• today i walked my racism

    Olena Kalytiak Davis

    Summer 2019

    today i walked my racism in a harness collar
    through flatbush, through ditmas park
    i called it buck, i told it to heel, heel, heal

    Olena Kalytiak Davis's most recent collection is The Poem She Didn't Write and Other Poems (Copper Canyon Press). She lives and practices law in Anchorage, Alaska.

    Read More

    Eve of Janus Debutante Ball

    Tiana Clark

    Past the portrait of Robert E. Lee I walked
    into the snow bright circle of center stage. Half my face
    caught in the blazing light and the other lost
    in my shadow growing against the wall, looking back
    on Belle Meade Plantation . . .

    Houses with Names

    Will Schutt

    Her poem being workshopped is—I had told her to rethink trees—about a tree. The poem is dedicated to Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin and describes an anonymous tree with a broken branch. Someone’s nicked their names into the bark. One student—classically handsome, tall, lean Black kid, writes sort of impenetrable jewel-like poems with beautiful turns of phrase and always breezes into the room with a classmate, laughing—breaks the silence. “I don’t think Trayvon would want to be turned into a tree.”

    Ethel

    Molly Dektar

    I watched for a long time and thought what my life would have been like if I really were an orphan, if Ethel had raised me on the Lower East Side. I usually felt like her guest—she was so considerate of me. At times I felt like her husband, coming home after my workday to eat food she’d prepared. I didn’t know why it was hard to feel like her daughter.

    Merch

    Love The Sewanee Review? Shop our new merch!

    Contact

    The Sewanee Review
    735 University Avenue
    Sewanee, Tennessee 37383 USA
    931-598-1185
    sewaneereview@sewanee.edu

    Subscribe

    To enjoy The Sewanee Review in print and on your computer or mobile device, subscribe today.

    Already a member? Login

    © 2022 The University of the South

    Back to top
    Web Design and Development by Riverworks Marketing