AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

The Poetry Magazine Podcast: KB Brookins and Holly Amos on Systemic Freedom, the Power of Insistence, and What People Don’t Understand about Texas

(If you notice a mistake in the transcript, please let us know by emailing [email protected].)

(MUSIC PLAYING)

KB Brookins:

(READS EXCERPT FROM “Notes after Watching the Inauguration”)

Before I was a human, I was free,
which is the healthiest of human abstractions.

Holly Amos: Welcome to the Poetry Magazine Podcast. I’m Holly Amos. This week I have the honor of sitting down with KB Brookins, a writer, cultural worker, an artist who joins us from Austin, Texas. KB’s debut book, Freedom House, will be out in April from Deep Vellum Publishing. Their chapbook, How to Identify Yourself with a Wound, was published by Kallisto Gaia Press in 2022. Today, we’ll hear poems from the new book, a poetry collection that explores internal, interpersonal, and systemic freedom. KB, welcome to the podcast.

KB Brookins: Hey, thank y’all so much for having me.

Holly Amos: We’re so excited to talk to you. And you’re in Austin. We actually talked with the poet Joanna Klink recently who’s also in Austin. So we’re just doing like a little Austin month over here. But y’all recently had like a massive weather event with super intense ice storms and outages. So yeah, like, how are you doing?

KB Brookins: I’m doing good. That’s so funny. Joanna, I’m in a class with her currently, because I’m at the MFA that she teaches at. So, fun, yay, my teacher!

Holly Amos: I love that.

KB Brookins: (LAUGHS) Yeah, I am doing okay. As is everywhere globally, the climate is changing locally in Texas. I’ve written about it. And I’ve just been checking in with my folks around here. Luckily, my household wasn’t too impacted. But yeah, I’m doing all right.

Holly Amos: I’m glad to hear that. And yeah, along with being a writer, you’re also a cultural worker. I wanted to get a sense of what that means for you to be a cultural worker. And then specifically, what it means to do this work in Texas, where you’re from and where you currently live. Okay, but also, before we get to that. Texas is big. I’ve never been there. I’m from the Midwest. I now live in Colorado. So maybe you can just give us a sense of like, where exactly you’re from, where you are now, what those parts of Texas, how they differ, what they look like.

KB Brookins: Often people put kind of Texas into four segments, where it’s like the Dallas area, the Austin area, San Antonio, and Houston. Right? Houston is the largest city in Texas. And then you have the capitol, which is where I currently live, Austin. And then I’m from Fort Worth, Texas. They differ in many ways. Age wise, I think that Austin is a very young city. And I am from a place where everyone knew everybody in my hometown, though it is like 900,000 plus people. Folks are very kind of like segmented to their, like, respective sides of the city. So I’m specifically from the east side of Fort Worth, Texas. In the Stop Six area, a historically Black neighborhood. Pretty much like four generations or something of my family all went to the same high school, for example, right? So, very close-knit, you know, kind of place. And yeah, doing cultural work, particularly in Texas. It’s funny because when I tell people I am a Black, queer and trans writer from Texas, they kind of like—the knee-jerk reaction is to feel bad for me, almost, like as if that’s like a bad thing. Because when people know Texas who have never been to Texas, it’s often in negative connotations, through like, the political theater that goes on here. Our governor is Greg Abbott, who is often in the news for negative reasons. Our Lieutenant Governor, Dan Patrick, one of our, you know, star-studded, I guess, political folks is Ted Cruz. Right? A lot of people know that name. A lot of people know Texas for the kind of like political shenanigans, I would say. But actually being like a living breathing, kind of like what I call career Texan, I’ve never lived anywhere else out of Texas. Now I’ve been to every major city and then every outskirt. In the places where it is still legal to go for me as a Black, queer and trans person, I’ve been to them. And cultural work to me, means work that tries to move Texan American culture forward, right? And the areas of interest that I personally have, or as far as racial justice goes, LGBTQI+ justice, disability justice, like, I’m all for just like, marginalized people not having like, disparate outcomes just because of like, who they are. Over time, I’ve practiced cultural work in different ways. I founded two different nonprofits before, actually, with like, friends. I’ve also worked in higher education, right, in student affairs. Where I find myself most useful right now doing cultural work is blending arts and I guess people would call it DEI, but I would more so use IDEA: Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity and Accessibility work. And that’s felt like the most purposeful work, and that’s felt like the work that makes me feel the most alive, really. Of course through my writing, literally just writing about, you know, the honest depictions of what it’s like to be in Texas, both the beautifulness of these trees, you know, both like the things that really keep me here and anchor me here as a state, and then also the political theater, and also the cultural, the ways that we treat each other that should absolutely change if we are to be here, if we are, you know, as a people to be here in, you know, the next 50 plus years, with the climate changing with all of the kind of like political landscape moving in a way that is, I would say, quite negative currently. Yeah, I write about those things. I also try to immerse myself not even just in literary communities, but also in organizing communities, right. And making sure that my work gets in the hands of not just like other writers, but also like, people live in their lives. Like Black people literally just trying to stay alive, I want them to read my book. People, queer and trans folks who are looking for community, whether it be inside of pages, inside of bars, inside of like, cultural centers, I want them to also be able to pick up my book. I dropped off like a couple of copies of my chapbook to my local barbershop, right. I’ve been going to the same barber since I’ve like lived in Austin. And it’s like a queer friendly barber. And I was just like, “Are y’all taking, you know, suggestions for things that you want to just have like in the, in the waiting room for people? Like, put my book there.” Like, I want people to be able to stumble upon the work and not necessarily need to have an in in some kind of way.

