The Zero Country
by Julian Randall

The wind melodies hard through the cotton
        All I need to know      the dead crave
gerunds with a desperation traditionally
  reserved for rain    
                              in another world I count
among those historical dead    
One age stretching past kingdom
crown of silence    I have been mourned
now live again elsewhere  here’s what
I have done with it     I spit on statues
in front of men who own multiple knives
Men dressed like trees     their children
dream of deer and what it means to own
I make a sad defiance     of the escape given
  I ride past rows of cotton   sun transfigures
them    gills of the bleakest fish    O meadow
of child’s fists    O violence that grows into
a more efficient violence     I’m some other town’s
ghost story     Their knives moan my name
    whetstone           bride of history
All their love is cleaving in any other language
I walk beneath trees   become the moon’s sharp
whistle    Violence is not my only name    Yet all the men
I find in foliage    look at me and whisper     Come true   Come true  

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Julian Randall is a Living Queer Black poet from Chicago. A recipient of multiple fellowships, Julian is the winner of a Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA in Poetry from Ole Miss. His writing has appeared in New York Times Magazine, POETRY, and The Atlantic. Julian is the author of Refuse (Pitt, 2018), winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award, The Pilar Ramirez Duet (Holt Books for Young Readers) and The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: Essays (Bold Type Books, 2023). He can be found at @JulianThePoet and on his website JulianDavidRandall.com.