silently as I could.
    I don’t want to alarm
    the other young men.
    It wasn’t always this way.
    I used to grin.
    I used to dance.
    The streets weren’t always
    sick with blood,
    sick with drugs.
    My life seems to be
    marked down
    for quick removal
    from the shelf.
    When I fuck
    the salt tastes sweet.

    At the end of heavy breathing
    for the price of the ticket
    we pay dearly, don’t we darling?

    Searching for evidence
    of things not seen.
    I am looking
    for Giovanni’s room
    in this bathhouse.
    I know he’s here.

    I cruise a black maze,
    my white sail blowing full.
    I wind my way through corridors
    lined with identical doors
    left ajar, slammed shut,
    or thrown open to the dark.
    Some rooms are lit and empty,
    their previous tenant
    soon-to-be-wiped-away,
    then another will arrive
    with towels and sheets.

    We buy time here
    so we can fuck each other.
    Everyone hasn’t gone to the moon.
    Some of us are still here,
    breathing heavy,
    navigating this deadly
    sexual turbulence;
    perhaps we are
    the unlucky ones.

    Occasionally I long
    for a dead man
    I never slept with.
    I saw you one night
    in a dark room
    caught in the bounce of light
    from the corridor.

    You were intent
    on throwing dick
    into the depths
    of a squirming man
    bent to the floor,
    blood rushing
    to both your heads.

     

    I wanted to give you
    my sweet man pussy,
    but you grunted me away
    and all other Black men
    who tried to be near you.
    Our beautiful nigga lips and limbs
    stirred no desire in you.
    Instead you chose blonde,
    milk-toned creatures to bed.
    But you were still one of us,
    dark like us, despised like us.

    Occasionally I long
    to fuck a dead man
    I never slept with.
    I pump up my temperature
    imagining his touch
    as I stroke my wishbone,
    wanting to raise him up alive,
    wanting my fallen seed
    to produce him full-grown
    and breathing heavy
    when it shoots
    across my chest;
    wanting him upon me,
    alive and aggressive,
    intent on his sweet buggery
    even if my eyes do
    lack a trace of blue

    At the end of heavy breathing
    the fire quickly diminishes.
    Proof dries on my stomach.
    I open my eyes, regret
    I returned without my companion,
    who moments ago held my nipple
    bitten between his teeth,
    as I thrashed about
    on the mercy of his hand
    whimpering in tongues.

    At the end of heavy breathing
    does it come to this?
    Filtering language of necessity?
    Stripping it of honesty?
    Burning it with fissures
    that have nothing to do with God?
    The absolute evidence of place.
    A common roof, discarded
    rubbers, umbrellas,
    the scratchy disc of memory.
    The fatal glass slipper.
    The sublimations
    that make our erections falter.

    At the end of heavy breathing
    who will be responsible
    for the destruction of human love?
    Who are the heartless
    sons of bitches
    sucking blood from dreams
    as they are born?

    Who has the guts
    to come forward
    and testify?
    Who will save
    our sweet world?

    We were promised
    this would be a nigga fantasy
    on the scale of Oz.
    Instead we’re humiliated,
    disenchanted, suspicious.
    I ask the scandal-infested leadership
    “What is your malfunction? Tell us
    how your automatic weapons
    differ from the rest.”

    They respond with hand jive,
    hoodoo hollering,
    excuses to powder the nose,
    or they simply disappear
    like large sums of money.

    And you want me to give you
    a mandatory vote
    because we are both Black
    and descendants of oppression?
    What will I get in return?
    Hush money from the recreation fund?
    A kilo of cocaine?
    A boy for my bed
    and a bimbo for my arm?
    A tax break on my new home
    west of the ghetto?

    You promised
    this would be a nigga fantasy
    on the scale of Oz.
    Instead, it’s “Birth of a Nation”
    and the only difference
    is the white men
    are played in Blackface.

    At the end of heavy breathing
    as the pickaninny frenzy escalates,
    the home crew is illin’
    on freak drugs
    and afflicted racial pride.
    The toll beyond counting,
    the shimmering carcasses
    all smell the same.
    No matter which way
    the wind blows
    I lose a god
    or a friend.

    My grieving is too common
    to arouse the glance of angels.
    My shame is too easy to pick up
    like a freak from the park
    and go.

    Urged to honor paranoia,
    trained to trust a dream,
    a reverend, hocus-pocus
    handshakes; I risk becoming schizoid
    shuffling between Black English
    and assimilation.
    My dreamscape is littered
    with effigies of my heroes.
    I journey across
    my field of vision
    raiding the tundra
    of my imagination.
    Three African rooftops
    are aflame in my hand.
    Compelled by desperation,
    I plunder every bit of love
    in my possession.
    I am looking for an answer
    to drugs and corruption.
    I enter the diminishing
    circumstance of prayer.
    Inside a homemade Baptist church
    perched on the edge
    of the voodoo ghetto,
    the murmurs of believers
    rise and fall, exhaled
    from a single spotted lung.
    The congregation sings
    to an out-of-tune piano
    while death is rioting,
    splashing blood about
    like gasoline,
    offering pieces of rock
    in exchange
    for throw-away dreams.

    The lines of takers are too long.

    Now is the time
    to be an undertaker
    in the ghetto,
    a black dress seamstress.
    Now is not the time
    to be a Black mother
    in the ghetto,
    the father of sons,
    the daughters of any of them.

    At the end of heavy breathing
    I engage in arguments
    with my ancestral memories.
    I’m not content
    with nationalist propaganda.
    I’m not content
    loving my Black life
    without question.
    The answers of Negritude
    are not absolute.
    The dream of King
    is incomplete.
    I probe beneath skin surface.
    I argue with my nappy hair,
    my thick lips so difficult
    to assimilate.
    Up and down the block we battle,
    cussing, kicking, screaming,
    threatening to kill
    with bare hands.

    At the end of heavy breathing
    the dream deferred
    is in a museum
    under glass and guard.
    It costs five dollars
    to see it on display.
    We spend the day
    viewing artifacts,
    breathing heavy
    on the glass
    to see—
    the skeletal remains
    of black panthers,
    pictures of bushes,
    canisters of tears.

    __________________________________

    From Love Is a Dangerous Word: Selected Poems by Essex Hemphill, edited by John Keene and Robert F. Reid-Pharr. Copyright © 2025. Available from New Directions.

    Essex Hemphill
    Essex Hemphill
    Essex Hemphill (1957–1995) was born in Chicago and raised in Washington, D.C. He was a member of the poetry collective Cinque, a frequent collaborator with the Emmy award-winning filmmaker Marlon Riggs, and the editor of the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men (1991). His collection Ceremonies: Prose and Poetry (1992) won the National Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual New Author Award.





    More Story
    The Best Story Collection About California Wildfires Isn’t a Book—It’s a Brand-New Record  On a summer afternoon early in the pandemic, the songwriter Will Stratton was riding his bike near where he lives in the Hudson...
  • We Need Your Help:

    Become a Lit Hub Supporting Member

    Lit Hub has always brought you the best of the book world for free—no paywall. But our future relies on you. In return for your contribution, you'll get an ad-free site experience, editors' picks, and our Joan Didion tote bag. Most importantly, you'll keep independent book coverage alive and thriving.