Flowers of gratitude to Abena Asare, Moira Brennan, Jossalyn Collado, Ross Gay, Aracelis Girmay, Corey Harrower, Zakia Henderson-Brown, Mark Kendall, Janet Isserlis, Charleen McClure, Kamilah Aisha Moon, John Murillo, Maile Ogasawara Garcia, Christina Olivares, Patrick Rosal, Mary Ruefle, Victoria Sanz, Nicole Sealey, Matthew Shenoda, Evie Shockley, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Elizabeth Velazquez, Robyne Walker-Murphy, Michelle Whittaker, Susan Wilcox, and Jenny Xie for every variety of wonder, support, shelter, and care.

To each dear friend who cheered me on: thank you, truly, for being in my life. To beloveds and strangers who shared my poems with beloveds and strangers: thank you.

Gratitude to those who provided significant feedback on poems not included here, but whose eyes instructed my hand: especially Charif Shanahan, who spread my poems across his living room fl or, and Donika Kelly, who walks with me.

I would like to thank Kwame Dawes for his generous reading and response to the first draft of Bluest Nude.

To Ada Limón, Tracy K. Smith, and Mary Szybist: I am exceedingly grateful for the care you took with Bluest Nude. Your poems move me. Your poems still me. A single word from you means the world. To Ellen Gallagher, who hands I needed to touch this book, thank you for your generosity, artistry, confidence, and time.

Thanks to the entire Milkweed team for the care, attention, and labor lavished onto this book. Gratitude to Mary Austin Speaker whose advocacy and eye shaped its materiality.

Simone Leigh is an artist I admire beyond measure. I am humbled and honored to have an image of her sculpture on this cover. Thank you, Simone, for trusting my work with yours.

I humbly place Bluest Nude into the rippling wake of ongoing conversation, scholarship, and artistry. Particularly, I am indebted to Denise Murrell’s Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today and Lorraine O’Grady’s “Olympia’s Maid: Reclaiming Black Female Subjectivity.”

Hand-over-heart gratitude to my schools: Mrs. Perry, Jacqueline Jones LaMon, Tracy K. Smith, Myronn Hardy, Marilyn Nelson, Cornelius Eady, Toi Derricotte, Carl Phillips, Ed Roberson, Terrance Hayes, Natasha Trethewey, Claudia Rankine, Chris Abani, Gregory Pardlo, Vievee Francis, Rachel Zucker, Sharon Olds, Yusef Komunyakaa, Edward Hirsch, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Meghan O’Rourke, Sally Wen Mao, and all my workshop-mates and instructors at Cave Canem, Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, New York University’s Creative Writing Program, and beyond. Again, to Terrance, bird on my shoulder. And to Gregory and Vievee for “seeing me clearly.”

Gratitude to those who raised me with love: my parents and brothers, my aunts and tribe. To my grandparents and way makers, thank you. To my mother: dedication and sunfl wers.

Thank you, Dear Reader. May whatever water is found in these pages quench you and make you thirsty.

About the Author