Notes
The title “It is not a question of memory” quotes James Baldwin’s essay “Many Thousands Gone,” from his collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son.
The epigraph of “On Acquiescence” refers to Emily Dickinson’s “Of Bronze – and Blaze.” The italicized language in the poem quotes the characters Big Worm and Smokey in the 1995 movie, Friday.
“Rich” and “Through” owe their dictionary form to several poems in A. Van Jordan’s collection M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A.
The title and beginning of the first line of “Between” are drawn from part of a sentence in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man: “The anticipation produced in me a sensation somewhat between bliss and fear.”