supply and demand by Evie Shockley
supply and demand
Evie Shockley
the more black boys you have, the more you want.
you act like we’re swimming in black boys.
you can’t keep black boys in your pocket.
if you had a million black boys, what would you do with them?
do you think we’re made of black boys?
your black boys are all tied up in property.
black boys won’t solve all your problems.
you don’t just find black boys lying in the street.
it takes black boys to make black boys.
most people don’t know how to save black boys.
black boys don’t grow on trees.
MARGINALIA
1.
Day 4 of The Sealey Challenge. Today’s offering is semiautomatic by Evie Shockley.
2.
This book is brutal and difficult to read—I had to sit with that discomfort as the poet addresses the merciless realities of our society: gun violence, sexual assault, poverty, slavery, and more. Her poems are unflinching—and she writes resolutely about how the suffering of marginalised people is normalised, and how exhausting it is to try to instigate change in a seemingly oblivious world, wearing oneself ragged to a shadow.
3.
In an interview, Evie Shockley said, “The emotional difficulty of moving consciously through the world we live in is what sends me to the page, the desk, in the first place.” In writing semiautomatic I feel the poet looks at language as a weapon that has silenced Black stories and bodies—and we are all of us accountable for not speaking our truths enough. What can poetry do against so much hate? Are elegies enough to hold the weight of despair and grief? Are verses enough to drive people to protest? Are we awake enough to confront the horrors of violence and what shall we do with our collective rage?
4.
semiautomatic is the gun that rips reality open—it is pointing at you and me. Do we dare to continue being silent?
KEEP READING
SOURCE
This poem appeared in semiautomatic by Evie Shockley, published by Wesleyan University Press, 2017. Shared here with profound gratitude.
DESCRIPTION
“Art can’t shield our bodies or stabilize the earth’s climate, but Evie Shockley’s semiautomatic insists that it can feed the spirit and reawaken the imagination. The volume responds primarily to the twenty-first century’s inescapable evidence of the terms of black life―not so much new as newly visible. The poems trace a whole web of connections between the kinds of violence that affect people across the racial, ethnic, gender, class, sexual, national, and linguistic boundaries that do and do not divide us. How do we protect our humanity, our ability to feel deeply and think freely, in the face of a seemingly endless onslaught of physical, social, and environmental abuses? Where do we find language to describe, process, and check the attacks and injuries we see and suffer? What actions can break us out of the soul-numbing cycle of emotions, moving through outrage, mourning, and despair, again and again? In poems that span fragment to narrative and quiz to constraint, from procedure to prose and sequence to song, semiautomatic culls past and present for guides to a hoped-for future.”
ENDNOTES
- Read more poems by Evie Shockley • Find books by this poet • Or view my library
- Explore other works in pursuit of: being a person of colour • people • the political • Or browse the index
- This is part of The Sealey Challenge.
DEAR READER
This little corner of the world is my passion project since 2005. My commitment is that it will always remain free to all. If this place holds meaning for you, would you consider supporting it? This can be in the form of a cup of coffee (+ other ways).
Note that Read A Little Poetry may receive a small commission if you make a purchase through any links on this site. It is at no additional cost to you and helps in the upkeep of this space.
Thank you for being here all these years—and into the future—as I hold poets to the light.
