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mepresley 's review for:
Electric Arches
by Eve L. Ewing
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
This collection focuses on black identity and has an incredible emotional impact, especially the retellings, which imagine alternate endings much happier than the events that actually transpired.
"Ever since black people came to this country we have needed a Moses/ There has always been so much water that needs parting/ It seems like all black children, from the time we are born come into the world in the midst of a rushing current that threatens to / swallow us whole if we don't heed the many, many warnings we are told to heed .... We are a people forever in exodus.
Before Moses there was Abraham, and ever since black people came to this country we have needed an Abraham....We are masters of the art of sacrifice; no one is more skilled at laying their greatest beloveds on the alter and feeling certainty even as we feel sorrow" ("What I Talk about When I Talk about Black Jesus").
"'We need help from our ancestors but you have been lost to us. So we worked very hard and made this special machine. It allows us to talk to you inside your head....I am your great-great-great-granddaughter....So now, Grandmother, my first question is...'....'What words can you offer us to help us be free as black people in a world that does not love us?' .... and the woman laughed....She laughed and laughed, and laughed." ("the device")
"I was six years old....The old white lady came down the block from time to time....This time she screamed at me. 'You little nigger! You almost hit me with that bike! Go back to your nigger Jesse Jackson neighborhood!'" ("the first time [a retelling]")
"As I was getting into my car I saw the lights flashing and the four of them sitting on the curb. CPD stood over them and the university police were looking on. I drove up and pulled alongside and asked what was going on, if their parents had been called and informed they were being questioned. Their heads were down. One officer told me that the youngest was nine years old. ....He told me to leave. I would not." ("four boys on Ellis [a retelling]")
My favorite poems were "how i arrived," "appletree," "what i mean when i say i'm sharpening my oyster knife," "Thursday Morning, Newbury Street," and "Columbus Hospital."
"Ever since black people came to this country we have needed a Moses/ There has always been so much water that needs parting/ It seems like all black children, from the time we are born come into the world in the midst of a rushing current that threatens to / swallow us whole if we don't heed the many, many warnings we are told to heed .... We are a people forever in exodus.
Before Moses there was Abraham, and ever since black people came to this country we have needed an Abraham....We are masters of the art of sacrifice; no one is more skilled at laying their greatest beloveds on the alter and feeling certainty even as we feel sorrow" ("What I Talk about When I Talk about Black Jesus").
"'We need help from our ancestors but you have been lost to us. So we worked very hard and made this special machine. It allows us to talk to you inside your head....I am your great-great-great-granddaughter....So now, Grandmother, my first question is...'....'What words can you offer us to help us be free as black people in a world that does not love us?' .... and the woman laughed....She laughed and laughed, and laughed." ("the device")
"I was six years old....The old white lady came down the block from time to time....This time she screamed at me. 'You little nigger! You almost hit me with that bike! Go back to your nigger Jesse Jackson neighborhood!'" ("the first time [a retelling]")
"As I was getting into my car I saw the lights flashing and the four of them sitting on the curb. CPD stood over them and the university police were looking on. I drove up and pulled alongside and asked what was going on, if their parents had been called and informed they were being questioned. Their heads were down. One officer told me that the youngest was nine years old. ....He told me to leave. I would not." ("four boys on Ellis [a retelling]")
My favorite poems were "how i arrived," "appletree," "what i mean when i say i'm sharpening my oyster knife," "Thursday Morning, Newbury Street," and "Columbus Hospital."
"how I arrived"
1.
in flight from a war for my own holy self,
clinging to a steamship.
the old farmhouse one day fell in cinders
but today, first, burned into my corneas
still visible when I close my eyes.
a tangerine aura with no center.
I told them I would not fight.
"appletree"
looking out a window for a long time before you realize
it's got no glass and the wind has been hurting your cheeks,
taking a shot to the heart even as you're called heartless,
asking only for a long farewell
and not even getting that much,
no matter if you asked nice or not.
"what I mean when I say I'm sharpening my oyster knife"
what I mean is I'll eat you alive,
slipping the blade in sideways, cutting nothing
because the space was always there.
"Thursday Morning, Newbury Street"
I think that maybe if we can guard ourselves and each other, if we can keep from losing out minds alone in quiet rooms and can at least lose them side by side, we may live through the year.
"Columbus Hospital"
The first stone is the hardest
which is why they don't use hands anymore.
Too much, the push of granite on the pads of the fingers
too much like the push of a match on the side of the dollar-store box
when the phosphorus has all gone out of it, the tinder has all gone
out of its heart, and the red is scratched with brown such that you
rub and scrape but the first never comes.
It hurts too much, that fruitless scrape.