A review by thecolourblue
Sho by Douglas Kearney

challenging emotional funny reflective medium-paced

3.75

Being neither Black nor American, I'm pretty sure I'm missing at least 70% of the cultural and linguistic context of these poems. What Kearney is doing with language and vernacular is very clever and fun and drawing from a rich aural heritage. I wish I understood more of the references than I do because I know it would make this collection even more enjoyable.

For the poems that I did get a better grasp of, such as First, She Cuts The Stems and Eulogy of a Pair of Kicks, there is a violence that bleeds through Kearney's word-playfulness to hint at the rawness below.

“Systems are the end of a rope and the rope. Measure and border between out, in. What desire’s entwined there.

A, say, Black woman cuts peaches down: A paring knife will do the trick. Orchard to house: 
A booming taxonomic doing.

Systems are frictions that flimflam as liquids. They abrade skin. In some systems, skins are tenor.”

I would love to see some of these poems spoken in performace by the author, they seem much more suited to that medium than to a written collection.