I always took note of them, because I think if you're in the black or brown body, you're negotiating them all the time. It's like women taking note of sexism. It's a kind of incoherency that you are constantly negotiating.

People expect black women to be angry, irrationally so, without reason. They think we are animals and we go around like the Wild Things.

Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment.

For me her image, the triptych, became a study of the weight the black male figure carries, given the fact that they are targeted by the police, and are constantly in danger of being misread in public spaces.

Because white men can’t police their imaginations, black men are dying.

One of the things that I think about is: How do you make moments that float, transparent? Moments that could just float away. How do you make a body accountable for its language, its positioning? Why not make a body accountable for its language?

I also found it funny to think about blackness as the second person. That was just sort of funny. Not the first person, but the second person, the other person.