![]() “Bedroom” also includes “Good Grief,” which is set “ after Texas Winter Storm Uri” and critiques both the failings of ERCOT (the organization that runs Texas’ power grid) and the systemic issue of climate change. I think heavily on the day the nurse instead said Is not a phrase I yell only when Beyoncé sings it. Referencing Beyoncé’s “If I Were a Boy,” Brookins writes: Section Three, “Bedroom,” “T Shot #6: A Parallel Universe,” one of many poems with the title T Shot (T for testosterone), explores what life for Brookins may have been like had they been born a boy. According to this CV, Brookins has held positions such as “ Co-Chair, Committee of Black people Who Survived, June 2020–November 2021,” has skills such as “Hiding myself,” “Hopping Fences,” “Development, including: / … The ‘helping hands’ of white people ($15,000 from forced allyship donations 2020).” Their references include “God as my witness” and “The gay agenda.” Brookins’ Fellowships and Awards include being “ Marked as alive during global embarrassment, 2016–2020” and “ Inaugural Fellow, psychiatrist’s office, 2020–2021.” A tongue-in-cheek critique of capitalist, racist, trans-phobic, and exploitative workplace practices and expectations, “Curriculum Vitae” speaks to the core of being a young adult in America today. “Dining Room” also includes a form defying “Curriculum Vitae” for KB Brookins with sections such as Education, Fellowships and Awards, Work Experience, Board and Committee Positions, Skills, and References. Take back 400 years / of uncontested leadership” and to “Give thanks to the futures you’ve stolen.” “Bare Minimum, Or To-Do List for White America,” directs readers not to “kill Black people” or “Asian women.” The poem asks readers to “Get a job - / one that doesn’t make you / a dictator. 8: Erasure” is “derived from the original text of Texas Senate Bill 8” passed on May 19, 2021, which banned abortion. Section Two ushers readers into the “Dining Room.” Brookins’ “Sonic Symbolism” is dedicated to Ma ’Khia Bryant, who was shot by police in April 2021. The vicious cycle of gentrification Brookins draws attention to is happening across the nation and disproportionately impacts communities of color. Brookins rightfully points out that “Preservation depends on what is considered / good” and that “fresh paint is sometimes mixed with blood.” The “preservation” and “fresh paint” have increased property taxes for landlords and, subsequently, have raised rent prices, pushing long-time residents out of their neighborhoods and homes to make way for affluent and, often white, developers. & fresh paint is sometimes mixed with blood.ĭeftly using enjambment and italicization for emphasis, tactics Brookins uses throughout, they draw attention to the inextricable links between race and gentrification by drawing attention to the rampant gentrification in East Austin, a historically Black neighborhood. I don’t know muchĪbout places, except that history is epistolary We’ll be building on top of your memory now. Lost here? The local paper’s business section In cracked corners of my local Whole Foods. They write: Preservation depends on what is considered In “Every Building in East Austin is a Ghost,” Brookins criticizes the memory and racial politics of gentrification. ![]() Section One inhabits the “Foyer.” Here readers are introduced to many of the ongoing themes Brookins’ poems explore. Using poetry as a tool of exploration and future dreaming, Brookins builds a freedom house, brick by brick by poem. They ask what a just and free future could actually look like. Organized as a tour through the “freedom house” Brookins imagines, their poems take up issues of race, trans-ness, gender, family, gentrification, climate change, Afrofuturism, sexual violence, body politics, and home.īrookins’ collection opens with “Black Life circa 2029” where the “hood is a small utopia of green grass” and there are “no police.” By imagining a future wherein Black people do not have to “call in Black the next day,” they lay the foundation for a freedom house to be constructed. ![]() Despite this opposition, Texans like Brookins have been engaged in a fight for a future beyond these boundaries. Based out of Austin, Texas, Brookins writes about growing up queer, Black, and trans in Texas - a state that has long housed anti-trans, anti-queer, and anti-Black legislation and ideologies. KB Brookins’ Freedom Houseis an unapologetic, forward-dreaming manifesto for a better, shared future. ![]()
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