Taylor Yingshi, Room
Bass
E-A-D-G
Eva ate dynamite good.
Like a tear gas brigade
on a runaway night.
Her genre, black meadow.
Her sound, maroon.
Her imitators, pale
as any clout in the versal world.
Eva already done got
down.
Eva already done
got
it worked out. Like a remedy for
terror, in our new
carceral courtyard.
My favorite little agitator.
My pluck. My thread of mind.
Eva ain’t dim gas
Eva ain’t devil
ain’t dust
always
dropping goods.
Eva
always grieving
drums
Goodness
gracious!
Eva ate
Eva ate
Eva ate dynamite good
Eva armed defense garland
departed geneaology
escort
sliding notes, paraffin fret fingers—
Eva ate
Eva ate dog - gone!
Joy Priest is the author of Horsepower (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), selected as the winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry by U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey. She is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a 2019-2020 Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, and the winner of the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series and The Atlantic, among others, as well as in commissions for the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Her essays have appeared in The Bitter Southerner, Poets & Writers, and ESPN. She is currently editing an anthology of Louisville poets for Sarabande Books.