Patricia Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art, winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Award and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist. She is a Guggenheim fellow; an NEA grant recipient; a former fellow at Civitella Ranieri, Yaddo, and MacDowell; a professor in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College; and a distinguished professor for the City University of New York. She was also a nominee for the 2018 Neustadt Prize.
Courtesy of the Greenwood Cultural Center
Lord, he was born a pesky question. Know
he always wore the danger hour of dusk.
The white folks named his skin impossible.
He teetered, balanced on the N…
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