A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems

Jackson Poetry Prize Winner Speaks Your browser does not support the audio element. “She has given us a world where music and brains are allowed to co-exist with instinct, where the lyric and the literal may dwell without eyeing the other with suspicion.”-Cornelius Eady From “The Perfect Lipstick”: It is why I appreciate my favorite shade of lipstick: Sherry Velour. Sounds like the name of a drag queen from the early seventies. One of those strapping Black men who had enough of playing macho, put their feet in five-inch heels and made saints of Dinah Washington, Rita Hayworth and a very young Nina Simone. So, on goes this lipstick. Pretty for parties. Fatal for festivals. Sherry Velour and her hot discoveries: light above the fog, a toy ship. Black men in sequined dresses and the click of new words in the new world where the most dangerous of dreams come true.