About the Feature
My ma
said agony
said hurt
said she’d be
damned
if pain
ain’t the one
thing all folk
say’s true
says all folk bow
when pain
huck
her elbow
across they neck
all folk
kneel
when pain
bite
dog-sure
at the belly
of old knees
when pain
rolls through
this town
even the trees
burst
at the seams
she said.
About the Author
Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley is currently the Tickner Writing Fellow and recipient of a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellowship as well as scholarships from Kundiman, Tin House, Sewanee, and VONA. He belongs to the Onondaga Nation of Indigenous Americans in New York. Peep his work from 2017 in Best New Poets (ed. Natalie Diaz), Boston Review, Iowa Review, Narrative, Ninth Letter, Pank, PEN America, the Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and Tin House, among others.