12. The entire stanza beginning with “My father must have seen such sights” is quoted from James Baldwin’s essay “Nobody Knows My Name.”

13. The phrase “the King the king the king” is a nod to Carl Phillips’s poem “The King of Hearts,” from his book Cortège.

14. “Be humble,” “Lil bitch”—“Humble” by Kendrick Lamar (2017)

15. “John Henry” speaks to the folktale of John Henry and the mental health issue known as “John Henryism” in the Black community.

16. Jazz by Toni Morrison

17. The Known World by Edward P. Jones

18. “York” is the enslaved African who ostensibly led the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

19. “Man in Polyester Suit” (1980)—photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe

20. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

21. For Mapplethorpe’s commentary of “super nigger,” see page 83 of Women’s Bodies, edited by Jane Arthurs and Jean Grimshaw, A&C Black, 1999.

22. Native Son by Richard Wright

23. “Mother Mary,” or Our Lady of Conception, is the saint syncretized to the orisha Yemanjá of Candomblé spiritual practice in Brazil.

24. The image of the hunter hunting a deer and the sentence “O, choosy god, choose me” allude to the orisha Ọ̀ṣọ́ọ̀sì (Ifá)/Oshosi (Santería)/Oxóssi (Candomblé).

25. “By all things planetary, sweet” —Gwendolyn Brooks

“In the Beginning”—The grandmother in this poem is my paternal grandmother, Mattie Ford, whom I love and miss. The eloko, plural biloko [Mongo-Nkundo language], is a dwarflike creature of Zaire that hypnotizes its victims with bells to more easily devour them. They are thought to be ancestors of the people who lived in the forests and are considered vicious to and begrudging of the living.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Poems appearing in Mutiny have appeared, sometimes as different versions, in the following publications:

American Poetry Review—“The Void”

Bennington Review—“Final Poem for the White Students Next Door Who say ‘Nigga’ When Singing Along to Rap Songs Loud Enough for Me to Hear” as “Maskot #3: For the White Students Next Door Who say ‘Nigga’ When Singing Along to Rap Songs Loud Enough for Me to Hear”

Boston Review— “Final First Poem”; “Final Poem as Request for Maskot for White-ran Journal, or ‘They sure do love them some black pain.’ ” as “Maskot #1: They sure do love them some Black pain”; and “Final Poem for Persona” as an excerpt from the poem “The River”

Brick—“Final Poem for the Biography of a Black Man as Animal and His Enforced Embrace of a Human Praxis”

Connotations Press—“Judgment” as “Wild is the Wind”

The Enchanting Verses Literary Review—“The Asphodel”

Kenyon Review—“Final Poem for the Moon”

The Missouri Review—“Tabula Rasa” and “The Field”

The Nation—“Final Poem for the ‘Field of Poetry’ ”

The New Yorker—“Final Poem for My Father Misnamed in My Mouth”

The Paris Review—“Mastery” and “ ‘Ne Me Quitte Pas:’ I Put a Spell on You: Nina Simone: 1965”

Poem-a-day at Poetry.org—“And Now Upon My Head the Crown,” “Hunter,” and “Order of Events”

The Poetry Review—“The Flying African” and “Herald”