An appreciation of the soul master on the 35th anniversary of his for-the-ages performance at the Image Awards. — It was the first warm day in a warm spring in a warm year. To add specifics, it was a Saturday, and my dad had dropped me off at big momma’s. Grandpa was taking a fishing trip with Uncle Moe, and there were no fights on, so it was just…

2022 was the year a new hip hop generation of men fully became the patriarchs they once blamed all their problems on — He used to bully me when I took the bus to University Place. In the years I went back and forth and then lived there, he and his “Starbuck Gang Homies” considered me to be a “bitch” “Faggot” and then an “uncle tom” because I wasn’t gangster enough. Time and…

But which place is actually which? There might not have been a black-owned hin the history of this nation less hospitable to the black Israelites and the nation of Islam than my grandparents’ three-bedroom. Built in 1971, on the corner of 15th and Sprague avenue, it was deceptively bottom heavy. It had a basement containing that…

I am from a generation of black folks infuriated by toxic internet politics. Kanye West and Kyrie Irving are the final straw after years of bullshit. I come from a place people call Up South. My spiritual and actual roots are from black people who came up from the south…

Remembering Pernell Whitaker. The appeal of pure boxers in minority communities is that they are physical manifestations of intellect. To stand in front of a fighter, hit, and not get hit is to show an improvisational mastery of skills, skills that aren’t just obvious but ones that no white person can deny. You…

A poem from my upcoming collected works manuscript Is it the silences between descriptive verbs? Is it the pattern(or sound)? Repetitions made new? the sight from his pitch beyond notes and figures of his delta-to-the-north-hill sorrow songs? Is it the sliver branch order in ivory soap and metal beyond blown blue-black scales? Is it a motion…

If I love You, I Cannot Lie To You Our discourse cannot be whole if we can’t tell the truth about what Black Lives Matter is now. This is a mural of Virginia Taylor, former head of The Northwest Dispatch and my first writing mentor. I was reading the article…

Serena Williams: A Personal Appreciation I usually curbed my young snot-nosed jerk when I was around my grandmother, but she had to check me on it one time when we were watching a Roberto Duran fight. It was in the early 90s, past when Ray Leonard pasted him in their…

An elegy for the great heavyweight contender of the 1970s, whose transcendent power and strong character outlasted his bad boxing luck — Earnie Shavers: 1944–2022 Boxers, for the most part, are some of the most decent human beings I have ever seen. Boxing, for the most part, is horrible. Rarely is it more horrible than in how rural talent is handled by their “management”? The sport has been haunted by unprincipled hustlers…