Alisha Gaines: Shuck n' Strategy

for Alisha

Clearly

clearly
some of us
were made
for TV

some of us
can animate
the mundane

some of us
speak flat spaces
into declarative
remixing ruts
into interrogatives

some of us
open our hands
so minstrel spirits
fall through
and recolor
the everyday making
of same

at least one us
clearly

_______
Alisha Gaines is a doctoral candidate and instructor of English and African American Studies at Duke University. Her dissertation focuses on liberalism and passing in the 20th Century US. She also writes brilliantly on black masculinities and makes Micheal Jackson and the color yellow even cooler than they already were.

This is part of a series of poems and collages documented at The Listening Project: A Poetics of Relation.