Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition - Softcover

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Shanta Lee is an award-winning artist, writer across genres, author, and public intellectual actively participating in the cultural discourse with work that has been widely featured. Winner of the Abel Meeropol Social Justice award and a 2024 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow (New England) , “Hallowed Hunted Body” is included in, This Is How They Teach You How to Want It...The Slaughter: A Field Guide for the Hunted & the Hunter, The Dead-Alive, The Live-Dead Ones, The…(Harbor Editions, 2024). Philip Brady’s newest book is The Elsewhere: Poems & Poetics (Broadstone, 2021). He is the author of two essay collections, Phantom Signs and By Heart from the University of Tennessee Press; a book-length poem, To Banquet with the Ethiopians, a memoir, To Prove My Blood, and three previous books of poetry. He has edited a critical book on James Joyce and two anthologies of contemporary poetry.

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"From “Shark River Bridge” by Michael Waters 

That’s where I’ll jump some wintry predawnOnce dementia has commenced, before it seepsDeeper into my brain & swerves meFrom my purpose, protects me from self-harm, Makes my death dependent Upon those whose love will stay their hand.I’ll wear my black woolen overcoat, its pocketsJangling with silverware, & wash downWith a tumblerful of vodkaThe long-amassed tablets of AmbienBefore leaping toward oblivion.Watching our elders deepen into dementia, We rehearse escapes, our exit fantasies.I will not gaze like my mother beyond the son Who visits the memory care facility, will not Pluck incessantly a ghost-hair off my tongue Or spin & spin again the buttons of my cardiganOnly to focus suddenly on his face & whisper—Those glinting hooks descending—“I want to kill you.” No. I will not. I’ve picked my spot. 

From “Come Home, Lady” by Tim Seibles 

O, let me be that onecome-hither morsel, thatsavory flavor and shineon your lips: what’s sorrowbut a grown manstuffed in the trunkof his worry?Your legs! Lady,your legs—long as an Alaskansummer day! That easy gait:your velvet thighs, your deeplywise and wicked ways—when I see youwe will dance like bumper carson rubber streets, like lazy duckson crazy lakes, like hippos and hobosin toe-shoes! 

(excerpt of the larger piece)Morowa Yejide“Blasphemy” 

With these words I blaspheme. Because I’m a writer, and by nature I care less about what others think than about the happenings in my head. So, I say this now. Decipher it how you must. I’ll start in the middle, out here in the badlands. That’swhere the blood and guts are. Where birth and destruction reign. Becauseeveryone is busy running and jockeying and jousting and trying to survivethe fray. There is the vigilance against destruction of social media platformand profile. There is the tireless culling of reviews and choices andpicks scraped from the bottom of riverbeds like fool’s gold. The old Zuluflank the new. Balkanized groups born of aged interests shift alliancefor proximity to fire and gaze. The stench of decomposing egos and ripe arrogance chokes the air. And there is no Writing Life for me. There is no cabin in astand of three-hundred-year-old trees. No roaring fire. No antiquetypewriter or mahogany desk. 

Ru Freeman“Write in imitation of KL, my friend PL says.” 

I write:I do not want to write to you, husband. I wanted to write a lie. I did not want to write honestly about immigrants like me. About brown bodies, and black hair, and brown superstitions, and black eyes, and brown aversions, and black ink, and brown curries, and black tea, and brown earth, and black tar. I did not want to write about green trees. I did not want to write about eighteen varieties of mangoes, fourteen of which are only found on my island. I did not want to write about how the land is owned by brown women and how the laws of the land favor brown women and how brown women get to pick which brown man they’d keep to cultivate those lands. I did not want to write about where we come from. I wanted to write an American memoir. I wanted to write a lie."