KIKI PETROSINO



KIKI PETROSINO


BLACK GENEALOGY

You’re on a train & your ancestors are in the Quiet Car. The Quiet Car is locked with a password you can’t decrypt. You’re a professional password decrypter & your ancestors are professional demolition experts. You’re wearing black tactical gear & your ancestors are wearing black tactical gear. You’re moving back through the train, slamming doors open, & your ancestors are ahead of you, laying small explosive charges in your path. When your ancestors blow up the Quiet Car, you escape through a window hatch. You climb to the top of the train & your ancestors rappel down the sides. You’re rappelling down one side of the train when you glimpse your ancestors above you, again, leaping from car to car. You cling to the train & your ancestors lift right off the roof with the help of multiple jetpacks. And lo, your ancestors are hundreds of slow snake doctors, & lo, your ancestors, intensively spinning. You, on the other hand, have been missing for some time.



KIKI PETROSINO is the author of three books of poetry: Witch Wife (forthcoming in 2017), Hymn for the Black Terrific (2013) and Fort Red Border (2009), all from Sarabande Books. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Best American Poetry, The New York Times, FENCE, Gulf Coast, Jubilat, Tin House and on-line at Ploughshares. She is founder and co-editor of Transom, an independent on-line poetry journal. She is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Louisville, where she directs the Creative Writing Program.