The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife

Poems

upfromsumdirt

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781985903463, 9781985903456
• eBook ISBN: 9781985903470
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía americana

The shoes of the fisherman's wife are coated with Kentucky dust and soil. They travel across oceans to ask questions of Egypt's deities, of Mali's Mansa Musa, of Nigeria's musician-activist Fela Kuti. In sonically rich, surrealist poems with nature at their heart and a touch of absurdism, upfromsumdirt creates an experience on the page that is of our moment and beyond it.

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife: Poems
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• The Story Thus Far
• Bas-Relief 1
• Lay Prone
• Fagan’s Gambol
• Jfkdls;a (Orison to the Orishas)
• Chiaroscuro Vita
• “Sometimes It Snows in . . .” (Well, You Know the Rest)
• What Light through Beyond Yonder Window
• Bas-Relief 2
• Dwell Like a Ghost
• Poetry, Its Pelt
• I’m Not Afraid in These Woods
• Don Quixote Dei
• Mansa Musa Discovers The Old World & Names It Little Africa
• Star / Date
• Ebbony
• How to Repair a Good Book’s Binding
• Umberjack
• Graveyard Ventriloquism
• Mending the Nets
• A Night in Tunisia (Alternate Solo)
• Elegba on the Playground Erector Set
• The Occupying Parable of the Silver-Spoon Purgatory
• Rosetta Poem
• Vanish in Our Sleep
• The Lighthouse at the Bottom of the Ocean
• Literary Dadaism Infomercial
• First Intermission
• Errfbound
• To Haint by Numbers
• Ae’quan’s Fable
• The Devil’s Dulcimer
• Black Nature: Poem
• Bedside Slop Jar
• Celestial Romance Theory
• Bas-Relief 3
• Give the Drummer Sermon
• Altar-Ations
• Fayre Gabbro, Trubl Helix, & the Jump Rope of Death
• Bas-Relief 4
• Bring Pigs to the Wedding
• Canon Fodder
• After 3 Long Years an Antagonist Tips Her Barista
• Mental Tale-Apathy
• Awkward Husbandry
• Bas-Relief 5
• Poem to Slay Chickens To
• Green-Apple Jolly Rancher Stick Blues
• Hauling Asp (a Shea Butter Gospel)
• Culled Black Poem Gouache
• This Isn’t Going to End Well . . . . . .
• Bas-Relief 6
• Second Intermission
• The Apocryphal Kentucky Aleatory Blues
• Herodivergency
• Nkisi-Eyed Country Girl
• Monstrous Enlightenment
• Interiority Intervention Support Group
• Mythematics
• The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife
• The Four Corners of Becoming Well-Rounded (As a Poet)
• Bas-Relief 7
• Megamorphosis
• Blind Nil
• Stardust Onomatopoeia
• The Organ Grinder Pays a Bill
• Ham Says Fuck My Daddy, He Can’t Curse a Goddamn Thing!
• Cacaophony
• Black Caterpillar Theorem No. 1
• Where Fireflies Come From
• The Disney+ Black Prince Storyboard Blues
• The Last Will & Testament of a For Real Wooden Boy
• Slow Walk from the Exploding Theme Song
• Idaltus #1 and #2
• The Treasurer of the Babalawo Guild Deletes His Twitter Account
• Get Your Hand Out of My Pocket
• Undocumented Denouement
• Fearing to Analog on the Grounds He Might Discriminate Himself the Black Digital Poet Pleads “Da Fif”—But Is He Already Too Late?
• Bas-Relief 8