All Aboard the ARC: Broken Halves of a Milky Sun: Poems by Aaiún Nin

***Note: I received a free digital review copy of this book from NetGalley and Astra House in exchange for an honest review. I have not received compensation for the inclusion of any links for purchase found in this review or on any other page of The Voracious Bibliophile which mentions Broken Halves of a Milky Sun: Poems, its creator, or its publisher.***

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Review

Theirs is a fiercely political poetics which centers the Black Queer experience and names the many violences committed by Western governments in the name of Christianity, “progress”, and the status quo.

In their daring and evocative debut, Aaiún Nin leaves absolutely nothing left unsaid. Theirs is a fiercely political poetics which centers the Black Queer experience and names the many violences committed by Western governments in the name of Christianity, “progress”, and the status quo. Where other writers would dance on the line between truthful testimony and placating respectability, most likely due to a reflexive need for self-preservation, Nin forges a path of their own through a tangled web of desire, trauma, history, and their personal immigrant experience—in their case, one that has been rife with racism, homophobia, and other intersecting axes of oppression.

What Nin refuses to do in Broken Halves of a Milky Sun is cater to an audience that would never listen to them anyway, at least not in any substantive or constructive way. In fact, they anticipate the not all men and not all white people responses and throw it back in the faces of their would-be detractors. This is not a space for the oppressors to have a say. Sit down. They are not accepting questions or comments at this time.

So moved was I by the poems in this collection that when I made it to the end, breathless and aching, only one response would suffice: Amen.

Broken Halves of a Milky Sun: Poems was published by Astra House on February 1st, 2022 and is available to purchase wherever books are sold.

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Poem for the Day: October 9th, 2021

Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Her singular sonorous voice echoes with the shared promise and potential of humanity, especially those who are downtrodden, maligned, and marginalized.

I love the imagery in this poem. It gives me chills every time I read it, and I can hear Maya Angelou’s voice in my head when I do. Her singular sonorous voice echoes with the shared promise and potential of humanity, especially those who are downtrodden, maligned, and marginalized. Inside also is a reclamation, a refusal to be shaped or cowed by the words and deeds of others. After reading “Still I Rise”, the only appropriate response is amen. Amen amen amen.

Maya Angelou Reciting “Still I Rise”

Poem for the Day: September 18th, 2021

Miracle Removal by Kevin Young

                             i.m. Helen Hill 

This world is rigged
with ruin.

Rain,
and its remains.

In the yard drought
fills the empty jars—

houses on stilts
still lean.

Sweet as revenge, the grass
devours the abandoned

dream house, unfinished kitchen
where cows now graze.

What angels
I would wrestle.

Kevin Young currently serves as the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture and has been the poetry editor at The New Yorker since 2017. He was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020. He previously served as the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. His most recent collection, Stones: Poems, will be released on September 28th, 2021 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group and is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.