Hip Hop Nation
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Hip Hop Nation
Japanese girls torment me. With chirpy, unfortunate English,
they ask, From America?
Hip hop very like. My body is news of their arrival.
They've landed in America, they're sure, because the static across my body has cleared
and I'm blacker than they'd imagined. I hardly look at them.
Other black men run into the tendrils of their gardens.
They don't see Medusa's helmet there, tossed and eaten through.
Kevin Simmonds, a writer and musician, has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, Bennett College, the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida, and Avery Research Center in Charleston, SC. His writings have been published in Massachusetts Review, Poetry, Field, and other periodicals, and his music has been performed throughout the USA, the United Kingdom, Japan, and the Caribbean.
