Saidiya Hartman

Being An Irish Story

Being An Irish Story

“As” is a love poem, after all. It’s a sidelong devotion—all wordplay and switchbacks. Its essence is decocted from its original artifacts, lost and now found, a reverse transit of its multiple parasitic meanings. It feels something like being in the archives, in a family, in love.

The Best Poem I Read This Month: Jayy Dodd’s “Black Philosophy #3”
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The Best Poem I Read This Month: Jayy Dodd’s “Black Philosophy #3”

“Black Philosophy #3,” Dodd’s new poem from the first issue of The Shade Journal, poses a series of “if…then…” questioning statements regarding blackness, black boys, death, dead boys, living boys, pretty boys, prettiness, and a manner of interrelating, interlocking, and uncompromising conditions between those terms.