JJJJJerome Ellis
JJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled animal, artist, and proud stutterer. He prays, reads, gardens, cycles, surfs, and plays. Through music, literature, performance, video, and photography he researches relationships among blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time. Born in 1989 to Jamaican and Grenadian immigrants, he lives in Norfolk, Virginia, USA with his wife, ecologist-poet Luísa Black Ellis. Source
Instructions Before Stuttering
Tread where the name has prepared
A full name full of desire
Clay like plenty
Love is sensitive
In the space of crying
The name goes ahead
To prepare you
Grasp the vessel
With both hands and
Walk slow
A road of red clover
Opens—
Published:
2023
Length:
Shorty
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2024
Themes:
Disability
Literary Devices:
Enjambment
a line break interrupting the middle of a phrase which continues on to the next line
Imperative
an instruction or a command
Simile
a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”