Split This Rock Announces 2020 Best of the Net Nominations
Split This Rock is delighted to announce six nominations for the 2020 Best of the Net Anthology. Please join us in celebrating these incredible and necessary poems by reading, listening, and sharing. To access the full poems, visit the 2020 Best of the Net special collection in The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database or click the links on the poem titles below.
“ma’am i’m sorry to tell you, your son is d-” by Darius Simpson
Content Notice: Racial violence, police brutality & anti-Blackness
driftwood floating in molasses
driftwood spinning in spine sap
driftwood sinking by the minute
“when white supremacy kills me” by Justice Ameer
Content Notice: Racial violence & anti-Blackness
do not make me a martyr
make me a history
make me the last one
make me the final name
with all of your might
live
“Prayer for those who run” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Content Notice: Refers to parental abuse, lgbtqmisia/queermisia & institutionalization
I wish you throwing away the cell the parents bought to track you with.
I wish you the Greyhound,
PATH train, whatever transit you're waiting for
coming on time
and taking you away express with no stops.
“Robert E. Lee and I Have a Staring Contest” by M Kamara
Content Notice: Racism & anti-Blackness
And a white person says racism is dead
and a white person jokes about slavery
and a white person lives unbothered
“Self-Portrait as Pop Culture Reference” by Natalie Wee
Content Notice: Racism & white supremacy
My skin, this well-worn hide I fold into a boat
sturdy enough to bisect any body of water,
was made from light breaking through my mother’s hands--
my mother lifting her fingers to the sky & inventing
a story where she touched & swallowed it whole.
“ يقبرني to bury me. you take your turn first” by Noor Ibn Najam
Content Notice: Death
and still, you insist, you must open my mouth
to a sudden blue meadow
where the moon tosses light
down on us in
fistfuls, the silent speech of dirt.
Image Description: The 2020 Split This Rock Best of the Net announcement. Nominees appear collaged in two columns with these words between them: Split This Rock 2020 Best of the Net Nominations, www.splitthisrock.org. From top to bottom the poets appear as follows: Left column includes Darius Simpson, Justice Ameer, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Right column includes M Kamara, Natalie Wee, and Noor Ibn Najam.