Poetry collection by Kelly Norman Ellis.

“In Kelly Norman Ellis’ long awaited second collection, a grand cinema of black life is honey-beamed and balanced on a ‘nipple of coal.’ Somewhere in the middle of turning these pages, the reader will helplessly rise and mercilessly hunt for dirty rice and Bill Withers. It is indeed the poet’s job to save something, but Ellis does more—she swears to paper a luscious book so rich with black zest and drylongso that each page sets high our thirst for all that is human, longed for and inexplicable.”      

Nikky Finney, author of Head Off & Split, 2011 National Book Award for Poetry