Ali Black

cantfindit
Ali Black is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. She is the author of If It Heals At All (Jacar Press, 2020). The book was named a finalist for the 2021 Ohioana Book Award in poetry. Her writing has appeared in The Atticus Review, jubilat, Literary Hub, The Offing, The Adroit Journal and elsewhere. She recently launched a creative writing program for teens called The Most Promising. Source

I Always Thought Lady Gaga Had Lupus

and for a long time I thought I’d write her a letter and she’d donate her 

24-karat gold wheelchair to me for my stiff joints but today I’m finding 

out that Gaga doesn’t even have lupus she has synovitis and it’s actually 

Toni Braxton who has lupus and in 2008 she collapsed on stage in 

Vegas and I’m like how did I miss this Toni is my girl I remember all 

them car rides when my mother played the [     ] out of Toni’s debut 

album in 93’ I was only 13 and singing them love songs as if I knew 

what my mama was going through and if somebody made a bet with 

me today to try and figure out which song from that album was my 

mother’s favorite I’d put everything I have on “Love Shoulda Brought 

You Home” and now I’m spending most of my time tryna place a face to

the you my mama coulda been singing to cuz in 93’ she’d already split 

from my daddy and I just can’t picture him cheating and that being the 

real reason she filed for divorce

Published:

2021

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2024

Themes:

Disability

Family

Love & Relationships

Pop Culture

Literary Devices:

Allusion

an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference

Bleeding Title

when the title of a poem acts as the first line

Sonnet

A poem with fourteen lines that traditionally uses a fixed rhyme scheme and meter.