Other People's Comfort Keeps Me up at Night by Morgan Parker

Selected by Eileen Myles for Switchback Books’ 2013 Gatewood Prize, Parker’s debut pulls no punches as it delivers poem after poem of smart, insightful criticism of our current age, where the American dream is no more and the struggle is real for so many as we live in, and attempt to push back against, our patriarchal, racist, capitalist society.ĭrawing on reality tv shows, music, and life experience, Parker creates sharp poems that explore the every day in concise, straight-forward language. Instead, she keeps coming at it with an unrelenting fierceness that is at turns funny, biting, and heartbreaking. Myers is particularly impressed with the the way Parker 'looks America in the eye and doesn’t blink or run away.' More: She lives in Brooklyn and at image: The Mountain of Crystal and Concrete/Meteor Mountain, by Yashua Klos, 2009.At Fanzine, Gina Myers takes a look into Morgan Parker's debut collection Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback 2015) and likes what she finds. A Cave Canem fellow and Editor for Little A and Day One, Morgan also co-curates the Poets With Attitude (PWA) reading series with Tommy Pico. Morgan Parker, author of Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (Switchback Books 2015), selected by Eileen Myles for the 2013 Gatewood Prize, and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyo ncé. I am a tree and some fruits are good and some are bad. I don’t want to give away my money but here I am. What is happening to my five dollar one cent. I just want to understand my savings account. I just want my student loans to disappear. I just want to have sex most of the time. Into a bar and drink a lot of wine, kiss a white man on his beard. They say Martin Luther King.Īt school they learned that Black people happened. I say this painting is contemporary like you and me. I know my pussy is real good because they said so.Įverybody looks like everybody I worked with.Įverybody looks like everybody I’ve kissed.Īt the museum I tell the school group about Black art. I don’t mean YOLO I mean they are hunting me. I do whatever I want because I could die any minute. I drink a lot of wine and kiss a Black man on his beard. Okay so I’m Black in America right and I walk into a bar. –AFĪll They Want Is My Money My Pussy My Blood The boldness of this poet’s wits is nothing short of invincible. Where do we position ourselves among these declarative rushes that explode irony? With a laugh or wince, with a fist or moan? Inside Parker’s affective demolition park all tones of psyche become possible even as none, in isolation, are quite sufficient to contain her multiplicity. The poet’s humor, rage, depression and lust pour out like a molotov cocktail. Morgan Parker’s tonal shifts bulldoze past the merely implicative towards an exuberance without safety net.

Other People's Comfort Keeps Me up at Night by Morgan Parker