"Humor is one way of political intimacy—a way to touch ourselves and one another with tenderness in public, a way to bend or break without submitting. I appreciated the humor in this poem, the way the speaker held themselves in a whole, full way, while speaking to the structures of a society that was designed to deduct us from its “citizenship”, that overdrafts us of energy and emotion and love, that works hard to break us down to a sum total of who/what is saved or owed. When I arrived at the last line, I was aware of the precarity happening, a precarity I have known, but I was also lucky to be still holding the momentum of the joyous power of the first line—I was empty in the pockets but overflowing with the speaker’s homegirls dropping it low, and not despite the situation, but because they deserve to celebrate their lives.”
—Natalie Diaz, contest judge and author of Postcolonial Love Poem and When My Brother Was an Aztec
Laron Bickerstaff, Untitled, 2018. Colored pencil on paper, 12 x18 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Creativity Explored.
Nothing Blacker Than My Bank Account
by Darnell “DeeSoul” Carson
Winner of the 2021 Poetry Contest
See how it moves? Drops low as my homegirls at a function?
Picks up at the last second, my bank account be so dramatic.
My bank account Blacker than me, always late, always right on time.
My bank account hate me, says I don’t keep it fed, says I do all this work
and still ain’t got no bread. I look at my bank account and feel closer to God.
I whisper fuck like a curse, then a prayer, withdraw from the ATM:
an offering into the pulpit of my hands. Oh, how blessed I am,
how Black. To stretch $20 over a week like momma’s post-church blanket.
My bank account reminds me money is a scam anyway. Like overdraft fees.
Or oatmeal raisin cookies, or my sister, asking for one of my fries
and then taking the whole damn carton. How we sustain each other
by passing back & forth the same $5, the same fish and loaves,
always just enough to get by, almost enough to forget you didn’t have it.
Published April 18th, 2021
Darnell “DeeSoul” Carson (He/They) is a Black queer poet, performer, and educator from San Diego, CA, and Editorial Assistant at The Adroit Journal. A 2020 TWH Writing Workshop Fellow and two-time CUPSI finalist, his work has been featured on Button Poetry, in The Adroit Journal, Between My Body and The Air (A Youth Speaks Poetry Anthology), and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing a degree in Cultural/Social Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing at Stanford University and will be a Writer in the Public Schools Fellow in the NYU M.F.A program in Fall 2021.
Laron Bickerstaff is an artist based in San Francisco, California. Bickerstaff has been a member of Creativity Explored since 1997, and his work has been included in many of the studio’s exhibitions. In addition to his artwork, Bickerstaff’s ASL font has been licensed by LISTOS California Emergency Preparedness Campaign, and CB2 for their home décor. Bickerstaff’s ASL font was also used as limited-edition print in support of the Rafiki Coalition. More of Bickerstaff’s work can be viewed and purchased on the Creativity Explored website.