Cruising Weather Wind Blue confronts us with a combination of hard realism and musical lyricism, painting unforgettable images in unforgettable language. This is American poetry at its finest: as spacious as Walt Whitman, as frank as the Beat Poets, and as alive with witness as the poetry of the Black Arts Movement. Braggs is a master storyteller, bringing a wide range of characters and social circumstances to life on the page. From the loneliness and longing of an inmate in Folsom State Prison to the hard-won practicality of Miss Carolina Brown, we find resistance and hope on the “backside of/ ugly love.” Braggs’ voice and style are unlike that of any other poet I have encountered, with rhythms that embody the raw energy of blues greats like Bessie Smith and jazz legends like Miles Davis, capturing what it means to retain one’s dignity in a world where “Sign Here________/ is a question without a mark.” These poems will stay with you long after you read them, resonating their message of our shared humanity, documenting the pain and frustration of inhabiting the world—but also the great love and resilience we find here.  — Holly Karapetkova

Excerpt from Clockwork Back, the Confederacy of Fences

If you want to know how America became America

the Beautiful, land of the free, don’t ask me,

ask Demark Vesey,

born in 1767 in Saint Thomas, hanged on July 2nd

1822

in Charleston, South Carolina for preaching

the truth.

For reasons, officially stated,… unknown. The moon

was shaped like a gun

that day in history just like yesterday in history

when they took down the Confederate Battle Flag

from the capitol grounds

of the town of James “Strom” Thurmond’s City.

The history of two weeks ago is too long of a way

to go, so somebody,

anybody walked into Demark Vesey’s AME church

and shot Demark Vesey

nine more times, point blank, in the face.

Among the dead faces, propped up

on the face of

a dark skinned modern day poster

29

Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth,

Nate Turner and Gabriel Prosser and David Walker’s

Appeal

to reveal what

tends, always, to be left out of history, the truth of

and about the Confederate

Battle Flag history of heritage and hate.

It is beyond too late to debate, but since we are talking

about Truth and Consequences,

let’s look closely at the economic impact of wallsand fences

and Confederate flags,

gray, stiff and dead, red, white and used-up blue glass.