before my mouth deads this slick body. Sing. wax on testify come, honey come, othey’d be honeycombwax testimony song. later, stories better tell could tongue my If.tongue for a better story later. unbroken prepare, myself into fold Ifold into themselves prepared for breaking. ,gag, ready: grace by un-weaponed nails MyHis hands grace a weapon ready as my gag. .trouble of kind new a with eager become fingers Hiswhat they are eager to finger & trouble. —done have hands my what him tell I &He asks about what my hands do .body my for slick too be mouth My 1. To be read back to front, from bottom to the top, like a staircase.
Unlucky Duplex (Slick Mouth)1
after Sean Des Vignes & Jericho Brown
Feature Date
- May 7, 2021
Series
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Copyright © 2020 by jayy dodd
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
the subject known as jayy dodd… aka [Jazzelle] aka Lady Tournament beamed down in Los Angeles ’92 & is now based in Portland, OR. Her professional literary career includes positions at The Offing, Winter Tangerine & more with features in the LA Times, Poetry Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Willamette Weekly, The New York Public Library & several anthologies. She’s the author of Mannish Tongues (Platypus Press 2017) & The Black Condition ft. Narcissus (Nightboat 2019). Her film & performance work has been installed & screened across the country from classrooms to museums. She has been a Lambda Literary Fellow & Precipice Art Grant Recipient through Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art. She the mother of Tournament Haus, a boutique Ballroom house in Portland Kiki Scene, where she manages & produces young Black queer & trans artists. Find her talking slick or in another dimension.
Fall 2020
Bennington, Vermont
Bennington College
Editor
Michael Dumanis
Managing Editor
Katrina Turner
Bennington Review is a national biannual print journal of innovative, intelligent, and moving poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and film writing, housed at Bennington College.
Fifty years after its original founding and thirty years after its last issue, in 1985, Bennington Review has resumed publication, with poet Michael Dumanis as Editor.
We intend to reinforce the value of the bound print journal as an intimate, curated cultural space in which a reader can encounter and experience new work with a degree of immersion not wholly possible through other media. We hope to bring together writing that is as playful as it is probing, that simultaneously makes lasting intellectual and emotional connections with a reader. Bennington Review aims to contribute distinctive style and substance to the national literary conversation through publishing sharp, unexpected, original poetry and prose from a geographically broad and culturally rich spectrum of prominent, up-and-coming, and new voices.
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
