This is the honey: an anthology of contemporary Black poets

The language of joy. Quilting the black eyed pea (we're going to Mars) / Nikki Giovanni --

The language of joy / Jacqueline Allen Trimble --

Garden of the gods / Ama Codjoe --

Labor / Jericho Brown --

Black boys / Tony Medina --

Navel / Robin Coste Lewis --

A parable of sorts / Malika S. Booker --

Boxing lessons / LeRonn Brooks --

On voting for Barack Obama with a Nat Turner t-shirt on / Reginal Dwayne Betts --

After people stop asking about me / Kayle Dargan --

Your dream is / Jason Reynolds --

A new day dawns / Nikky Finney --

Carolina prayer / Justin Phillip Reed --

Inescapable country / Mark McMorris --

Blood memory / Ronda Taylor --

The nightflies / Sheree Renée Thomas --

Healing / Lolita Stewart-White --

This is the honey / Mahogany L. Browne --

That's my heart right there. This is an incomprehensive list of all the reasons I know I married the right person / Clint Brown --

That's my heart right there / Willie Perdomo --

Refractions / Alan King --

I wish my love was here / Kurtis Lamkin --

tripping / Van G. Garrett --

Fruitful / Evie Shockley --

Poem that begins w/a tweet about Gwendoline Books / Mitchell L.H. Douglas --

Love poem / Cameron Awkward-Rich --

May perpetual light shine / Patricia Spears Jones --

Forcing it / Antoinette Brim Bell --

In my rush / Jonterri Gadson --

Characteristics of life / Camille T. Dungy --

As serious as a heart attack / Kalamu ya Salaam --

The talk / Gayle Danley --

Crows in a strong wind / Cornelius Eady --

How we made you / Kwame Alexander --

Weathering out / Rita Dove --

Want could kill me / Xan Forest Phillips --

When Macnolia greases my hair / A. Van Jordan --

"[love letter to self] / Warsan Shire --

a poem about you and me and the new country / Anis Mojgani --

Patience / Ross Gay --

Figurative language / A$iahMae --

hello / Sean Hill --

Delores Jepps / Tim Seibles --

The ear is an organ made for love / E. Ethelbert Miller --

Love for a song / J. Drew Lanham --

Most beautiful accident: a single parent's ode / Samantha Thornhill --

How to get emotional distance when voodoo is not an option / Pamela L. Taylor --

distant love #1 [my michigan bed remix

for ellen g] /

Brian Gilmore --

Butter / Elizabeth Alexander --

Our people II / CM Burroughs --

The blue dress / Saeed Jones --

Owed to the plastic on your grandmother's couch / Joshua Bennett --

On Mother's Day / Frank X Walker --

A twice named family / Traci Dant --

Another homecoming / Jarita Davis --

Magnitude and bond / Nicole Terez Dutton --

(Twigi) / Gary Jackson --

For the healing / Marlanda Dakine --

Inheritance / Tyree Day --

Mule / Sharan Strange --

Hanging laundry / Maritza Rivera --

The painter / Opal Palmer Adisa --

Beloved, or If you are murdered tomorrow / Elizabeth Acevedo --

"Harold's Chicken Shack #35" / Nate Marshall --

On Rampart & Canal / Nadir Lasana Bomani --

Where I'm from / Nikki Grimes --

Inundated / Hayes Davis --

The Black girl comes to dinner / Taylor Byas --

oh didn't they tell us we would all have new names when we decided to convert? / Nikia Chaney --

Richard Pryor and me / Curtis L. Crisler --

In my extremity / Mary Moore Easter --

Ode to Sudanese-Americans / Safia Elhillo --

Demonstration / Chanda Feldman --

R&B facts / Nicholas Goodly --

Dear future ones / Jacqueline Woodson --

Back to the past / Amanda Gorman --

Stand / Ruth Forman --

Reunion / Reginald Harris --

Blue magic / Niki Herd --

Antebellum / Gregory Pardlo --

Pastoral / Natasha Tretheway --

Southern history / Natasha Tretheway --

Nelsons (on the road 1957) / Marilyn Nelson --

Accents (after Denise Frohman) / Yvette R. Murray --

The mystery man in the black hat speaks / Quincy Troupe --

The I Be tree / truth thomas --

We not crazy, we feeling irie / Arisa White --

Devotions. His presence / Kwame Dawes --

You are not Christ / Rickey Laurentiis --

Conjecture on the stained-glass image of white Christ at Ebenezer Baptist Church / Marcus Wicker --

