Build Yourself a Boat

By Camonghne Felix

2019 National Book Award Longlist: “Centering on black, female identity, [this is] an exquisite and thoughtful collection.” —Bustle

This is about what grows through the wreckage. This is an anthem of survival and a look at what might come after. A view of what floats and what, ultimately, sustains.

A finalist for the PEN Open Book Award, Build Yourself a Boat redefines the language of collective and individual trauma through lyric and memory.

“With Build Yourself a Boat, Camonghne Felix heralds a thrillingly new form of storytelling.” —Morgan Parker, author of Magical Negro

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9781608466146

Book preview

LOST POEM 4: R X

The psych on duty in triage

Asks me if I want to die, and I say

Not at the moment, no, but stay

Tuned. I can charm my way out

Of anything—including his seven-day

Suggested stay, those ugly

Gray mornings buzzing in infrasound

I can save my own life just as easily

As I can corrupt compounds of

Ripe silence with just a mouth—

Drown it out of its own sound.

This is what makes me dangerously

Compatible with death

Me and my ability to finesse

Choice out of desire, the talented

Tenth of disassociation, the power

Of being just a body within a body

Of jewels.

CONTOURING THE FLATTENING

I try not to tell about the stories

still bleeding. After all, who wishes

to lead their own mother to wolves.

I try not to mess with the shape of

my privilege. I only say what they

need to hear. If the they is an us

I make myself an example. I lie to keep it all intact.

But if I felt I could, I would unstitch

this plaque sewn over my

mouth. I would tell you of the seasonal

allergies, how my primary doctor warned

my mother of dead cockroaches, their

eggs, the likelihood of them in my lungs.

I would tell of how often we’d bomb the house,

how I’d spend summer nights collecting little brown

skeletons in the thousands, every inhale ending

in a question of poison.

I would tell of the mice that sometimes bit

us in our sleep, how the infestation of them

violated any concept of domain—how

we could not know who the house really

belonged to; a house of rodents, or of men

but I keep my sob stories to myself¹. I keep my

smile white and my fists closed. I let survival be

survival. I grow into the shoe. I keep the world

big and my sanity small.

1I was almost killed in that water and I’ve had a fear ever since.

CUTTING W/ JB

JB’s getting her ass bussed in the other room. We can hear the clap-clap of wet flesh over the whip of the ceiling fan above. The heat in the projects is always on and thick and coming for your edges except for the days when you really need it, when it’s five degrees with wind chill and Housing won’t come fix your broken bedroom window. It’s half past midday and by now I’m bored enough to maybe consider going back to school but they won’t let me in this late in the day anyway, so I have to sit with the decision I’ve made. No one’s looking for us. Emmy’s mom died five weeks ago, so as far as she’s concerned, what the fuck is a parent? I’ve never had a best friend before. All the books say that when your best friend’s mama die, you ain’t got no parents neither. We spend our days in patient wanderlust, living off sheer probability in a series of cheap, rancid

Reviews for Build Yourself a Boat

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a particularly dark collection of poetry. In one poem there's a line about being all edges, all corners and this is certainly not a smooth ride. With topics ranging from rape to suicide, self harm to drowning, don't expect to relax and feel comfortable. I listened to this, as read by the poet, and it has something about it that make it hard to stop listening to. Of all the collection, the one that stood out for me as being radically different in tone was titled "Imagine" in which she marvels that her younger sister is going to go to university and study something that could well lead to her being an astronaut. The bemusement that her little sister seems to be set on such a different path and the wonder that this young woman was her little sister is so entirely different from the rest.