When I saw it first, up closeit was the hands of a womanthat placed it therea vision in the context of my own pasta bridge made evidentby those made to wander.Of course she would recognize kinher, the maker of facesthe sculptor of eyeless sight.There was something about the ancients,trinitarianthe rockstoneexcavated from some watersreminiscent of the riverthe hairs from the headsyoung and oldbrothers curled in their own simple semblancea twist as old as breath, we are sure,no matter the street or desert.But there beside the faces of Fayoum,the place of my motherand the countenance of my fathera marker for amalgamation.That Kushite bald patchon the crown of remembrancea crack to the domewhere wisdom seeps.I felt the whole of historybreeze through that crackshaping the toolsthat shape the facesthat rock the headand cause usto see.
Rock Head
after David Hammons & for Simone Leigh
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Copyright © 2022 by Northwestern University.
Published 2022 by TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced from Prairie Schooner Volume 98, Number 1 (Spring 2024) by permission of the University of Nebraska Press.
Copyright 2021 by the University of Nebraska Press.
Josephine Sittenfeld
Matthew Shenoda is a writer, professor, and author and editor of several books. His poems and essays have appeared in a variety of newspapers, journals, radio programs and anthologies. His debut collection of poems, Somewhere Else (Coffee House Press), was named one of 2005’s debut books of the year by Poets & Writers Magazine and was winner of a 2006 American Book Award. He is also the author of Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone (BOA Editions Ltd.), editor of Duppy Conqueror: New & Selected Poems by Kwame Dawes, author of Tahrir Suite: Poems (Northwestern University Press), winner of the 2015 Arab American Book Award and with Kwame Dawes editor of Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden (Northwestern University Press, 2017). His latest book is The Way of the Earth (Northwestern University Press, 2022).
Shenoda began his teaching career in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University where he taught for nearly a decade and has since held several faculty and administrative positions at various institutions. Currently he is Professor and Chair of the Department of Literary Arts and affiliated faculty in Africana Studies and the Brown Arts Institute at Brown University. Additionally, Shenoda is currently faculty for Cave Canem and a founding editor of the African Poetry Book Fund and both the African Poetry book series and On African Poetry book series.
Spring 2024
Lincoln, Nebraska
University of Nebraska
Editor-in-Chief
Timothy Schaffert
Managing Editor;
Jessica Poli
Prairie Schooner, an international literary magazine, publishes poetry, short fiction, and essays from around the world. In recent years, the quarterly has included authors from six of the seven continents (with subscribers in just as many). Historically, it is one of the nation’s five oldest quarterlies and will celebrate its centennial with the Spring 2027 issue. A project of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department since its debut in 1927, Prairie Schooner is one of UNL’s most important cultural exports and research legacies. Not only has it published some of modern literature’s most notable writers, but it has also provided opportunities for generations of students to gain first-hand editorial experience.
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