Summary: Charlie D. Hankin’s Break and Flow examines the language, culture, history, and politics of hip hop in Cuba, Brazil, and Haiti. Organizing his chapters around a series of themes––yearning, raplove, uprooting, scale, writing, and violence––Hankin invites the reader to consider the many ways that hip hop culture and rap music have influenced (and been influenced by) [...]
At the top of the hill of possible grief, Is where I meet it, Or it meets me. We join in mutual expiration, Breath comes ragged, If it comes, At all. In the haze of the night of possible grief, Is where we feel it, A loving ambush, all prepared. It watches, companionable Offering the [...]
My Dear and Honoured Rilke, I have received your letters We all did–– Joyce’s “general postoffice of human life” was Not too late After all Your letters, first posted Then unposted–– Wash us clean across the generations Bring us the quiet and careful wisdom You sought in Solitude Criticism won’t bring us near to art [...]
Bury your life in bookends for a bookend eases things A start and a beginning both will carry you as wings Bring your callous calling forth whisper through the wall A crackling caterwaul awaits the generous recall You haven’t made it out just yet your anchor still resides But brilliant was the time we met [...]
it’s a wave that blows and blasts us, sends us out, tousled, enduring the marred matter of motive it’s a hum that rides and wrecks us, pulls us home, spent, wandering the cobbled course of confusion when i stepped, and you stepped, and we stepped, creases ceased and blood began when i stepped, and you [...]
The next word is the word of wonder–– the word we wait for, and wait again. The next sigh is the sigh of smoke–– the sigh set off by our soft trigger. The next call is the call of condolence–– the call we put off, just forget it. The next leap is the leap of [...]
Abandonment is childhood’s end For leavers and for stayers both The quick lash of window’s light Meets malice at the door Castles turned to trees arrange For leaf’s bright toss And air’s cool whisper In the bright den of dawn Losing time to bed’s fine folds Enwrapped in raptured coverlets This lonely joy kills across [...]
The business of broken things comes for everyone, calmly coaxing, flash forward to end’s meat. In time’s taking we supply decay, mushroom fodder, gentle dis-integral. The business of broken things keeps the score, blithely burrowing, back to seeded womb. Returned to exile we dissolve astray, no looking back, no back, no way. The business of [...]
She took me with her when she went, Down to the dark place people go. She plied my surface, left me bent, No pack to pack, no space to stow. She broke the compass, tore the map, Blinding out to ocean’s edge. She flayed the wound with stinging strap, Made offerings to drive her wedge. [...]
A flow of fresh air fell into your field–– the open door, a portal to things abandoned but not forgotten. Breeze calls the tree limbs home, slanting shade into your slipstream, sunlit, warm and worn. This journey’s craft banks broadly, traversing the low and languorous byway, the last stop before oblivion. Breath holds its pattern [...]