Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Any Psalm You Want: Poems
    Any Psalm You Want: Poems
    Any Psalm You Want: Poems
    Ebook110 pages1 hour

    Any Psalm You Want: Poems

    By Khary Jackson

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A leader in the new African American Lit movement, Any Psalm You Want by Khary Jackson intertwines past, present, music, quiet, death and life in intimate, passionate verse, to moving and poignant effect.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWrite Bloody Publishing
    Release dateOct 1, 2018
    ISBN9781938912238
    Any Psalm You Want: Poems

    Related to Any Psalm You Want

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      followed—in front, as horses—into daisy& silver dancing, knowing the jaw who unkeysin the danced earth to drink me down to haints,& will go again. was willed. distrusted happiness, addicted to it.a god needs of a god. here, i don’t want to reachfor g

      3 min read

    • Article

      Devil Asks Why You Would Mouth The Word Pity

      Jul 1, 2022

      even in this abundance of dark? Even in this abundance of dark you have totake the stars on faith. Look: Under today’s dim sky there is a basket.In that basket there is a fish. Come night, you are the animal that will eat the best parts of it. And ye

      1 min read

    • Article

      An Anti-Racist Poetry Reading List

      Jun 8, 2020

      These recent poetry collections offer poignant narratives and snapshots of racial injustice in America. The post An Anti-Racist Poetry Reading List appeared first on The Millions.

      1 min read

    • Article

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • Article

      Writing Prompts and Exercises

      Feb 14, 2018

      Suggested Reading: A Primer for Poets & Readers of Poetry (W. W. Norton, February 2018) by Gregory Orr The author of a dozen books of poetry as well as three books about poetry, including Poetry as Survival (University of Georgia Press, 2002), Orr de

      2 min read

    • Article

      All The Gay Saints

      May 1, 2020

      All The Gay Saints
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Rails

      Dec 1, 2021

      The Rails
      1 min read

    • Article

      An Appreciation Of Julia De Burgos, “Farewell In Welfare Island”

      Jan 1, 2022

      It has to be from here,right this instance,my cry into the world. Life was somewhere forgottenand sought refuge in depths of tearsand sorrowsover this vast empire of solitudeand darkness. Where is the voice of freedom,freedom to laugh,to movewithout

      11 min read

    • Article

      Jericho Rising

      Jan 13, 2020

      Jericho Rising
      11 min read

    • Article

      Seven Poems

      May 1, 2023

      There was a boy even stranger than I waswho’d call me in the eveningto see if I’d come to Scouts. Something in mehesitated. Then one morning during eighth grade English we got hall passesand did it in a stall in the bathroomtaking turns over the john

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Any Psalm You Want

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Any Psalm You Want - Khary Jackson

      Author

      ENACTMENT

      A hundred years from now, Civil War re-enactments will

      be dead. In their place: every Juneteenth, solemn young

      hands will wrap red (or blue) bandanas around their heads,

      warm up the low rider, polish off the AKs and .45s,

      and cruise around the ‘hood with Snoop (Doggy) Dogg on blast.

      The faces of old black women will, on cue, peer through their

      windows at the bobbing car, and upon seeing the boys and their guns and

      their gyrating arms, the old black women will dive to the floor

      and mouth a prayer to the Lawd. An unfortunate black boy

      standing in the front yard, unable to escape in time, will twist

      his torso, yank his limbs to the choreographed puncture

      of lungs, thump the grass without bracing his fall. His eyes

      will flicker shut. He will imagine he can no longer breathe.

      And from somewhere near, from everywhere, a forty-year-old

      black woman will howl for her boy. Her hands will shred the air.

      At the corner, in the liquor store, the cashier is calmly shaking

      his head, preparing to tell the first listener that boy was

      a good boy. In the store is a forty-ounce bottle, waiting to be opened.

      Waiting for its moment to dance the blood.

      FOR BRENDA MOOSSY

      She told me she’d distinguished the soul of a gator

      by the taste of its spine, by how many taste buds

      tore off upon it, ravenous. Then she laughed

      until a nymph spat out.

      I married the swamp for nothin’ but her mania.

      She said it’s the closest we can come to your mouth,

      begged me to one day bury her in the Ozarks.

      Somewhere there’s a licked-open cow gut, brandishing a voice

      and face and hands, poeming: Naw sugar, I just want to be loved.

      Somewhere a farmer touches himself sober in the stalks.

      Somewhere a buzz of feathers and flies ensures nothing goes to waste.

      Somewhere, there you are, biting into barbecue sauce draped on a rib.

      You tell me you know he loved you. Listened. Gave everything he’s got.

      ——

      Brenda,

      Sometimes you rattle into my mind and I want to pull the car over

      and mold myself an ax. They say we’re dust, right? We can cry ourselves

      into mud, reshape our bodies, harden at noon. I was born a missing jewel,

      natural as the swamp.

      ——

      She was my favorite nurse. 1984. She wasn’t scared by my body.

      She didn’t twist her mouth, proclaim my beauty through one eye.

      When she spoke, her voice buzzing, I sunk into the bayou.

      My blood cooled. My lips molten leather.

      ——

      When she left:

      A beaten girl curls up under him, croons of a sweet Jesus.

      Exhaled smoke unveils the exit lights.

      The field misses her hands.

      The scarecrows tell me they hang themselves.

      ——

      I found a letter in the bayou, in the remains of a molded ax.

      It was all in Arabic, the same as my name.

      At the end, a voice:

      find me.

      WHEN THE SONG IS DONE

      For a moment, the song is killing you.

      Because it is perfect. This song

      was made for your sorrow, this specific sorrow

      from this most exact and exquisite backhand of your life.

      The music is ugly, in the way a lover is once they’ve turned

      their back to you, when you know the silence after is all yours,

      inelegant, inarticulate, merciless. But dear god, when the music plays,

      when it plays, for every moment you’d spent swallowing the burst,

      the music is a middle and ring finger at the back of your throat.

      And now, for the three minutes and forty-four seconds of this song,

      when it retches out of you, it is exactly right. Every chord

      is an extracted image of you, convulsing in the shower,

      frozen under moon, pounding your mattress,

      heaving in the car. These moments are knitted together,

      Frankensteined by the sound.

      And now,

      for a moment, the song

      is over. And it is now that you know,

      after all the therapy, the pills, the fucking and the sleep,

      you know how long the repeat button has kept you alive.

      HOW TO MAKE IT GOSPE L

      On the television a capella competition The Sing Off, a sextet named Jerry Lawson and The Talk of the Town sung a version of House of the Rising Sun. Afterwards one of the judges asked, How did you make that song a gospel?

      The lesson:

      open the song with a river of ooo’s,

      thick and low, as if sung under the breath,

      spine bent in the field,

      a sleeping infant on your back,

      the impending moon the only white

      you can stand.

      You follow with

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1