(V.)

In 1974, when Ntozake Shange first released the cannon of Black girl magic known as For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, her opening stanza was a call to all of us.

somebody / anybody

sing a black girl’s song

bring her out

to know herself …

This book is answer to that call.

Anastacia-Renee’s words frame so many questions: what is sacred, what is beauty, what is tragedy, what rites of passage have we endured to be initiated into the complexities of our humanity? These poems read like rituals, invoking ancestors and Becky alike in a nuanced honest reflection of this time in life.

These poems are stories of blackness, of queerness, of womanhood, and of all the identities we hold externally and internally that create the tapestry of who we are and who we want to be.