Head-Turner
From To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness (Alfred A. Knopf, 2022) by Robin Coste Lewis. Used with the permission of the publisher.
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Last summer, two discrete young snakes left their skin on my small porch, two mornings in a row. Being post-modern now, I pretended as if I did not see them, nor understand what I knew to be circling inside me. Instead, every hour I told my son to stop with his incessant back-chat.
2015
An erasure of Grant Allen’s Recalled to Life
I don’t believe
I thought
or gave names
in any known language.
I spoke
of myself always
in the third person.
What led up to it,
2017
“The light range was so narrow if you exposed film
for a white kid, the black kid sitting next to him would
be rendered invisible except for the whites of his
eyes and teeth. It was only when Kodak’s two biggest
clients—the confectionary and furniture industries—
complained that dark chocolate and dark furniture
were losing out that it came up with a solution.”
—Broomberg and Chanarin
2017