Supreme

by Patrick Sylvain

I will séance America into a love
Even the Supremes will be afraid of.
Court me, angle and anchor me to rights,
Not to right. The right is afraid of supreme
Rights. Dreams have fangs. Have teeth.
The court silences the hissing of riders,
And marchers for rights, gagging
The actions of the X-King, hexing color to a supreme
Nothing. Stop in the name of love we are supremely
Hurt in the land of supremacy
With hooded rage snuffing rights,
With hoods simmering into gloom.
America, let me séance you into a love
Supreme so right that rights are
Sealed by the supreme of courts. Let me court you
Into a real American love, a supreme riff of
Baby love, ‘til injustice do us part.

 

 

 

Patrick Sylvain

Patrick Sylvain

Patrick Sylvain is a poet, writer, translator, photographer, and academic. He is a faculty member at Brown University’s Center for Language Studies. Sylvain has taught as a lecturer at Harvard, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and Tufts University. Additionally, Sylvain was a lecturer in anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is published in several anthologies, academic journals, books, magazines, and reviews, including African American Review, Agni, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Caribbean Writers, Anchor Magazine, JoInt. Literary Magazine, Dirty Chai, Ploughshares, SX Salon, Haiti Noir, International Journal of Language and Literature, The Journal of Haitian Studies, The New West Indian Guide, Revista: Harvard Review of Latin America, Massachusetts Review, Human Architecture: A Sociology Journal, Poets for Haiti, Fixing Haiti and Beyond, The Butterfly’s Way, Tectonic Shifts, The Best of Beacon Press, Transition, and The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse. He has been featured on PBS NewsHour, NPR’s Here and Now, and The Story, and he was a contributing editor to the BostonHaitian Reporter. Sylvain’s academic essays are anthologized in several edited collections, including The Idea of Haiti: Rethinking Crisis and Development, edited by Millery Polyné, and Politics and Power in Haiti, edited by Paul Sutton and Kate Quinn. Sylvain graduated as a Conant Fellow from Harvard University Graduate School of Education, where he received his EdM, and also holds an MFA from Boston University, where he was a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow.

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