Here is the Sweet Hand: Poems

By francine j. harris

WINNER OF THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD IN POETRY

The poems in Here is the Sweet Hand explore solitude as a way of seeing. In particular, the speakers in francine j. harris’ third collection explore the mystique, and myth, of female loneliness as it relates to blackness, aging, landscape and artistic tradition.

The speakers in these poems are often protagonists. Against the backdrop of numerous American cities and towns, and in a time of political uncertainty, they are heroines in their quest to find logic through their own sense of the world.

The poems here are interested in the power of observation. But if there is authority in the individual versus the collective, Here is the Sweet Hand also poses questions about the source of that power, or where it may lead.

As in her acclaimed previous collections, harris’ skillful use of imagery and experimentation with the boundaries of language set the stage for unorthodox election commemoration, subway panic, zoomorphism, and linguistic battlefields. From poems in dialogue with the artistry of Toni Morrison and Charles Burnett to poems that wrestle with the moods of Frank Stanford and Ty Dolla $ign, the speakers in this book signal a turn at once inward and opening.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Aug 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9780374721916

francine j. harris

francine j. harris is a Detroit native whose recent work has appeared in Rattle, Callaloo, and Michigan Quarterly Review and she is the author of the recent chapbook between old trees. She is a Cave Canem fellow, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and is currently a Zell Post-MFA Fellowship recipient at the University of Michigan.

Book preview

i.

Versal

The wood is not a negro with tree in the farm-split sand

for almighty, not a road to bend over,

not a lakeside, or sideways log stump, not

a sidelong, not a strangler clutch

or fruiting body of fungus. The warn

of wood is not hiding in bark, in deer suit,

or elk piss musk, not in camouflage. Not

a snowshoe a negro, not a cowhide stripped

or oversprawl. The tree is not a loner type, not

a sleeper cell, not a jumpy trigger.

The foliage low hangs a lake I like, an ice cave

shot, a hit tide, frozen in place.

And a black girl is standing on it, over a river rocking.

Sidebank isn’t thug among us, not

a rush gang, not a flower snatched from sidewalks,

which isn’t breaking in root. Nothing

for jewels, isn’t watching through windows. The black meadow

isn’t sniper squatting, cheapening the field reek,

eyesore cattail driving down

the sound of stream driveby. The wood

is an eager, a Negus among us, a runner like eagle,

a brown sighting, root system gathered in growl

of curl, of amassed vein feed. Say it with us.

The wood is a falcon, a clean stretch of might.

The dark bark is humming. Night stretched.

A reserve is craning in its path glow, pitch fall.

Matted grass atrament, blowing night

like long husk. and a black girl is standing in it.

Reflections in a Pool of Hair

You have been standing in a pool of your own hair.

You rub the hair into dirt and pick out crows you’d like to lift it away.

You take off your socks.

Hand to eyes to block the sun, you look

for someone who looks like you.

You see men in retro glasses, you see men behind retrofitted glass

and men on black bikes and women with small

piercings in their sharp noses and you see their bad silver nail polish, you’ve got

bad silver nail polish

and everyone wheezes. You wheeze

and the small gay men at the bar spend sunset

tuning American Idol onto two screens.

They talk like bar glass. In their gravel, they vote singers.

There is a tingle at the back of your throat that holds the phone on hold

and thinks the words

Obama.

Obama wants to be a palindrome.

You catch yourself in a plate glass window, you catch yourself

in the neighbor’s glass plate, you catch yourself

wondering if you look like your hair

in their windows. They put away

Reviews for Here is the Sweet Hand

[sheila1957 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Most of the time I had no idea of what was being spoken. I could pick up pain and loneliness but I could not put it in context. She does, at times, have a good turn of phrase. On the whole, I just did not get it.