What is it ’bout the river that makes even spirits sing? We hear a laugh& don’t know if it’s ours or our momma’s, our sister’s or otherworld kin.What current of possibilities. We could splash, laugh, water-dance. Hell,we could baptize somebody. Wash the wet of us they said would stay dirtyour whole lives. Glory, we could become something old & new. Anybodycould meet us here. Sister. Self. Ancestor or God. Monster. Our dresseshaunt our legs while we wade in God’s eye & gene pool—looking just likewho we came from. The water broke &that’s the last time we were thisclose to tasting the salt & mineral of heaven…. Or whatever you call theworld where a tree be a conversation partner growing from self & sky. Oh,anybody can meet us by the water—so we bring our sisters, our cousinsn’em— our girlhood timeless & rippling ’round our legs. O anything ispossible in water’s memory. We could be ’bout anything.Girls. Grown. Guile & guiltless. Gap-toothed & gliding gait. Green. Gracious. Gang of gods. Grim-glory. Grief.Galaxy & gather ’round. Good ground. Glass & garment. & goodness-me.& grace. Gemstones. Gift-giddy. & gospel. & got damn. Good news. Gravity. No gore though.
Ky Smiley
Last Century, Last Week: Holy Will (Ekphrastic)
after Ky Smiley
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“Last Century, Last Week: Holy Will (Ekphrastic)” From BLOOD-FLEX: by Ajanaé Dawkins.
Published by New Delta Review on May 12, 2025.
Copyright © 2025 by Ajanaé Dawkins.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Ajanaé Dawkins is a poet, a performer, and an educator. She has published work in The Rumpus, EcoTheo Review, The BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic, and The Offing, among others. Her honors include a Tinderbox Poetry Editors Prize and a finalist placement for a Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize from Cave Canem. Dawkins is the 2022 Duncanson artist-in-residence at the Taft Museum and a recipient of a fellowship from The Watering Hole and the Pink Door Writing Retreat. She is the theology editor for EcoTheo Review, a Blackburn Fellow as an MFA candidate at Randolph College, and an MDiv candidate at Methodist Theological School in Ohio.
Winner Of The 13th Annual New Delta Review Chapbook Contest
Selected By Ashley M. Jones
"What a rich text, a true wealth for the soul of all who come here and witness this complicated and stunningly told testimony! What a golden gift to the archives of womanhood! Dawkins’s Blood-Flex is a chapbook with the heft and vision of skilled poet several books deep. Reading this will make you impatient for all the works to come from this visionary, this truth-teller. If the truth can do anything but be sought and told, then I’m certain that the truth loves Dawkins for how she gets to it. With great humility, the poet asks in the author’s note, 'What new could I say about something damn near old as God? What could I truly imagine that hadn’t been felt before?' but I am here to say that nobody can imagine into the realm of mother’s and daughters the way this poet has. It is her humility, her ripe, pungent heart that makes the genius so sweet here. It is the empathy, the epiphany, the electric lyric and questioning that makes this work so special. We are blessed that Dawkins made this for us to share. With each line and each poem I feel lives changing, I hear louder and louder the sound of a world where mothers can be women and girls can be safe rushing towards us. Read this book, then listen to the wind."
~ Danez Smith, author of Bluff
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