Title: Play dead
Description: Lyrically raw and dangerously unapologetic, play dead challenges us to look at our cultivated selves as products of circumstance and attempts to piece together patterns amidst dissociative chaos. harris unearths a ruptured world dictated by violence—a place of deadly what ifs, where survival hangs by a thread. Getting by is carrying bruises and walking around with "half a skull."

From "low visibility":

*I have light in my mouth. I hunger you. You want
what comes in drag. a black squirrel in a black tar lane,
fresh from exhaust, hot and July's unearthed steam.
You want to watch it run over. to study the sog.*

*You want the stink of gristle buried in a muggy weather.
I want the faulty mirage. a life of grass.
we want the same thing. We want their deaths
to break up the sun.*
Subjects: African Americans, Poetry, Poetry (poetic works by one author), POETRY / American / African American, LGBTQ poetry, Lambda Literary Awards, Lambda Literary Award Winner, collection:audre_lorde_award=winner, POETRY, American, African American