08.10.2018
Weekly poem on Trump Presidency
Nicole Sealey
Hysterical Strength
When I hear news of a hitchhiker
struck by lightning yet living,
or a child lifting a two-ton sedan
to free his father pinned underneath,
or a camper fighting off a grizzly
with her bare hands until someone,
a hunter perhaps, can shoot it dead,
my thoughts turn to black people—
the hysterical strength we must
possess to survive our very existence,
which I fear many believe is, and
treat as, itself a freak occurrence.
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Nicole Sealey, born in St. Thomas and raised in Apopka, Florida, is the author of The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the 2015 Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize, and Ordinary Beast (Ecco, 2017). She holds an MLA in Africana Studies from the University of South Florida and an MFA in creative writing from New York University. Sealey is the Executive Director at Cave Canem Foundation. "Hysterical Strength" first appeared in Narrative Magazine.
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llustration: anna_croc01