The black figure has always been a subject of entertainment in popular culture, as well as an image to sell things. In some ways, that’s how people relate to us—because they’ve seen us on television.
—
Derrick Adams
Three Poems by Allyson Paty
Norah Maki, Vanitas (oranges with death mask of hair), 2014. Graphite, ink, hair.
Allyson Paty’s poems can be found in Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, jubilat, The Literary Review, Tin House, the PEN Poetry Series, and elsewhere. She was a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Poetry and a 2017-2018 participant in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace Program. With Norah Maki, she is co-founding editor of Singing Saw Press.
Related
The poet on her new collection and what it means to mess with, fuss with, break, and refresh language.
“The blood of the thing is the truth of the thing.”
Vast plates shifted littler ones / with constant sounds and heat terrible / Then there was a cleft and so a river