Condition: if the Garden of Eden was in Africa / DéLana R.A. Dameron --

Offeratory / Chris Abani --

grief / toni blackman --

sallie ledbetter: a mother's hymn / Tyehimba Jess --

My father's geography / Afaa Michael Weaver --

Sunday poem / Joel Dias-Porter --

I could eat collard green indefinitely / Alice Walker --

The gray mare / Afaa Michael Weaver --

The Easter prayer, 2020 A.C. / Frank X Walker --

Tell them what you want / Jabari Asim --

Devotions / Derrick L. Austin --

Wanderlust / Remica Bingham-Risher --

Race raise rage: the blackened alphabet. To racism / Lucinda Roy --

The blackened alphabet / Nikky Finney --

"I'm rooting for everybody Black" / Cortney Lamar Charleston --

The blue Seuss / Terrance Hayes --

Dear barbershop / Chris Slaughter --

Before I fire her, the therapist asks What IS it like to be a Black woman HERE / Aricka Foreman --

A piece of tail / Teri Ellen Cross Davis --

Why I can dance down a Soul-Train line in public and still be a Muslim / Aisha Sharif --

Fuck/time / Inua Ellams --

Beyoncé on the line for Gaga / Morgan Parker --

Contemplating "Mistress," Sally in 2017 / Chat'la Sebree --

Mussels / Lucinda Roy --

5 South 43rd Street, Floor 2 / Yolanda Wisher --

Unrest in Baton Rouge / Tracy K. Smith --

Quare / L. Lamar Wilson --

Some young kings / Roger Reeves --

We are not responsible / Harryette Mullen --

Carl's Barbershop / Abdul Ali --

On being called the N-word in Atlanta, 2016: a southern ghazal / teri elam --

The president has never said the word Black / Morgan Parker --

[this is to say I am more terrified of capitalism than any wildlife encounter] / Jasmine Elizabeth Smith --

In the event of / Shane McCrae --

Happy / Kevin Powell --

Holla / Evie Shockley --

When I see the stars: praise poems. A prayer for workers / Yusef Komunyakaa --

Heaven: for Nikki Giovanni's 80th birthday / Renée Watson --

The origins of the artist: Natalie Cole / Toi Dericotte --

Elegy for Chadwick Boseman / Len Lawson --

When I see the stars in the night sky / Joy Priest --

Hip hop analogies / Tara Betts --

For ben harper (7:42pm 1-18-02) / Jessica Care Moore --

My poems / Joanna Crowell --

Aubade to Langston / Rachel Eliza Griffiths --

What women are made of / Bianca Lynne Spriggs --

ruth (for a sister poet) / Michael Datcher --

Black gold redux (for Nina Simone) / Jacqueline Johnson --

for Duke Ellington / Reuben Jackson --

Don't let me be lonely (Mahalia Jackson is a genius) / Claudia Rankine --

For John Lewis, who loved to dance / Pearl Cleage --

Soul Train / Allison Joseph --

for allison joseph / Van G. Garrett --

I, master (for David Drake, enslaved potter-poet) / Glenis Redmond --

San Diego and Matisse / Clarence Major --

Ashe / Kevin Young --

Queen Bess / Kimberly A. Collins --

The ragged and the beautiful / Safiya Sinclair --

brown-eyed girls / Gerald L. Coleman --

Zebra (for my son) / January Gill O'Neil --

Quality: Gwendolyn Brooks at 73 / Haki R. Madhubuti --

A love poem written for Sterling Brown / Sonia Sanchez --

Whispers on the wave / Dr. Tanya Maria Matthews --

Praise / Angelo Geter.

Introduction

The language of joy

That's my heart right there

Where I'm from

Devotions

Race raise rage : the blackened alphabet

When I see the stars : praise poems

About the poets.