Associate Editor Taylor Byas: Marcus Donaldson’s poem is akin to the song that you stop everything to dance to when it comes on in the club. I love work that reminds me that language both makes and unmakes meaning, that it is capable of shifting our realities. Donaldson’s rhythmic piece first talks me out of my body, than talks my body into movement.
Take, Eat: For colored boys who stop inviting me to “fuck it up” after my Milly Rock goes Vogue
wrists’ stiff leaks
wrists limp loose in afterglow
my body might make itself
sculpture on the chant of three
might twirl through the chant’s end
my body more free than I am
my body look like your body
might loose your body
might leak your body from you
pour you out a blessing
take eat
be our bodies broken into
be our bodies broken in two
be our bodies bread & a red
stripe & a healing
a living a sacrifice unto only ourselves
Marcus Donaldson is a writer with a lot of questions. Their essays have appeared in The Burr Magazine. They are currently working on their first chapbook of poems and live with their family on a hill just north of Cincinnati, Ohio.
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