Thomas Sayers Ellis co-founded The Dark Room Collective in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received his MFA from Brown University. He is the author of three books of poetry including The Maverick Room (2005), which won the John C. Zacharis First Book Award. His poems and photographs have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Callaloo, Best American Poetry (1997, 2001 and 2010), Grand Street, The Baffler, Jubilat, Tin House, Poetry, and The Nation. He is also an Assistant Professor of Writing at Sarah Lawrence College, a faculty member of the Lesley University low-residency MFA Program and a Cave Canem faculty member. He lives in Brooklyn and is currently working on The Go-Go Book: People in the Pocket in Washington, D.C. His most recent collection of poetry, Skin, Inc., was published in 2010 by Graywolf Press.
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The Maverick RoomPoemsFrom"Nicknames"
Go Ju go Ju go.
Lightskinned Rainbow
eclipsed Tick Tock,
his chocolate walk-partner.
Incestuous Pootchie and Tan.
Both Frogs. Squirrel. Crazy ass Sponge.
Bama Duke’s lopsided,
sticky daughter, Peaches.
Out b-shaped barber,
Blinky. We miss you,
Missy, rest in peace.
John Rocks-on-Rocks.
The Young Dillingers.
Freckles versus Baby Tim.
Cabalou stuttering,
i-m-m-mi-t-ta-ting Johnny Lips.
Hillbilly, Lefty, Itchy and Skip.
Dootie Bug’s first
baby’s mama, leaving.
Tootie had Fin.
The Maverick Room:Poems -
The Maverick RoomPoemsFrom"The Maverick Room (I. The Break of Dawn)"
Explosive posters lit at night.
On every tree a cardboard saviour
Nailed to rooted echoes of wooden agony.
Sidewalks graffitied with chalk silhouettes,
Stank of murder, scabs of moonlight
Patch our wounded night.
Wrapped in bandaged blue, pale morning
Wakes the day. Mute doses
Of evaporating darkness on the breath of potholes.
The Maverick Room:Poems -
The Maverick RoomPoemsFrom"The Maverick Room (IX. Shooting Back)"
You load, focus, aim.
The shutter falls like a tiny axe,
Reopens, a blinking eye washed in light.An image enters the world
Premature, wet, lit like a miracle. The holier ones
Exploit darkness, develop like secrets.
Only the faithful possess
Nerve enough to stand this long, arms crossed,
Fearlessly posed, in the line of fire.
Every shot attempts to capture
The will-to-survive of its target:
High-top fades, hooded sweats, hard stares,
A Gucci background, a wicker chair.
The Maverick Room:Poems
"Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems is Thomas Sayers Ellis' stingingly intelligent, heart-thumpingly lovely collection of poems on the broad theme of race and identity—though Ellis strives to defy categorization. In the opening poem, he writes, 'These genres these borders these false distinctions / are where we stay at / in freedom's way.'" —NPR
“Skin, Inc.: Identity Repair Poems is a bristlingly clever, obnoxious, didactic, and passionately sincere book . . . There are many ways to approach the topic of American race (most poets choose by simply ignoring it) but Ellis is at once the most confrontationally bitter and the most idealistic poet of several decades. The paradoxical mixture—of openness and defiant ire—makes Skin a dead serious, challenging collection, smoldering with resentment and manically brave in its racial politics.” —Tony Hoagland, American Poetry Review
“[A] marvelous and accomplished volume . . . These are gregarious poems, always socially conscious, that never shortchange the intelligence of the reader as they dissect, intersect, embrace, and reject traditional tropes of African American literature.” —Ploughshares [on The Maverick Room]
Selected Works
