My Personal Favorite with Brittany Rogers
A Poetry Blog
This poetry blog only asks the poet to answer one two-part question:
At this moment in time, which of your own poems is your personal favorite, and why?
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Self-portrait as Pauling’s Market on Lycaste and Vernor, Circa the 1980s
Here, we break bread
and sell it.
Jar the pickles, pig feet,
penny candy. Here,
we manna. Miracle.
Make potatoes, rice,
and a pound of chicken
a whole week’s worth
of meals. Careful:
the counter is guarded by
Mean Jean’s children;
there will be
no forgiveness
for liars or thieves.
Ask anyone
about the last man
who walked through
these aisles sticky-
fingered.
Pauling blood,
every one
of them.
Ornery.
Watching
the door.
***
Brittany: Right now, my favorite poem of mine is "Self-portrait as Pauling’s Market on Lycaste and Vernor, Circa the 1980s." As an adult, I discovered that my family had owned a market that was eventually sold and torn down so that the neighborhood could become a Chrysler plant. Writing this poem gave me space to mourn the possibilities, memories, and ephemera that I never got to experience, while still connecting the ways that I still embody my family's legacy, despite the unknown. I love that this poem is now its own archive, that there will be a paper trail for people in my future lineage to examine.
Bio:
Brittany Rogers is a poet, visual artist, essayist, high school teacher, and lifelong Detroiter. Audacity is the overarching concept that activates her creative process; as a Black queer femme, Brittany is fascinated by the boldness and risk taking that daily survival necessitates. As such, her explorations of audacity often lead to an interrogation of the connections between the audacity of Black women and pleasure, longing, autonomy, the erotic, adornment, coming of age, and matrilineage.
As a whole, Brittany’s creative work pokes at the notions of respectability, ownership, beauty, and obligation, and is constantly looking to subvert the heteronormative and patriarchal expectations that are placed upon Black femmes. She has work published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Apogee, Indiana Review, Four Way Review, Underbelly,Mississippi Review, The Metro Times, “The BreakBeat Poets: Black Girl Magic”, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora,Lambda Literary, and Oprah Daily.She is Editor-In-Chief of Muzzle Magazine and co-host of VS Podcast. Her debut collection, Good Dress, was released by Tin House in 2024.
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