The Poetry of Len Lawson
“For this group of poems, I adopted the prose form to invoke the voice of an anonymous speaker, perhaps snatching truth and wisdom from the four corners of creation, independent of time and space. They are in a sense proverbial yet probing the very fabric of existence—not deified but as witness. They endured many drafts and sequences.”—Dr. Len Lawson
Speculative Friction
By Claire Bateman, Poetry Editor
GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Hubris)—June 2025—Poet Len Lawson is the author of Negro Asylum for the Lunatic Insane (Main Street Rag, 2023) and Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019), and the editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair Press, 2021). South Carolina Humanities awarded Lawson a 2022 Governor’s Award for Fresh Voices in the Humanities, and he has received fellowships from Tin House Summer Workshop, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Callaloo Barbados, Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. His poetry appears in African American Review, Callaloo, Mississippi Review, Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, and Poetry Northwest, and has been translated internationally. Lawson earned a PhD in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and an MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte. Born and living in South Carolina, he is Director of African American Studies and Assistant Professor of English at Newberry College. Lawson writes, “For this group of poems, I adopted the prose form to invoke the voice of an anonymous speaker, perhaps snatching truth and wisdom from the four corners of creation, independent of time and space. They are in a sense proverbial yet probing the very fabric of existence—not deified but as witness. They endured many drafts and sequences.”
A boy with his mother’s robe tied around his neck
By Len Lawson
will climb a tree trunk, coil his legs on a limb, spring into the air, and touch ground before his belly reaches his throat. the cruelty of this world would have us believe that falling is flying, that the shoulder blades never secreted wings. gravity is a bully. shattering the desire for liftoff. crushing the burden of imagination. stifling our tongues from the taste of clouds. the god of this world even said so when he struck down the tower of men as they erected it toward his throne. to see the wildness in their eyes for construction. to feel their hearts kindle and snap like a winter fire, tearing the flesh from their bones like the caped boy landing on his knees, knowing they would one day soon see and be their god, no more mindful than the winged insect who loses its memory of home, smacked down by the hand of mercy, or by a boy upset he didn’t fly.
point somewhere in the darkness to a kernel of light
By Len Lawson
and say, Baby, that one is yours. hold her close to you on a cool meadow, a blanket sealing your bond to each other. she shutters at the loss of a streaking tear down the galaxy of her cheek, dares not gaze into your eyes longer than you can see the blurry blink of light. the star has cried too, winced at how you gave it a master, turned its back to both of you before the scream of its budding, before it swallows your next generations whole. tell your child together it twinkled that night. your seed will smile back, yet stars too are only seeds, planted in space by a patient hand. in your night sky, see only an echo of its pulse, a beating heart struggling to thrive in the womb. teach your child to pray to it because you have never beheld the destiny of both star and child. if you’re going to name a star after her, how long will you wait for its bursting?
Delivery Truck Flies the confederate flag in Myrtle Beach
By Len Lawson
I, too, have been a rebel in my day.
desire for sand in my crevices,
blanketing my naked body
with the ocean,
a conch shell where the fig
leaves should be.
wearing the night like skin,
the stars only in my teeth.
you haven’t released your soul
to the universe until you
return your body to the waters
who birthed you
who judge your life to determine
if your breath was worth
puckering its lips to your mouth
and blowing, blowing
rippling through you,
your tongue red with life
like this paralyzing fabric
on the back of a moving truck
not waving, haunting, a relic
dry as the bone
of a conch shell.
red light suspends time
enough for history to whip
the night of my body.
I clutch the soul I thought I released.
anger surfs through me like
this truck’s dangling red sail,
turning a street, toward rebellion
yet do I marvel
at the fabric
of the universe
the stars crisscrossing
my teeth, through me,
those shooting stars
a black body must ask if it is the star or the darkness.
By Len Lawson
born with the cold space in its flesh. baptized in the madness of the dark, a void filling the nostrils for its first breath. looked down at its own skin and thought its eyes were closed. dodged its reflection in the mirror as a child, believing the reaper had come. tears sprang like comets from its face, escaping the black hole of its mouth. black body, born the darkness. light never its home. blessing the infinite wall of space with outstretched silence, until breath blown into it. black soul, breathing light.
To order copies of Claire Bateman’s books, Wonders of the Invisible World, Scape, or Coronology from Amazon, click on the book covers below.
Claire Bateman
Claire Bateman’s books include The Pillow Museum: Stories (Fiction Collective 2); Wonders of the Invisible World (42 Miles Press); Scape (New Issues Poetry & Prose); Locals (Serving House Books), The Bicycle Slow Race (Wesleyan University Press), Friction (Eighth Mountain Poetry Prize), At The Funeral Of The Ether (Ninety-Six Press, Furman University), Clumsy (New Issues Poetry & Prose), Leap (New Issues), and Coronology (Etruscan Press). She has been awarded Individual Artist Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the Surdna Foundation, as well as two Pushcart Prizes and the New Millennium Writings 40th Anniversary Poetry Prize. She has taught at Clemson University, the Greenville Fine Arts Center, and various workshops and conferences such as Bread Loaf and Mount Holyoke. She lives in Greenville, South Carolina. (Please see Bateman’s amazon.com Author’s Page for links to all her publications, and go here for further information about the poet and her work.) (Author Head Shot Augment: René Laanen.)