Leila Mottley: woke up no light

Mottley’s poems are poignant and provocative. In her opening poem, “a case for / against repetitions,” she writes:

play dead / play docile / play along
stare a beast in its mouth and dare it to bite this is the only way to know if
the country is still hungry

Mottley writes about blackness and about her great grandmother:

My great grandmother was the original Rosa Parks.
Except it was Virginia and she was so much meaner
than Rosa ever dared to be
My great granny was what you would call
A motherfucker. A bitch. A python
when it came to protecting her young

She calls out “all the best celebrities are perverted” and she spares no Miles Davis:

miles davis plays a mean trumpet and i must admit
i still listen to flamenco sketches when the going gets tough as his knuckles
scabbed over from his woman’s cheekbone
but a man that mean must got something
he needs to puff into that brass
so my daddy puts it on the stereo and
we all name our babies after him
hoping they might be born metallic

I don’t understand everything she writes, but I enjoy her works. The poems are set in Chaparral, designed by Carol Twombly, and they are a pleasure to read.