Smudge

By Mahogany L. Browne

"Acclaimed poet Mahogany L. Browne triumphs again with her latest poetry collection SMUDGE, a powerful, intimate, and complex portrait of a girl who deserves more than what she is given: a world in which our hero is both painfully invisible and vulnerably exposed. Browne masterfully invites us into this girl's life with language that is evocative, nuanced and immediate. The result is a book that is incredibly present. You live each moment presented in the book as if it were your own, and feel deeply the girl's fears and her humiliations, her hopeful trust and blind love, her shifting sense of safety and self. But despite the honest and harrowing heartbreak that finds its way into the girl, the book nonetheless has a defiant beauty, a strength of character and self that willfully defies the limits others attempt to put on this girl. Browne continues her tradition of creating rich, unflinching, and unapologetic work cataloguing the world as she sees it, and SMUDGE sees her at the top of her game."—Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, NEA Poetry Fellow & author of The Year of No Mistakes

• Language: English
• Publisher: Button Poetry
• Release date: Mar 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781943735181

Mahogany L. Browne

The Cave Canem and Poets House alum Mahogany L. Brown is the author of several books including #DEAR TWITTER: LOVE LETTERS HASHED OUT ONLINE IN 140 CHARACTERS OR LESS (Penmanship Books, 2010), recommended by Small Press Distribution & About.com's Best Poetry Books of 2010. Mahogany bridges the gap between lyrical poets and literary emcee. Browne has toured Germany, Amsterdam, England, Canada and recently Australia as 1/3 of the cultural arts exchange project Global Poetics. Her journalism work has been published in magazines Uptown, KING, XXL, The Source, Canada's The Word and UK's MOBO

Book preview

name

Slink Feel Good

you ain’t never been the type

to let a man climb his ocean

of a body through your bedroom

window             not like Li Li

she      first born daughter

to a correctional baton man

she learn quick     how to sweet talk

a man away from his sensibilities

            & you be:   the type

of swoon & shadow frame

& sickle moon     sliced into the

brown      you be:     Li Li-like

mimic      you point your toes

into the canvas of your bleached

Keds    straighten your stretch pants

in plain sight    &                     wait

for any boy’s heat       to greet

your famished eyes    burnt orangish brown

under the delirious      sun

           Li Li always called you

pretty    always    called    the next

morning when  Steven    slink

his body from her bed        or her

           window   ajar

y’all laugh          the rotary phone

a coil of secrets tapping against

the carpeted floor           she

sigh   a breath of fresh crisp

& alive against     your virgin ears

it feel like something inside is on fire

Vast

"She pursued, adored and claimed me,

and I was desperate to be claimed." – Rebecca