Song On, Thomas Sayers Ellis

Song On, by Thomas Sayers Ellis, offers six new poems that soar with inventive music and syntax. An excerpt:

Afro(Fisted) Pick

A symbolic growth tender-headed as protest,
The genre beneath
Blackness.
All red, black and green
Without being
Red, black and green.
All social work
And struggle.

The revolution at the root
Of every groove
Of grooming.
Soul wouldn't be Soul
Without it
And neither would America
Or where America
Bogarts peace.


THOMAS SAYERS ELLIS is an Associate Professor of English at Case Western Reserve University and a faculty member of the Lesley University low-residency M.F.A. program. He is the author of a chapbook, The Genuine Nego Hero (Kent State University Press 2001), The Maverick Room (Graywolf Press 2005) and the editor of the forthcoming Quotes Community: Notes for Black Poets (University of Michigan Press 2006). His poems have recently appeared in Fair Trade, Lit, Mosaic, Tin House and Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. Visit his website: http://www.tsellis.com/