Holly Amos: I love that so much. One of the first like, salon I went to in Boulder where I live now, the person working the front desk had their book of poems for sale also. And yeah, like it just made that such a different space.

KB Brookins: Mm-hmm.

Holly Amos: But yeah, KB, I wanted to ask you, you mentioned the beautiful trees and like, the things that anchor you to Austin and keep you in Texas. Could you talk a little bit more about the things that anchor you? I love this sort of—I’m from Ohio originally. Ohio gets shit on a lot too. But like, all of these places, there are good people, there are good things happening. So I love sort of like uplifting, yeah, like, what are the things that keep you and anchor you in Texas?

KB Brookins: I think that Texas has some of the most like, creative political organizing in the whole nation, really. When you see rhetoric online, like, “Oh, like, how could you let this happen? Like, why do you have the same Governor?” etcetera, etcetera, it’s like, you actually don’t understand the hostility that exists here. People have, you know, lost jobs because they were trying to bring, you know, class actions against, you know, for instance, like a local jail system. The opposition has all of the resources necessary to crush any kind of opposing anything. So when people in Texas actually do have wins, it’s just the work that went into the back of that. I think about all of the types of things that people have been able to do in Texas in order to live. I think it’s amazing. I tell people often that like the best shows that I do, actually, I think are like, in gay bars. When I’m like, in some, like, super low key queer bar, and I’m the only poet on the lineup, and it’s just like me and a whole bunch of drag performers and musicians. I love that. I love how inter-stitched the artistic communities are. It’s not at all weird for me to be on the same lineup as a comedian in Texas, or me to be on the same, you know, for me to be exploring the same issues as, you know, someone who works at Planned Parenthood. And we’re all at the same event. Because, you know, that person might be tabling and I’m tabling right next to them with my books. You know? And then we strike up a conversation, and now we’re besties. Like, another thing that I really love about Austin, in particular, is the green space. I can walk around my neighborhood and be able to point out the various trees, and feel like I just really have like a relationship and like, stakes in those trees. Which is why climate catastrophe is really upsetting to me. I mean, it should be upsetting to everyone, but it is especially upsetting to me to see, you know, 100-plus-year-old trees in my neighborhood, like, be sliced in half.

Holly Amos: Yeah.

KB Brookins: Because of ice storms and things like that. And I’m just like, I pass that juniper tree every day. I like, have stopped to like, touch that crepe myrtle like a million times. Or I’ve stopped to get, you know, berries from this particular tree. Like, you know, and I think about the things that anchor me as really, things that are just beautiful about the state. The food, like the culture around food is really amazing as well. I’m just like, there’s just nothing like Texas barbecue. I’m just like, it’s different. You know, when I go to New York—which I love, I love visiting New York—when I go to New York, and I’m just like, “Hey, could I get some sweet tea?” and everyone just looks at me like, “What’s going on? Why are you asking me that?”

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: Whataburger, you know, like, it’s just stuff about Texas that is just like so specific, that I’m like, y’all just don’t understand. There’s so much beauty here that I think gets really overshadowed by the negativity that is actually not even representative of the everyday folks.

Holly Amos: It’s really beautiful to hear you talk about and also just, it’s really clear how present you are like in your environment, in your landscape. And that’s really lovely, too. I, you know, we live in a computer digital age where I don’t think everybody lives that way. Obviously, I think the poets do a little more, but yeah, thank you for that. I want to talk about your poems, too. So your debut book, Freedom House, is going to be out next month. Congratulations.

KB Brookins: I Thank you.

Holly Amos: It’s described as “a poetry collection that explores internal, interpersonal, and systemic freedom,” right. So there’s this great twist here. “Systemic freedom” is not what we usually hear. “Freedom” isn’t the word we often hear after “systemic.” So yeah, refusing the like, expected word “oppression “there. But can you talk about your relationship to freedom, like as a concept and also as a state of being?

KB Brookins: I think about freedom in obviously, these kind of like three-pronged ways. So I am trans. And I have undertook medical transition and social transition in order to really just transition into the person that I am. And I think about the first time I even like, knew that being trans was like an option. And I think about all of the doors that that opened up, like, in my mind and in my body, right? I was just like, “Oh, that’s, that’s an option. That’s, that’s wild.”

Holly Amos: Mm.

