Jari Bradley

Jari Bradley is a black genderqueer poet and scholar from San Francisco, California. Jari has received fellowships from Callaloo, Cave Canem, and Tin House. Their work has been featured in the Huffington Post, and is listed by Blavity among "15 Creatives in the Bay Area You Should Know." Jari's work has also been published in Callaloo, Hot Metal Bridge, Nomadic Ground Press, The Virginia Quarterly Review, BOAAT Journal, and Punctum Books’ Anti-Racism, Inc: Why the Way We Talk About Racial Justice Matters. Jari has an M.A. in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University, and is a recent MFA candidate at the University of Pittsburgh. They currently serve as Poetry Editor of the University of Pittsburgh literary magazine, Hot Metal Bridge. Source

Boihood

All I ever wanted to be was a song—

something soft and light held in the mouth

sung sweet beneath the coming dawn.

I return to that first desire—its gingham blouse

rubbed against the heavy pull of flesh hovered

in a dark that I can only recall as that dark.

I ask what grace awaits that tender tendril’s suffered

stretch of green wide enough to tear a stark

light out from under a troubled sky? I return

to the center of that smallness and sing its wounds—

jagged rasp crooned until edged out and earned.

I was the only boi I knew dreaming in soft bruise.

And it made me as beautiful as the blood’s slow sprawl

at my knee, right before punching a bullying boy to crawl.

Published:

2023

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2024

Themes:

Body & Body Image

Childhood & Coming of Age

Identity

LGBTQ+ Experience

Poetic Form