“Final Poem as Tidalectic Elegy” takes its quotes, in order of appearance, from: “ ‘The Water Is Waiting’: Water Tidalectics, and Materiality” by T. Mars McDougall (Liquid Blackness, volume 3, issue 6), “Ocean” by Alice Smith (She, Rainwater Recordings, 2013), In the Wake by Christina Sharpe (Duke University Press, 2016). The italics “sunken Africans will give AIDS to the sharks” is a comment someone left on a YouTube video I watched years ago that depicted a small barge of many African migrants begging for help while being ignored by sailors on a ship, one of whom recorded that very video. The ending to section two hearkens back to Ellen Bryant Voigt’s poem “Largesse” from her book Shadow of Heaven (Norton, 2003). “Church’s” refers to the restaurant Church’s Chicken.

“January 28, 1918”—Porvenir was a small West Texas border town. The Texas Rangers of Company B (led by Captain James Monroe Fox), the Eighth U.S. Cavalry Regiment, and four Anglo-American ranchers killed fifteen men and boys there. This poem uses the NBC News article “ ‘Porvenir, Texas’ Details Massacre of Mexican Americans by U.S. Soldiers, Rangers” by Raul A. Reyes (September 27, 2019), and “Remembering the Porvenir Massacre” by Justin Minsker from the Texas Historical Commission (January 25, 2019).

“ ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas’: I Put a Spell on You: Nina Simone: 1965” is inspired by Frank Bidart and Eduardo Corral. This poem is my interpretation of the art genre “Whose sleeves?” The French is from Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas” (1959).

“Final Poem for the Moon” is inspired by and for Natalie Diaz.

“Final Poem for Grandma Elizabeth’s Cancer” is an acrostic.

“Mastery” is a poem that references many artworks, songs, spiritualities, literary works, and folktales. Due to the loss of my office from water damage post-fire, I lost the notebook that contained most of these allusions and nods. To the best of my ability, I will list what immediately comes to mind with deep apologies for any information I leave out:

1. The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot is referenced throughout the poem.

2. “Dixie” (1859), composed by Daniel Decatur Emmett

3. Beloved by Toni Morrison

4. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain

5. “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes

6. “Her cries bleed over the dirt with a strange insistency.” —Margaret Walker

7. “Garden of Heavenly Rest” is where Zora Neale Hurston is buried.

8. “Eden’s daughter in the dust” is a nod to Julie Dash.

9. “Sweet and fresh, the sudden smell”—“Strange Fruit” (1937), composed by Abel Meeropol

10. “drapetomania”—A “disease” meant to explain why enslaved Africans ran away from slavery. See Samuel A. Cartwright for more details.

11. “Juba Dis” is from the rhyme “Juba Juba,” meant to accompany the dance pattin’ juba, aka hambone. The dance originated from enslaved Kongo peoples and consists of stomping, clapping, and patting the arms, thighs, hips, face, chest, and shoulders in intricate rhythms, mimicking drums when drums were made illegal for fear of their ability to facilitate slave revolts.