When the Ghosts Come Ashore by Jacqui Germain

Poetry. African American Studies. "The poems in Jacqui Germain's WHEN THE GHOSTS COME ASHORE are the cross-section of a body mid escape. Placelessness is the place, leaving only the unsafety of flesh as a hideout. Black presences break from the margins and pierce through these hard lyrics. Nat Turner saws away at the MLK Memorial in DC while St. Louis itself curses the speaker her privileges. All the white boys are dangerous and 'there is a demon in everything.' Germain has made of her craft an exorcism: 'Let my anger be the celebration we were never / supposed to have.' Let it. Let it."—Phillip B. Williams