Here I Throw Down My Heart

Acknowledgments

101 My thanks to the editors and publishers of the following journals in which these poems first appeared, some in slightly different versions: “After the Waters” and “Basin Street” in Hurricane Blues; “What News,” “Playing the Dozens,” and “Making Ends Meet” in Nimrod; “Albedo,” “Diseases of the Earth,” “Altar Candles,” and “R&R” in BlackRenaissanceNoire ; “Film Noir” and “Second Tour” in Calyx; “Recruited” in Drunken Boat; “First Blood” in North American Review and PoetsAgainsttheWar.org; “American Rude” in BetweentheLines ; “Counting Sheep” and “The Silver Screen” in Cave Canem Anthology XII: Poems 2008–2009; “On With the Dance” in Northwest Review; “Crossing the Rubicon at Seventy” and “Furlough” in Ploughshares; “Nostalgia” in The Big Muddy; “Cataracts” in 110/110: A Collection; “Roadkill” in Torch; “Going There” in Orion; “The Memory of Skin” in the Amistad Journal; “Crossing the Rubicon at Seventy” in Angles of Ascent : A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry; and “Making Ends Meet” in In the Black / In the Red: Poems of Profit & Loss. Here I Throw Down My Heart is a transliteration of Bagamoyo, a town on the coast of Tanzania, where captured Africans were transported to the island of Zanzibar to await the slave ships that would take them to the “New World,” now known simply as “The West.” Bagamoyo was the last glimpse they had of home. In the West, we say “Home is where the heart is.” I am grateful to the people of Bagamoyo, and to others who I have encountered on my distant travels, for allowing me for a moment that glimpse of home. Acknowledgments ...