REVIEW BY GABINO IGLESIAS

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Sometimes you read poetry that makes you think of a juggler throwing knives lit on fire into the night sky. You’ve seen jugglers before, but this one—the one you’re reading—is new, special, unique. Encountering poets like that means encountering not only words in orders you’ve never seen them in before but also words used to say things you’ve never heard them say before. upfromsumdirt is that kind of word magician (“i’m a shaman on the forward path/walking past-backwards to where the Ra also rises”).

I first encountered upfromsumdirt’s word last year when I read Deifying a Total Darkness, which blew me away and struck a chord with the Caribbean magic riding my veins. When I started putting together this National Poetry Month project, I knew I had to reach out and include some of his work. To Emit Teal was all I wanted it to be and more.

You don’t even have to go into the first poet to know you’re experiencing something strong, something that carries a message. All you have to do is read the dedication:

“TO EMMETT TILL

FOR

breonna &

ahmaud &

george &”

Simple, but it hurts. Three times; a history of racism, struggle, and murder. Then you start reading, and it only gets better. One of the things that make upfromsumdirt work unique is his balance of time and subject. He writes about now, but with always keeps the past present. He writes about the word, but in a way that’s filtered through his experiences and amplified and presented by his voice. This is poetry about the self that often is inextricably tied to the world and to other people.

Some things in this collection are easy to write about. You already know it deals with racism and history. Yeah, slavery is in there, and don’t you forget. There’s also a distinctive musicality and words that create their own rhythm: “you hafta be a butterfly to feel this tango,/electric bomba for our boneblack spirits.” Lastly, there is Blackness as upfromsumdirt sees it in a historical context: “our status as Nigerian bronze smith descendants/down to some ordinary yard bird—hustlers” Lastly, there is the stuff you read and then read again because it’s so timely (sadly) and so powerful:

“we coddle our kids in the genie bottle’s broken shards; we caress & dress our newborns in secondhand smoke & mirror with “make a wish” as body armor. born as batteries—their pained laughter the lithium for the very war machine come to kill them. for nostalgia’s sake, they’ll even kick in your door in the dead of night and brew tea for you under a hail of bullets; the keystone cops in a brutal ballet.”

You can understand that without much digging, but then there are poems that seem to bring messages that demand you dig deeper. upfromsumdirt seems to have spoken to the Orishas and they gave him a gift: to write with words we all know but in a way that strikes your chest like the sound of drums…and makes you understand it beyond language. This is something he does time and again, and it’s the reason why folks should read his work. Here’s just a taste you can feel and could have a hard time explaining because it contains so much:

“either way, i’m too ancestral to carry on as some

cold canon’s common cuck—i’m an old ass man

my knees ache from translating Earth?

to a telling-tongue (and from too much Splenda

to let a daughter tell it)—carrying a vesperous hurt

400 years too heavy – but walking around with your

ass on your shoulders is a definite cause for type-2

diabetes so i’ve backed down (somewhat) with

the mouth-frothing diatribe—i’m a faith-healing

black folk-art snake handler in 21st century coveralls

bidding you to come eat my magic yeast—beneficial

poisons to regrow lost youthhood these

mythic words are a load-bearing wall in the Temple

of Octavia—Patron Lady of the Thick Black Lip

each quip a ledger for our unborn legends and that’s

the real reason i’ve lured you here—human sacrifices

are needed—so surrender at once your throat to me let me

slice out a premonition with the edge of

an orange peel placing these long drawn out words?

on the sleeve of a t-shirt for e-bay every sentence

a gang sign for the Dark Gods Of Black Poetry on

pinterest—my stories hauled in egg sacks from

the center of the sun on the back of Anansi

i’m here because there is splinter in America

and now is not the time for withdrawing words

absconding from the up-or-down vote.

You’ve seen jugglers before, but from time to time you encounter one doing tricks you’ve never seen before. That’s what To Emit Teal does, and it’s what makes upfromsumdirt a poet you should read. Leave what you think you know about poetry at the door and enter his world. You won’t regret it.

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Gabino Iglesias is a writer, editor, literary critic, and professor living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.