& if you must know—the worn & beleaguered mermanfills his deep atlantic pockets to the brimwith the heads of benthic seahorses& the heady poems of mythic black folk bothfloating to surface in ambush of sky& if you wish to know—i open mouth and wallow youyou swollen fish hallow in my naveli scale the gleam in your eyes,my medulla gasping for reflective raptureuntil (in all the underwater caves of verse) ((pocketing a disassembled sun))the horizon gently surrenders furl, the miliumof morning sun—its vicious onslaught of curious dawn;our united ilia flaring towards choraleuntil the ocean between us is indiscernibleour conjoined niche devoid of crestfallen sorrow: a drawning :: an undrowningmy heart, bloated from your smile;muffled by your light—this, tho, tbh,we both know you already know & yet you marvelas to why i’m emotionally concussed my corneas reshapedto your fictitious cameo my heart bending to your gracefilters your shadow & that i am visibly wracked shouldgo without question as your refusalto laud me with decisive vow canonically vexesbut, shrew, it was your house demandingin excessive dowry i build you this balcony—don’t vacate now your avouchment to leap!you saw my stygian tongue and assumedit meant bawd when it said bard so now refusesto bow & construe a lyric for thine own comfort(therefore when i clepe there is no wherefore)& since you refuse to know—my anachronisms bear a raft, neither sundeck nor rift—my oceanic timbres swaling through umbrasrising through haptic dark—but, soft! (not soft.)
What Light Through Beyond Yonder Window
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upfromsumdirt. “What Light Through Beyond Yonder Window”
From The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife: Poems. pp. 9-10.
© 2025 Ronald W. Davis.
Used by permission of The University Press of Kentucky.
upfromsumdirt is a visual artist, graphic designer, & poet and is the author of four full-length poetry collections, Deifying A Total Darkness; To Emit Teal; The Second Stop Is Jupiter; and The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife; his fifth collection, We, the Umbra, is nearing completion with inquiries being sent out over the summer. He was cofounder and poetry editor of the now defunct magazine, Mythium Literary Journal, as well as cofounder of the equally defunct bookstore & cafe, The Wild Fig Books and Coffee. brothadirt is a member of the Affrilachian Poets collective and resides in Lexington, KY with his partner, author, & literary professor, Crystal Wilkinson.
Lexington, Kentucky
Simultaneously mythic and realist, this collection is an invitation to sway in a swell of Black love and to stomp in protest against the world's injustices. The voice in these poems is both intimate and international, welcoming us into his soul and taking us on a sweeping journey through the Black diaspora. In the process, upfromsumdirt demonstrates the complexity of Blackness by examining the portal of his own body through space and time and interrogating its binds.
The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife is a place to linger and wonder, to mourn and laugh, and to bear witness to the living and the dead.
"upfromsumdirt writes of his life as a Black boy and man; of how he has lived that life sometimes as ghost, other times as animal, not always as human; of his love for his partner and the tiny, intricate beauties of the earth and human connection; of poetry as the landscape of radical liberatory imagination. His use of English against itself—combined with his ironic, irreverent, yet deeply sincere and vulnerable tone—feels propulsive and prescient. This is a much-needed entry into the literary conversation at large."
—Ariana Benson
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