ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Kendra N. Bryant is a 40-year-old Black lesbian woman who teaches composition courses at the historically Black North Carolina A&T State University — academic home of Jesse Jackson, Ronald McNair, and the Greensboro Four, who invoked the 1960s lunch counter sit-in movements. Her poems have been published in texts including: the afterword of Deborah G. Plant’s “The Inside Light”: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston; New Texas: A Journal of Literature & Culture; and Stephanie A. Allen and Lauren Cherelle’s Solace: Writing, Refuge and LGBTQ Women of Color. Additionally, she has commissioned works forthcoming in Gary Lemons’ Hooked on the Art of Love: My Call for Soul Work.
Kendra earned a creative writing certificate from the University of South Florida, Tampa while working on a Ph.D. in English, Rhetoric & Composition (2012). Occasionally, she contributes personal essays to her blog site. Kendra is currently working on a manuscript of protest poems archiving the literal and figurative murders of Black lives.
Poets Resist
Edited by Sandra L. Faulkner
June 17, 2020
Edited by Sandra L. Faulkner
June 17, 2020
sonnet no. 1 for the Black Lives Matter Movement
Black Lives Matter don’t make Black lives matter
when white robes in blue suits judge & jury.
“We want justice!” sounds like Babel’s chatter,
yet the world questions Black rage & fury.
What’s not outrageous ‘bout Black bodies lynched?
We’re target practice in a new Jim Crow;
& tho we march w/fists erect & clenched,
it may all come down to one deadly blow.
& w/each swing, we will call out their names —
Trayvon, Eric, Sandra, & Emmett Till —
we’ll fight ‘til we call each Black body slain.
& since we’re divine, it’ll be in God’s will
to live thru Nat Turner; scrap to the end!
Come what may come ‘til liberation wins!
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
