Published in Issue 62.4: Fall 2023
Fall 2023 | Rachel Nelson Reads "Diseases of American Slavery (the desire)" – MQR Sound
Rachel Nelson reads "Diseases of American Slavery (the desire)" for MQR's Fall 2023 issue "Transversions".
Read the text for this piece on the MQR website.
The desire
to find your mother’s hand
must be cured A slow day
under the sack is a contagion
The desire
not to melt into fields
is an affliction The wish
to be still as the sky
unfolds into pink dusk
means your life is in danger
The desire to find
your mother’s hand
The wish
not to be enslaved is evidence
of pathology
Call these diseases
natural as a bird wanting
to sun itself south
Illness a fruiting
a manifestation
of this condition
on your father’s back
on your child’s back
What is the cure for that?
Rachel Nelson is a Cave Canem fellow and a graduate of the University of Michigan’s MFA program, where she won a Hopwood Prize for playwriting. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, the museum of americana, Muzzle Magazine, Pleiades, Thrush, and elsewhere. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
