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    Fantasia for the Man in Blue
    Fantasia for the Man in Blue
    Fantasia for the Man in Blue
    Ebook133 pages49 minutes

    Fantasia for the Man in Blue

    By Tommye Blount

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    About this ebook

    In his debut collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue, Tommye Blount orchestrates a chorus of distinct, unforgettable voices that speak to the experience of the black, queer body as a site of desire and violence. A black man’s late-night encounter with a police officer—the titular “man in blue”—becomes an extended meditation on a dangerous erotic fantasy. The late Luther Vandross, resurrected here in a suite of poems, addresses the contradiction between his public persona and a life spent largely in the closet: “It’s a calling, this hunger / to sing for a love I’m too ashamed to want for myself.” In “Aaron McKinney Cleans His Magnum,” the convicted killer imagines the barrel of the gun he used to bludgeon Matthew Shepard as an “infant’s small mouth” as well as the “sad calculator” that was “built to subtract from and divide a town.” In these and other poems, Blount viscerally captures the experience of the “other” and locates us squarely within these personae.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFour Way Books
    Release dateMar 2, 2020
    ISBN9781945588655
    Fantasia for the Man in Blue

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      Book preview

      Fantasia for the Man in Blue - Tommye Blount

      Fantasia for the Man in Blue

      Tommye Blount

      Four Way Books

      Tribeca

      More Praise for Tommye Blount

      I have been waiting for this miracle of a book to come out for so long without understanding why—until I was finally allowed to read it from start to finish, first in one big gulp, then slower, with the kind of leisurely pleasure I might otherwise reserve for dessert. Pay attention to the lyric lightness, the vivid and philosophical diction, the keen function of form, the grasp of history and its consequences. Then indulge in the satisfaction in language, the refashioning of myth, and, perhaps there is no other way to say this: the STYLE, honey. Tommye Blount is one of our greatest writers because he is willing to do what is so difficult: hold poems to exacting and crucial standards. This book was written not by a master, but a virtuoso.

      —Tarfia Faizullah

      Copyright © 2020 Tommye Blount

      No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Names: Blount, Tommye, author.

      Title: Fantasia for the man in blue / Tommye Blount.

      Description: First edition. | Tribeca : Four Way Books, [2020] |

      Identifiers: LCCN 2019031755 | ISBN 9781945588495 (trade paperback)

      Subjects: LCGFT: Poetry.

      Classification: LCC PS3602.L679 F36 2020 | DDC 811/.6--dc23

      LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031755

      This book is manufactured in the United States of America and printed on acid-free paper.

      Four Way Books is a not-for-profit literary press. We are grateful for the assistance we receive from individual donors, public arts agencies, and private foundations.

      This publication is made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts

      and from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency,

      We are a proud member of the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses.

      ISBN-13: 978-1-945588-65-5 (electronic)

      Contents

      Fantasia for the Man in Blue

      I

      How Sweet this Great Land

      Americana Elegy

      My God, Lick Him Clean

      The Button

      The Purse Thieves

      Historical Site

      Late Show at the Americana

      Framing Debra Shaw

      Proscenium

      The Laugh

      Phonophobia

      At the Mercury Theater,

      Blood Harmony

      The Pool

      II

      Fantasia for the Man in Blue

      Leroy Auditions for the Fame School

      The Ballad of Bobby Blake

      Castro Supreme Finally Speaks

      Ode to Chub Porn

      Not an Elegy for Erik Rhodes

      Diesel Washington Demonstrates The Bully

      Thug on Thug

      Are you clean,

      Bareback Aubade with the Dog

      And the dog comes back

      The Runts

      Lycanthropy

      Palmer Park

      The bug

      Fable of the Beast

      Niggas’ Revenge

      Arcane Torso on Grindr

      The Weather, the Weather

      What sort of bird

      III

      Fantasia for the Man in Blue

      Icarus Does the Dishes

      The Suit

      Geppetto’s Lament

      Of a Wicked Boy

      Aaron McKinney Cleans His Magnum

      Of his daughter’s hair,

      Portrait of My Father

      Leda

      Hardheaded Aubade

      The Bug Chaser

      The Singing Head of Orpheus

      Do you have anything

      IV

      Dear Latrice Royale

      The Lady Chablis as Herself

      Rest Stop in Rawsonville, Michigan

      The Hunger of Luther Vandross

      Luther Vandross Sings Bowie

      Luther Dreams of Aretha Franklin’s Gown

      Bling Elegy

      Fantasia for the Man in Blue

      Notes

      This is what makes me feel niggerish, I’m afraid: being watched.

      Fantasia for the Man in Blue

      You know good and well you can’t be out here

      in the dark morning to take in

      the moon—full as the bowl of light

      attached to this police cruiser. Like a grayed

      elephant shoots air through its trunk

      before it charges off to safety

      from a mouse in one of those old black

      and white cartoons, you

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