‘Kindling’
— Joyce Chong
we translate ourselves
with borrowed tongues and are called
articulate for it.
(the rest of us are dead.)
You wouldn’t think that reading could be such an aural experience, but language has this strange connection to sound and memory and imagery and meaning that is inextricable from the other senses. Undi’s poetry is rhythmic and crisp, language that is certain of itself, poetry that takes a voice of its own when you read it. Kindling tackles the history of criticism, violence, sidelining, and stereotyping that years of racism has enacted on black bodies. It challenges every iteration of black as underestimated, as dismissed: “for specialized porn search terms and basketball teams. our negro magic, our noble savagery // we entertainment and twitter feed // the best of us / are the black friend” It’s clear-eyed and succinct the way poetry should be, unwavering and illuminative. This is proof that poetry is more than just words and images that sound and fit well together, it is more than one lasting image; it builds itself until it is more than just the words on the page, something that can’t be contained by just language. It is entirely unflinching.
when you trace a finger
up your branchless family tree
and find a legacy of kindling,
how do you not make flint
from your learned hardness