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a more perfect Union (Journal CBWheeler Poetry Prize) (Paperback)

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Finalist, 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award

In the tender, sensual, and bracing poems of a more perfect Union, Teri Ellen Cross Davis reclaims the experience of living and mothering while Black in contemporary America, centering Black women’s pleasure by wresting it away from the relentless commodification of the White gaze. Cross Davis deploys stunning emotional range to uplift the mundane, interrogate the status quo, and ultimately create her own goddesses. Parenting, lust, household chores—all are fair game for Cross Davis’s gimlet eye. Whether honoring her grief for Prince’s passing while examining his role in midwifing her sexual awakening or contemplating travel and the gamble of being Black across this wide world, these poems tirelessly seek a path out of the labyrinth to hope.

About the Author


Teri Ellen Cross Davis is the author of Haint: poems, winner of the 2017 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and works as the Poetry Coordinator for the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.

Praise For…


“‘I have become an ordering of the unpredictable,’ Teri Ellen Cross Davis writes in the poem ‘The Goddess of Blood,’ and she could be describing her own work: unpredictable in the best sense, ordering chaos as the best poetry must do. This is an important collection, full of anger and tenderness and a sure command of language.” —Linda Pastan

“Teri Ellen Cross Davis has written us a blood-oath ode to Black motherhood, to Love’s primal ecstasy, to the R&B royalty of Prince, all prismed through a seasoned awareness that is international in scope and homegirl-homegrown in its vernacular and dizzying heat. A more perfect Union is an urgent outcry, a galactic guitar riff of blues that echoes in the turmoiled space between America’s promise and the place where fear is always / a whip, or White lady / calling 911.” —Tyehimba Jess

a more perfect Union is nothing short of a collection that will move us as much as it will make us laugh, cry, and rethink how we interact with the world. Hold onto this book. It will no doubt teach us how to live better than we did before.” —Lucy Zhang, Quarterly West

“These poems are hopeful, yes, and also smart and honest. They are as purple as a funky lyric or a keloidal scar. You’ll find resilience and resistance and rough sweet magic in these poems by Teri Ellen Cross Davis. You’ll find the truth.” —Camille T. Dungy, author of Trophic Cascade

Product Details
ISBN: 9780814257784
ISBN-10: 081425778X
Publisher: Mad Creek Books
Publication Date: February 10th, 2021
Pages: 74
Language: English
Series: Journal CBWheeler Poetry Prize