Bringing the shovel down

77 Pages·2011·0.255 MB·English

by  Gay, Ross

Bringing the Shovel Down
Pitt Poetry SerieS
Ed Ochester, Editor
Bringing the
Shovel Down
ross gay
university of pittburgh press
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Copyright © 2011, Ross Gay
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-6135-2
ISBN 10: 0-8229-6135-0
This book is dedicated to Mikayla Grace and Hannah Rose.
And to the memory of Don Belton.

Our children cannot dream unless they live, they cannot live unless
they are nourished, and who else will feed them the real food without
which their dreams will be no different from ours?
—Audre Lorde

Contents
Nursery 1
Love, You Got Me Good 4
For Some Slight I Can’t Quite Recall 5
The Syndromes: Doubling 6
Bringing the Shovel Down 7
Bull Dragged from Arena 10
American Dreaming 11
The Syndromes: Memorial Syndrome, or Memory 12
Glass 13
The Lion and the Gazelle 17
The Syndromes: Cartographer’s Syndrome 20
Axe Blade 21
Isaac 22
Prayer for My Unborn Niece or Nephew 23
Love, I’m Done with You 26
Solidarity 27
The Syndromes: Horologist’s Syndrome 28
Hollywood 29
Within Two Weeks the African American Poet Ross Gay Is
Mistaken for Both the African American Poet Terrance Hayes
and the African American Poet Kyle Dargan, Not One of Whom
Looks Anything Like the Others 30
Some Instructions on Black Masculinity Offered to My
Black Friend by the White Woman He Briefly Dated: A
Monologue 31