Quiver

Quiver is a book of reckoning, a book of ghosts, a book of lineal fracture and generational fatherlesness. It’s a visceral guide through boyhood into fatherhood. One that yields witness to trauma, erotic shames, brutalities and toxic masculinity, and in so doing, emerges with a speaker beginning to free himself. Patricia Smith said it best: “Quiver will change the way you see.”“floodghost”Mother couldn’t managewhat sated me, so she prayed:sought in silencea substance that’d soothe,something familial with grace.I groaned. Broke bodiesover blacktop’s pane, a bottom-less well of blood. At sevenI smothered a frog and fed each legto my quivering sisterlaughed while she choked out its skin. At twelve,I pulled a pistol from underthe vacant shed and shovedits shudder to a schoolboy’s temple, teased while he wept in his piss.And yet all along a Psalm, a satchelof prayer: song. Mother makingcontracts with the sky, while Itore its pages to light a fire, warmmy hands around it. Radiant blue. Redfrom a faraway pine.