Flag Betsy Porritt Alfonso and Sonya

Alfonso and Sonya

Eva Gerlach / Bianca Sistermans

is a haunting amalgamation of languages and elements—of science

zocht er dichtregels en strofen bij

we are not yet in the world

Flag Betsy Porritt Alfonso and SonyaImani Elizabeth Jackson '"We are and were a Black family," Jackson writes and the dead matter of history hums. In this book of nearly subterranean intensity, I feel the poet hum, and it erodes borders between the poet's mouth and the river's, between forms of matter and states of consciousness. I feel Black life too, in its impossible thickness, and all of this in a beautiful economy of language that seizes without coercion and shapes without chisel.