so dearly paid for. you are the gas pedal
to the floor. your beauty is a maker of
myths. on your tongue piss turns to milk
you devastate me
5
do not remember. forget
a dream among objects
outside that closed door of
the rosewashed room, framed
against the doorway, a Queen Anne chair
the sitter waits in shadow
we did not meet. there was
no entanglement of tongues
i did not experience love
race did matter
and my hymen did not break
you were unconcerned about impressing
anyone, least of all my parents
our stars did not cross
there is nothing to the past
forget my name
Notes & Acknowledgments
Wanda Coleman took great care in sequencing her individual poetry collections. While this volume is a selection from those collections, we have retained Coleman’s sequencing in all cases but for one: the opening poem, “Wanda in Worryland,” appears out of sequence.
The American Sonnets 12 through 24 first appeared in Wanda Coleman’s American Sonnets (copublished by Light and Dust Books and the Woodland Pattern Book Center, 1994) and appear here with permission of the Coleman Estate.
Photo Courtesy of Rod Bradley
Wanda Coleman (1946–2013) was born and raised in South Central Los Angeles. She was the author of twenty books of poetry and prose, including Bathwater Wine, winner of the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the American Academy of Poets—the first book by an African American woman to receive the prize—and Mercurochrome, a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award for Poetry. Coleman’s other honors included fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the 2012 Shelley Memorial Prize from the Poetry Society of America, and the 2012 George Drury Smith Award from the Beyond Baroque Literary Center.
Terrance Hayes is the author of seven poetry collections, including American Sonnets for My Past And Future Assassin, a finalist the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, 2018 National Book Award in Poetry, 2018 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, and 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His 2010 collection, Lighthead, won the National Book Award for Poetry. Hayes is a 2014 MacArthur Fellow and serves as a Professor of English at New York University.
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