KB Brookins: Like, once I first learned what the word nonbinary was, for instance, like, because I’m, I’m the kind of person that’s always on a Wikipedia page. I don’t know, maybe that’s a thing that all poets experience, but I especially am like, when I just hear something, and I don’t know what it means, I will immediately go look it up. And like, that’s why I have like, 100 plus tabs on my phone at any given point. But yeah, I just like, got naturally introduced to nonbinary folks, as one does. And I knew that it was not appropriate to ask. So then I was like, “Oh, let me just go look it up,” right. And then I was like, “Ohhhh.” As soon as I knew what that was, I was like, “That makes so much sense. That exactly like, who I am.” Because I’ve always like, never really bought into the currency of gender. It’s just like not been something that has ever made sense to me. And I knew it was something like that people will react in subtly, or like, just straight up hostile ways when you question it, right? I grew up mostly in the ’90s and the 2000s. So like, in some ways, we’ve progressed and in other ways, I see a lot of cyclicalness in like, now this kind of like anti-trans rhetoric that’s coming out from multiple, large magazines and things like that, right. But I remember experiencing that hostility and being like, “Okay, I’m gonna just keep my questions to myself.” But then once I was opened up to a world of people who asked those questions, and then got answers, I just like, knew that there was something on the other side of that that would pull me towards myself more. So I see personal freedom as being kind of my insistence on transness, my insistence on being myself in a world that like constantly wants to deny you of that. I write about that a lot in the book. And I write a lot about interpersonal freedom, which I find interpersonal freedom to be the way in which like, have you ever just like talked to a person, and you immediately just felt, like, comfortable? It’s something beautiful that happens in that moment. And I remember experiencing those moments for the first time with some of who I consider my chosen family now. I remember experiencing that, you know, moment with, who is now my fiancé. And I wanted to write about those things, because it is really freeing to be able to see yourself and to be really like, complimented, like, in this life by the people that you keep around you. And then also, in those moments, because naturally, we are all not the same people, therefore we have conflict, but like, when we have conflict, how do we address it? And like, if you see conflict as an opportunity to actually grow that love, something also like, even more beautiful can happen. So I see freedom as like, a way to deepen and refine and continually, like, practice love in our relationships. So I write about that. And what I see as systemic freedom, right, we’re always talking about like systemic injustice, we’re always talking about the system as an opposite. But I’m like, so what if it made sense for said systems, for us to create cultural systems, and for us to also create, like, even political systems that like, work for us, right? I find, you know, though there are many reasons to be like, “I have lost all hope. In everything in the world,” right, I just insist, I insist on knowing that there is something better that could be happening. And I’ve worked with so many people that have just made a way out of no way to where like, I just believe that there are better systems. There are systems that we can create that are not the current systems that we have. There are systems that we can refine in order to be systems that work for us. And I think that refining is kind of in the cultural sphere. And I think that recreating is in the political sphere. So, you know, just talking against systemic injustice by bringing freedom into the room.

Holly Amos: I love this idea of refinement. It makes me think of like a nice sandpaper that’s like, we’re just gonna like, take some of the edges off of this and make it better. There’s a line I really love in your poem “Notes after watching the inauguration.” Well, it’s a couple of lines. But it goes, “Before I was human, I was free, / which is the healthiest of human abstractions.” Can you set this poem up a little bit, and then read it for us?

KB Brookins: Yeah. So, this poem comes out of an experience of being a university student in 2016. Specifically, being a university student in November 2016. If you’re not, if you’re just unsure of what I mean, when I reference that,

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: the night that we all found out that Trump won this election, right? I remember that year being just crowded in a whole bunch of stuff. It was my also my senior year, hot mess.

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: But I remember that year being, you know, like, I was finally living in this apartment, I thought I was so grown. And I talked to like the same neighbors and I had the same neighbors throughout, obviously, like my whole time. And I remember said neighbor, one of my neighbors, actually, that I talked to pretty much all the time, they like, opened their door, and it was this huge MAGA banner.

Holly Amos: Oh, no. (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: This huge MAGA banner. And like, I remember also when this news was announced, hearing people cheering and things, right. And at that time, you know, I had taken some classes in Black Studies, and I was learning a lot about the legacy of slavery, and having a lot of just like, personal revelations, as it pertained to like, my Blackness and my gender, and, and it was just, it was just an odd time. And a practice that I’ve had since I was a young person is journaling. When things just start to feel like, too large in my brain, I just have to make them actually make sense in journaling practices. And I’ve been doing that, I mean, I was an anxious kid. Like, super anxious kid, the kid that cried on the first day of like, second grade, like, that was me. Because I was just like, “I don’t know where to sit.” So, I just started journaling. And this poem was like one of the 100 times where a journaling kind of, over time and refining, became a poem. And I put “the inauguration” because I think this is unfortunately just an evergreen experience. It could be any inauguration, I think. So yeah.

(READS POEM)

I walk campus and wonder if I’m standing
on an unmarked grave. Are we under
concrete, grass, or any other forced terrains?
I wonder again, this time, if violence is
a remix of what the making of America
is while white boys blare music. They use
MAGA banners as decoration on white walls
down the hall from Starbucks. Is Starbucks
a stand-in for brother? Time is a mark
of body decay and not much else.

–––

Before I was a poet, I was a lineage. One that
asked questions of the diner when they didn’t
let us in, one asking if I’d like my mocha
with the white chocolate as white girls
celebrate victory. Who wins when I decide
white. Before I was human, I was free,
which is the healthiest of human abstractions.
Free has the best marketing team. I am
the violence that forced itself into life.

–––

In an alternate timeline, I was someone
with less life taken up by what kills me.
More sure I had a home, its history
singed in paneled pink walls. Sure
that it was mine and safe to dance in;
I was happier there, since there are
no inaugurations. There are no cameras
capturing my ending.

At the protest, I see them with their cameras.
They snapped faces of weary elders
in their cameras. They got BLM as hashtag,
Blackness as temporary and distant
in their cameras. Can they, through bright
silence and access to hope, see me?
They got the whole wide world watching us
perish. They got the whole wide world
in their terror-lens.

Turn off your Wi-Fi. Bring plenty
of water. Wear masks and gloves;
get up when they spray you.
Call for help, call for anybody
but them. Singe contacts on
your skin. They get mad when they
can see your camera. If you listen
to the chants enough times,
you’ll catch on perfectly. Broken hearts
in unison sound easy, like doomsday.

–––

When the white folks come for me,
When the state troopers come for me,
When the graveyard comes for me,
When the Starbucks comes for me,
When the cameras come for me,
When Republicans come for me,
When Democrats come for me,
When my own demise comes for me,
Who will answer the door?

–––

This is not my house. Someone else
must open it.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Holly Amos: That was so great to hear you read. That ending is so amazing. It’s really haunting, but in like a different way than how I usually mean haunting. Like, maybe it haunts, actually, you know, the way that it puts the action back to somebody else. Can you talk a little bit about that ending?

KB Brookins: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I like kind of experience Blackness in the, I would say like the American kind of like, legacy of like, caring about Blackness in waves, right? In 2020, it was like, Oh, George Floyd protests. In 2016, it was like, oh, Trump is elected, and he’s clearly racist. And also like, 2012, Trayvon Martin, right? Like, it just comes in waves when these conversations happen. And often, like every single time, I think Black people are asked a question by non-Black people, which is like, “What can I do to like, do better by y’all?” or “What can I do to, you know, rid you of this ache?” etcetera, etcetera. And it’s actually like, so, all of these things like racial capitalism and police brutality, these are not our systems that we created. So this is not like our mess to fix. So, when I’m thinking of “This is not my house,” and I mean, I want people to be able to read this poem and like, take what they need to take from it. So I’m like, you know, I can share how I feel. But like, how I feel is like, take it how you want to take it. But “This is not my house,” what I was kind of like getting it with this ending really is like, I can tell you all of these things, but you actually have to like, take the steps necessary to figure out those answers for yourself. Right? To the said ally, right? To the, you know, person that wants to be useful. And all of these things that I’m exploring in the journal entry, and all of the things that Black people always have to explore, like, in every day of their lives. We are already doing the work that we need to do, which is staying alive. Right? And the work that you need to do is, hey, this is not my doing. So, whatever happens in the undoing process, it’s gonna take like, you know, when people say like, “The revolution will not be televised,” or like, the revolution requires X, Y, and Z, I think the revolution requires introspection, right? Like, what, how can you make yourself most useful? Because I’ve thought about that a lot in cultural work, Like, I’ve tried all of these kinds of different types of ways to be useful. And actually, I know I can be my most useful in X way, for example. And the reason why it’s not “2016 Inauguration,” and I remember why this is evergreen is like, we have inaugurations, you know, every four years, right. And also, and those are a type of elegy, honestly. But I think like, we have such cyclical conversations about Blackness and conversations about the political sphere and how that impacts the actions of others, right, but you can’t continue to rely on Black folks. You could even extend this to other marginalized groups. It’s like queer and trans people should actually not be the people making sure that all of this TERF stuff like gets undone, for example. So yeah, I was just kind of getting it like, do your own work.

Holly Amos: Totally. Yeah. The other thing about, I mean, even in that poem, but in your book, Freedom House in general, there were times I laughed out loud, which really shocked me. I mean, also, like, sometimes they’re like, snuck into these like, really tough poems. You know, you delve into like, some of the hardest, most painful aspects of US culture and history. But then there are like, these moments of humor. Even like the title “Sexting at the Gynecologist” is an amazing title. So yeah, I was wondering where you locate that humor? Like, is it part of like a lineage for you? Like poetry ancestry, like, familial lineage? Like, where does that humor come from?

KB Brookins: I’m sure you’ve heard of the saying, like, I have to laugh to keep from crying, right?

Holly Amos: Totally.

KB Brookins: There’s an amazing text called Laughing to Keep from Dying by Danielle Fuentes Morgan that I think talks about the Black American experience and having to interstitch humor into our lives in order to stay alive. And I think that’s just always been like a kind of thing that one has had to do. You have to laugh at some things in order to not just like be enraged all the time, or like to, like just lash out. And I find that to be like, very specific to Black Americanness, very specific to, you know, the marginalized communities that I have been a part of, and that I have loved. And I think it’s natural. I just actually went to a Q & A with Victoria Chang not too long ago. And she said something like, if you’re lucky, your self will like, you will find yourself on the page. Or like who you are will translate to the page. And I definitely think like who I am just as a person, I use humor—I actually admire comedians, because like they make such large social commentary. And they make people laugh in the process.

Holly Amos: Yeah.

KB Brookins: Like, if you need to know like, the pulse on what’s happening, watch some of the comedy, like the standup that was happening during that time, right?

Holly Amos: Mm-hmm.

KB Brookins: I even think about like, one thing that I like to do when I’m trying to learn more about an era, right, if I’m trying to learn more about the 1920s, sure, I’m going to read Langston Hughes, but I’m also going to like, look at what the comic landscape was during that time. We think about textbooks, but I’m like, actually, literature and comedy, we can just learn a lot there. So I don’t know, I am a connoisseur of comedy. I also think that Black people are just some of the most funny people and it’s like, because that’s how life is. You laugh in the same day that you cry often. In those moments where I’ve been able to make both of those things exist at the same time, it’s hopefully me marking myself on the page because I’ve had to make both of those things exist at the same time just in my life.

Holly Amos: Hm.

KB Brookins: So they have to, if I am to be an authentic writer, they have to also happen on the page. So, I’m glad that it comes off as humor, because sometimes when you write humor down, I’m always like worried like, is it coming across.

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS) Totally. It does. It definitely does. One of the other things I picked up a lot in your poems are—and I hear this even when you’re talking about like, touching the plants in your neighborhood, which I just freakin’ love. Like people should touch the plants in their neighborhood a little bit more, you know?

KB Brookins: (LAUGHS LIGHTLY)

Holly Amos: But yeah, you have, there’s like these moments of like tending or caretaking, but of the self is how I like, read a lot of them. And sometimes they take on this like speculative quality. So in “Notes After Watching the Inauguration,” you know, you have this part: “In an alternate timeline, I was someone / with less life taken up by what kills me. / More sure I had a home … Sure / that it was mine and safe to dance in.” That felt like this speculative, like, caretaking to me. And I was wondering, yeah, if you could just talk a little bit more about like the tending and caretaking in your poetry and yeah, how it shows up in your life, like, generally.

KB Brookins: What interests me a lot as a connoisseur of art is art forms that are exploring possibility. Like what’s not currently happening, but what could happen. I see a lot of that in Afrofuturism. Sci-fi in general. One of my favorite artists in the world is Janelle Monáe. I think she’s like, brilliant. And like I think about fashion. This is actually something I learned from Roger Reeves. I took a class with him last semester. He was talking about like, the stuff that you see it at New York Fashion Week and you’re like, “You could never sit down in that, why would you wear that?” Right?

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: Like, why would you ever put that even on, because it’s not like a, it’s not a thing that you could use, like, utility wise, like, I can’t actually just show up to class in like a poofy whatever, you know. Like, I have knives on my on my shoulders. But you could do that at New York Fashion Week, because fashion is so much about possibility. And that interests me so much as an idea. Because it’s like, yes, okay, maybe we’re not just doing this, you know, Doja Cat thing where we’re putting stones on our face, and they’re red, but maybe all of a sudden, we have like stones on a shirt. And that starts to sell. Because of that one thing, like, you know, like, there are ways in which fashion changes over time. And I think it’s like, in order for low rise jeans to come back, somebody had to just like, go out on a limb and start wearing them again, you know?

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS) Totally, totally.

KB Brookins: So, like, that’s what I hope to do in my poems.

Holly Amos: Bring back low rise jeans? Sorry. (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: (LAUGHS) To be clear, not necessarily that, but I’m trying to think about what could be possible if we, if we fix some things, if we were more free.

Holly Amos: Yeah.

KB Brookins: What would be more possible? That means that there will be Black trans people, Black queer people, Black disabled people like me that can dance, that can spend large swaths of their day, not just like 10-minute intervals, touching the plants in their neighborhood, knowing the plants in their neighborhood, right? Being able to forage and eat the plants in their neighborhood. Like, I want that. So I’m going to talk, you know, about it. And sometimes when you talk and you put, you know, works behind that talk, then it becomes. Right? I think about the people that came before me that really had to wish upon a star to do some of the things that I’ve been able to do.

Holly Amos: Hm.

KB Brookins: And I think about how they had to see that possibility. I think about like protesters, a lot of times, that is so much about possibility. You know, seeing that there is something better and demanding that it happen. You can’t just like wish upon the star, but I can write about it. In hopes that it’s like, okay, what do we need to do? My goal as a writer—I keep like, interrupting my own self, but my goal as a writer, really, is to hope that someone reads my work and like it galvanizes them into some kind of action. So why not then, if that is one of my goals, interstitch moments of possibility?

Holly Amos: I love that so much. When you’re writing the poems themselves, does that feel like caretaking for yourself? Or is it like a more complicated feeling?

KB Brookins: Yeah, it’s, the poeting process is still so mystifying to me because it changes as the days change for me. But with this book, it’s so funny, I feel, because I was just like waking up out of my sleep to like, write little lines down and stuff like that.

Holly Amos: Wow.

KB Brookins: Like it was just really getting to me, some of these ideas that I was having. And I think like, even in the dreamscape, I was just thinking about like, in my dream, there were these Black people that were riding around in Cadillacs that were Barbie painted, you know? And like, there in my dream, there was this type of thing and it’s because I want it so like, why not write it down, right? Or like, if I don’t want that exact thing, sometimes my dreams, I’m like, that’s weird.

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: (LAUGHS) But like, there’s not been a way for me so far to be able to, like, really explain what the poet writing process is. But like, for instance, like, “Notes on Watching the Inauguration” was literally just like a culmination of multiple days of journaling. And then I was like, what if I put line breaks in this? And what if I added some things in order to make these sections make sense? Because one way to cheat—well, I don’t know, I guess there’s, there’s no cheating in poetry. But one way that one could cheat is just by like, smushing some poems together and being like, this is one poem now, right?

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: So I just smushed a whole bunch of journal entries together and was like, this is a poem now, and like, now, I just have to make it make sense by, for me, at least, lineating this poem, and then like, making section breaks, and then like, maybe copy-pasting some stuff, because it actually makes more sense up here, XYZ. And then for other poems, it literally is just like, it’s just like fell out of me, you know? And this is the first draft. And actually, I just need to like, let it sit in a document for like a couple months, and then X, Y, and Z. Or maybe the speculative element of it comes at a super later date. Like, I think I wrote a poem in that book also that I wrote in 2019, and it’s like ”Black Life circa 2029.” It’s like, something happens, like I had this negative, you know, interaction with a police officer. And then I didn’t write about it because I tend to not be able to write about things until like, I’ve gotten to a place where I’ve just like processed more of it—#therapy.

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: And so then maybe a couple months later, I wrote about it. And I was like, what if I wrote about this as if it didn’t happen? As if like something else happened instead? And of course, like, we have poets that have done that before, like, you know, Lucille Clifton, one of her most famous poems is like that, you know, “won’t you celebrate with me,” because things have tried to literally kill me, and they have failed, right? Or we have like, even like, “Sorrow Is Not My Name” by Ross Gay, where it’s like, there’s clearly an element, like, behind this of like, goriness, things that are bad. And I approached that poem, like, as if that thing that actually happened like that, the opposite happened. So I don’t know, speculation in the poeting process is just so weird I can’t really put it down to a science, but I think I’m just interested in general about the future, and interested as a poet about the possibilities of our future if we talk about our future as if, as if it could happen.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Holly Amos: Can you share the opening poem to your book, the poem “Black Life circa 2029”?

KB Brookins: Yes, I’d be happy to.

(READS POEM)

“Black Life circa 2029”

Clean fridge.
Spacious, carpeted living room.
Newly swept floors, a wooden desk table.
Designated lunchtime everyday at noon.
SZA playing on vinyl.
Window blinds, open and intact.
Money, crisp and resting in the bank.
Sour gummy worms with wine on the counter.

I visit my mother regularly and tell her I love her.
I don’t flinch when my father raises his arm.
My father raises his arm to hug me.
The hood walks me, and sometimes I walk it back.
The hood is a small utopia of green grass.
All the Cadillacs are Barbie-painted.
I walk the eastside and don’t get hit on.
Black men gleam gold teeth, and there are no police.

I go up the street to get chicken, and there are no police.
The black boy shoots a toy gun; still, no police.
There are no police at the school or hiding behind
exit signs on the freeway. I don’t clutch my
steering wheel when black-and-white cars appear close.
I don’t get handcuffed or questioned—my lover doesn’t
have to hold me. Handcuffs exist only for the filthiest
of kink shit; I don’t have to call in Black the next day.

I don’t replay the night in my head; the ticket
doesn’t get paid off. There’s isn’t a target on my back
that I can’t remove. There isn’t a target on my face
when I cry at night, or in the morning, or in the restroom
during my designated lunch, closer to 12:30.
I love my land comfortable; I love this life, loud.
I have a living—
I have a room.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Holly Amos: There’s also a series in your book of “T Shot” poems. They’re sort of like these little landmarks throughout the book. You know, “T Shot #1,” “T Shot #4.” Can you say a little bit about this super generous series?

KB Brookins: Yeah, of course. So “T Shot” is short for “testosterone shot.” Again, I’m a trans person, so I’ve been in ongoing like, medical transition for a while. And man, if that’s not a weird experience of being able to see with your own eyes and with your body like how people treat you differently based on how they gender you—because we all, I think it’s a reflex and I think it’s a taught thing without people having to say words about it. It’s a taught thing for you to look at someone and make a set of judgments based on what they look like. Race is one of those. Gender is another. Sexuality, fatness, like, we make a whole bunch of generalizations based on what people look like. But I just didn’t really realize how deep-seated it was with gender until, you know, people started not seeing me as a, you know, masculine Black girl and instead started seeing me as a Black man. So, as I was experiencing this thing, you know, this life that I’ve chosen for myself, I was just like, yeah, I gotta write about this. It’s so weird. And like, when I try to explain it to, you know, maybe some of my cis friends, they’re just like, “How does that make sense?” And I’m like, it does make sense, because it literally has happened.

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: And at first it’s that kind of like euphoria, like in, kind of like my “T Shot #1,” I’m just like, “Ah, this was such a good idea. Like, I’m so happy,” you know? And sitting in that is really great. And like, sharing that happiness with others I think is really important. Because some people, you know, some people think it’s just like, “Oh, you’re trying to ruin children’s lives by, you know, letting them be trans” or “You’re ruining your own life.” Like, you know, I’ve had that rhetoric spewed at me, either online or in person. But I’m just like, but why do you not want me to be happy? Because this happiness is contagious. It’s palpable, right. So I had poems in there about, you know, that medical transition and that happiness that I felt and also about, like, the ways in which it’s just changed the way that I feel about myself, and the way that I interact with others, and the way that I interact with systems. I remember, when I changed my gender marker on my car insurance, my car insurance, like, payment went down.

Holly Amos: What?! (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: And even something small like that. I’m like, what the hell? (LAUGHS) It’s just like, we gender things so much that it like, impacts how we spend money.

Holly Amos: Yeah.

KB Brookins: It impacts how we speak to people. Even though it’s not technically a “T Shot” poem, I have a poem in the book about how men are just so much nicer to me now, you know?

Holly Amos: Yeah.

KB Brookins: In that series, I’m really just trying to more or less like, create a day in the life of someone going through medical transition, and how as those shot numbers increase, you know, the way that I experience the world differs. You know, I lived a life before I had hair on my face and before I had the voice, the deepness of the voice that I have and before I had a flat chest. And to be able to show that to others, I hope, at least, and like, to also have other trans people read it and be like, “I see you, I absolutely understand that.” I was just like, yeah, I’m gonna take a chance on this, if people don’t get it, okay, that’s fine. You know, there’s always that risk that you’re taking by making something so specific, but I think it was a worthwhile risk. I hope readers feel like it was as well.

Holly Amos: Can you read “T Shot #9: Ode to My Sharps Container” for us?

KB Brookins: Yes, of course.

(READS POEM)

“T Shot #9: Ode to My Sharps Container”

Holder of loose blood. Taker of contraptions
I use when I’m brave enough to save myself.
Visual reminder that I can do it. Former container
of pickles so you smell like sour victory. Glass
house of my gender. Chest hair–maker.
Every interaction at the coffee shop, on the
phone with medical providers, every nervous
laughter after checking the sex on my ID
comes down to you. Ass hair–activator.
Restitution for a 20-year gap between who
I was & who I could be. Balding beauty. Conjurer of
my wildest dreams, ones I’ve dreamed since
I was 13. Activist. Advocate. Apt to be who believes
in me. Tallying up all my T, & all my bois who didn’t
get to be boys. Heaven sent. Heaven’s back door,
roping me up through the vent.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Holly Amos: This poem and so many of the poems in your book remind me just what you were saying, like, not just how powerful poems can be as incantations for the future, but also these connecting nodes to other people. Like people who really might need to hear this poem. And it reminds me of an interview that you did for PEN America where you recounted the first time you heard a poem. You said it was in seventh grade. And you said that it struck you for the rest of the day. And that quote, “In a way, I feel like I’m chasing that high every time I read or write a poem,” which I freakin’ love. Do you remember what poem it was? And do you remember the first time you wrote a poem?

KB Brookins: It’s not a poem I can remember, unfortunately. But it was a poem written by like, one of my peers.

Holly Amos: Oh, I love that.

KB Brookins: Yeah, yeah, it was in seventh grade, Miss B. Williams. I hope she’s somewhere doing amazing. And she read a poem by one of her eighth graders. And she just did this like whole production of it. Like it was like a whole performance of this poem. And then at the end, she was like, “Yeah, and this was like, one of my students wrote this after a boy didn’t text her back.” It just felt like so, so large. Like, all of the feelings in the poem just felt so large, so bombastic, so like, visceral. I was just like, “Yeah, I feel this.” Like, there’s something about this that I can relate to, even though I can’t relate to like a boy not texting me back, not because boys loved me or anything, but like, (LAUGHS) I was like, I’ve just never been in that predicament. But I feel like, it just felt like something that had happened to me. You know?

Holly Amos: Yeah.

KB Brookins: I didn’t even know poems, like, could do this, maybe. Because to my knowledge, like at that point in my life, I had really only like, heard things about poems, and it was all like, all dead white dudes, right?

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: So like, I don’t, I don’t really know if people even still write poems, like, at this point in my life. I’m 12. Right? Then I was like, oh, this is so cool, because it’s like, actually relevant to the everyday life of a middle schooler. Right? So I thought about it, but then I was like, yeah, it just seems like you gotta be very brave to do that. And I just don’t even feel secure about myself. You know, I feel so awkward in my body. I like, was one of those people that hated talking in class. Like, when, you know, the teacher calls on you to read, I’m just like, this is like, death to me. (LAUGHS)

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: I was like, this is the worst thing that you could do to me, why do you hate me? You know, so I was like, “Yeah, I can’t, I can’t write poetry because A) I can’t really like, it’s kind of like sharing a journal entry. Like, I would never share that with anybody. So, I’m just not going to do that.” And I didn’t for like, you know, four more years. And it just so happens that, you know, my whole friend group—I finally got a friend group in ninth grade. I tell everyone it’s just some extroverts kind of, like, picked me up.

Holly Amos: I love that. (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: Like, for real, shout out to the extroverts, because they really are the people that keep the world spinning,

Holly Amos: (LAUGHS)

KB Brookins: but like, I just didn’t have a friend group at all until ninth grade. And this girl just decided that she was my friend and I just went with it, because I’m like, “I don’t have any other option,” you know? And all of her friends went to this like, afterschool poetry society thing. It was like, a part of the afterschool program. For the whole first year, again, in ninth grade, I was just like, I’m not that kind of person that’s gonna talk in front of people. Like I just, it was just way too scary for me. And I was also having unthinkable thoughts, because at the time, it was just not okay to be queer. It was not okay to be trans. I’m not saying that it is okay now, but we didn’t even have the visibility. You know what I mean? If anything, the media that I remember, at the time for being queer was maybe like The L Word.

Holly Amos: Yeah.

KB Brookins: And that was like, it, you know what I mean? And I wasn’t permitted to watch The L Word, not at 12 years old. So I was just like, yeah, I just, I’m having on thinkable thoughts and the things that I would write about would also get me picked on so like, I’m just not going to do that. And that teacher, you know, rest her soul, “Miss Duran,” was so patient, because I would just be sitting there while my friends are writing their poems and telling them to each other. And she was like, “You know, you can always participate if you want to,” and she would always just be like, you know, planting these seeds, but not feeling too coercive or anything. But yeah, I finally, you know, just got the guts to participate one day and I just loved it, and have been loving it since, you know.

Holly Amos: That’s such a great— love it. Yeah, it’s also, I mean, teachers really are like, the few teachers who will plant those seeds for you are so important.

KB Brookins: Mm-hmm.

Holly Amos: It’s a great origin story, KB. Is there anything else you want to share with us?

KB Brookins: My intentions through Freedom House was to connect with as many people as possible, connect with as many people who are thinking about possibility, who are thinking about Black queer and trans existence, who are thinking about disability and climate change, you know, like, the themes are so vast, and I think it’s because I really wanted something in there for everyone. But the thing that tethers everything together is freedom. So if you’re even thinking about freedom, you know, let me know. And also read the book and let me know what you think of it.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Holly Amos: Thank you so much, KB, for sharing your poetry and for sharing more about yourself with us.

KB Brookins: Yeah, thank y’all for having me, I appreciate it.

(READING OF EXCERPT FROM “Black Life circa 2029” FADES IN)

The hood is a small utopia of green grass.
All the Cadillacs are Barbie-painted.
I walk the eastside and don’t get hit on.
Black men gleam gold teeth, and there are no police.

I go up the street to get chicken, and there are no police.
The black boy shoots a toy gun; still, no police.
There are no police at the school or hiding behind
exit signs on the freeway. I don’t clutch my
steering wheel when black-and-white cars appear close.
I don’t get handcuffed or questioned—my lover doesn’t
have to hold me. Handcuffs exist only for the filthiest
of kink shit; I don’t have to call in Black the next day.

I don’t replay the night in my head; the ticket
doesn’t get paid off. There’s isn’t a target on my back
that I can’t remove. There isn’t a target on my face
when I cry at night, or in the morning, or in the restroom
during my designated lunch, closer to 12:30.
I love my land comfortable; I love this life, loud.
I have a living—
I have a room.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Holly Amos: A big thanks to KB Brookins. KB is a writer and cultural worker from Texas. They are the author of How to Identify Yourself with a Wound, out from Kallisto Gaia Press in 2022, and Freedom House, out from Deep Vellum next month. You can read four of their poems in the March 2023 issue of Poetry in print, online, and in the app. The upcoming April issue of Poetry is going to include poems by all eleven of this year's Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winners. It's a historic issue. You can get it, actually, in your mailbox, if you subscribe today at poetrymagazine.org/podcastoffer to get your copy of this historic issue in your mailbox. It's also just in time for National Poetry Month. This show is produced by Rachel James. The music in this episode came from Resavoir, Alabaster DePlume, John McCowen, Rob Mazurek, and Irreversible Entanglements. That’s it for today. Until next time, be well, stay safe, go touch some plants in your neighborhood, and thank you for listening.

(MUSIC FADES OUT)