Aleksander Zyw, Untitled [Z 317], 1949. Watercolor, pen and colored ink on paper. © The Estate of the Artist.

Aleksander Zyw, Untitled [Z 317], 1949. Watercolor, pen and colored ink on paper. © The Estate of the Artist.

 

Blackberry the Masses
after Solange & Sylvia Plath

by Kyle Carrero Lopez


 

Blackberries know no loneliness,
each drupelet per fruit
its own ruby heart, blood
-rooted deep in its brothers

Squash one then the others
feel a blue interruption

Blackberries on brown palms
brown ferries
black packs
black brown
brown juice
black suits
black the new
black

Blackberried: to me
we feel close to an us,
till again he leaves me
on read

Dankest red-blues gush
as if he blew through
me, a stemmed
worn out thing

My worn down innards
cave in on themselves,
and beyond them, same time:
my people blow apart
like blackberries,
stomped

Image is insufficient
but if I’m to take both,

Blackberry me
on concrete
on camera
and my people will sprout
in revolt

Black
berry me
so at least
the worms, the soil,
can feast

 
 

Published August 18th, 2019


Kyle Carrero Lopez is an American poet of Afro-Cuban descent. Originally from North Jersey, he is a Poetry MFA Candidate at NYU & reads poetry submissions for Homology Lit. He collaborated with Garrett Allen on BLK MLK (2019), a live movement & video performance piece presented at Spectrum NYC. His poems are published or forthcoming in Poetry, THE BOILER, office magazine, The Florida Review, The Acentos Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, & elsewhere, as well as in the anthologies Grabbed & The Breakbeat Poets Volume 4: LatiNEXT.



Aleksander Zyw was born at Lida (then in Poland, now in Belarus) in 1905. He studied law and art history at university in Warsaw before going on to the Academy of Fine Arts, from 1926 to 1932. He then travelled in Europe, notably to Dalmatia, Greece and Italy, before settling in France in 1934, and establishing a studio in Paris. At this time he specialised in landscape, working both in oils and other media. In 1939 he enlisted in the Polish army in France, in which he served until the French surrender.