Digital Poetics 3.23 Five Units by makalani bandele

Image: motion touches consequentially by makalani bandele

unit_81, or
unit of density

take me to heart and i'll always love you.[1] moment of clarity like liquid smoke in ‘nem mustards. aint no telling. gently enter the valley carved by ten thousand years of spring rains and yearn for the rest of the day. jopappy'll pop up out the cut outta nowhere and do you thirty. it's the politics of hunger out here got people hungry. welcome to church's chicken, may i take your order? rest here beneath the eaves of evening. line from the poem like a worm in your ear. the ushers bet money on the deaconness's lying testimony. breaking news: this is a white man's world and pretty close to uninhabitable at this point. people's hearts be hungry for love but we be playin’ too much politics. baby, why's it so cold in here? night in, night out, lived in fear of night riders. you can only see to the horizon, if that far. this is probably gonna hurt.

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unit_71 is abundantly clear

belly fills with air like a nascent sky, the pelvis rocks, the legs open, the chest rises and then falls like swells across the ocean. what part of epistemic do you not understand? realtalk: help yourself to some wide cognate with inequivalent in the overheard overhead. beans and cornbread had a fight, turned around and started kickin' the cops' tails when they arrived to break it up. you caint get that on the spiritual channel. give me a dollar. in the final analysis, mean muggin'. by this time next year will the catalpa have grown enough to block the six o'clock sun from the southwest side of the porch? it be just like a bass to walk up in here with a number of conflicts of interesting lines. stay out of grown folk’s business. 
sometimes you got to shake that thang, you got to just show no shame.[2] open ocean gives the falling skies a run for its money to the end of the horizon. have to start paying more attention to people who aren't paying any. here sounds are fighting against other sounds to be heard. to let lil’ daddy tell it and get it all good and wrong. the sentence-makers are going to ride it till the wheels roll off. 

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node unit_106

whiteness magnet prep 56, p.s. diversity 7, but don't listen to me. my dwellin' is swellin', it nipped my bud when i happened to fall into a spot.[3] sound familiar to you? down the hole how words never anything. a sensorium sensing itself riding as an encounter in a public bathroom stall. naw mean. 
who's world is this?[4] that’s the way empire crumbles into a pile of eyeballs. yessir, this convo'll heat you up dawg. done by the book, but the book is a manual for how to murder black people. jump off the opposite leg, land on the alternative foot. whiteness, naw mean. the girl grew into a boy enchantingly abstract like a serious investigation of blue. these buses is raggedy. people coming in late like this started early. stopped by to tell ya plug nickel, and homegirl is not a coupon.

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unit_116,
as a unit of code

the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.[5] among other row houses, the compounding of inequalities upon inequalities. there are people that can be easily conned, and people that it's not so easy to con, and any decent con artists can smell difference.
can you call me when i feel like hearing your voice? the evenings were exquisite with starlight. some lofty and exceptionally noble idea was maintained in it anyway. they didn't have to do him like that. that's the price of a loosey. discourse depends upon listening, and listening is essential to finding a way out of this mess. i'm all crisis'd out. i wanna rock right now.[6] the remain lofty it market exceptionally can and. this needs further research. to invite its white emptiness to be interpreted in terms of a specific visual articulation of the absence of non-white. less is more. is there a story in this by the sea?

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unit_100

rather than answering the argument or claim. black women in the u.s. graduate with the most debt—$30,400, on average—compared to $22,000 for white women and $19,500 for white men. keep my name out your mouth. breathe way down deep into the gut and know. the art of black poetry, or the mystery ingredient in grandma's secret sauce. long before she could write, she knew her name was written outside the lines. don't come around town without the hip in your hop.[7] all of that makes me want to. an astonishment of snowdrops reimagines the undulating field. if you stumble, just make it part of the dance. metaphor all cunning and cocksure like sucking on a toothpick. rather long outside her she was lines claim or write. behold, the sentence-makers with all their charms. arrival anywhere but nowhere. riot is a murder of crows into the air after the report from a shotgun blast rings out. look out below.

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[1] Aretha Franklin. Lyric to “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man”. Genius, 2020. https://genius.com/Aretha-franklin-do-right-woman-do-right-man-lyrics.

[2]  Salt-n-Pepa. Lyrics to “Shake Your Thang”. Genius, 2019. https://genius.com/Salt-n-pepa-shake-your-thang-lyrics.

[3] De La Soul. Lyrics to “Potholes in My Lawn”. Genius, 2020. https://genius.com/De-la-soul-potholes-in-my-lawn-lyrics.

[4] Nas. Lyrics to “The World is Yours”. Genius, 2020. https://genius.com/Nas-the-world-is-yours-tip-mix-lyrics.

[5] A quote attributed to British economist John Maynard Keynes

[6] Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock. Lyrics to “It Takes Two”. Genius, 2019. https://genius.com/Rob-base-and-dj-e-z-rock-it-takes-two-lyrics.

[7]  A Tribe Called Quest. Lyrics to “Keep It Rollin’”. Genius, 2020. https://genius.com/A-tribe-called-quest-keep-it-rollin-lyrics.

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makalani bandele is an Affrilachian Poet, and has received fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, Millay Colony, Cave Canem Foundation, and Vermont Studio Center. His work has been published in several anthologies and widely in print and online journals. He is the author of hellfightin’ (Willow Books/Aquarius Press) and under the aegis of a winged mind, awarded the 2019 Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. His latest manuscript consists entirely of his invented form “the unit” and poems from this unpublished collection have been published or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Washington Square Review, Red Ogre Review, and The Common.

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