Makalani Bandele

unit_89 is all-city

After Julie Mehretu (Van Gelder 3; JM D - 1.05)

waited around the frenzy till it was feverish to find that ulterior way in. what’s the matter with the moon this week? she blew up northside in a fantastic way. like a cacophony of marks for the traffic’s rush and the inescapable pollution. to be disoriented gladly. fancy a chance meeting of you wherever here is so deep in the city? at dusk’s dirtiest horizon notes dark the same. the dream of a burgeoning of metaphors. laid on this side of town till it ached. what’s a night around here without the salience of intermittent gunshots? apotropaic grips. the same feverishly waiting in some discovery at soft check. summer of pliable forests we bump along the parkway. on god, staying strangers is easier on the heart. as hard as she interpreted, she couldn’t leave the streets alone. never got less than three racks of pops a chop as to spread the proceeds around more equitably.

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About the Author

Makalani Bandele is an Affrilachian poet and Cave Canem fellow. A recent graduate of the University of Kentucky with an MFA in Creative Writing, Bandele’s work has been published in several anthologies; over forty units have been published or are forthcoming in the likes of Washington Square Review, Inverted Syntax, The Common, and Posit. He is the author of two books of poetry: hellfightin’ (Willow Books/Aquarius Press, 2011) and under the aegis of a winged mind, awarded the 2019 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize.