Roya Marsh
Bronx, New York native, Roya Marsh is a nationally recognized poet, performer, educator and activist. She is the Poet in Residence at Urban Word NYC and works feverishly toward LGBTQIA justice and dismantling white supremacy. Roya’s work has been featured in Poetry Magazine, Flypaper Magazine, Frontier Poetry, the Village Voice, Nylon Magazine, Huffington Post, The Root, Button Poetry, Def Jam’s All Def Digital, Lexus Verses and Flow, NBC, BET and The BreakBeat Poets Vol 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket 2018). In Spring 2020, MCD × FSG Originals published Roya Marsh’s dayliGht, a debut collection of experimental poetry exploring themes of sexuality, Blackness, and the prematurity of Black femme death—all through an intersectional feminist lens with a focus on the resilience of the Black woman. Source
Rememory
is the sound of me thinking
in a language stolen from my
ancestors. I can’t tell you who the
first slave in my family was, but we
are the last. Descendants
of the sun. Rye skinned
and vibrant, wailing to
a sailing tomb. We twist
creoled tongues. Make English
a song worth singing. You erase
our history and call it freedom.
Take our flesh and call it fashion.
Swallow nations and call it
humanity. We so savage
we let you live.
I can’t tell you who the first slave
in my family was, but we remember
the bodies. Our bodies remember.
We are their favorite melody. Beat
into bucket. Broken
into cardboard covered
concrete. Shaken
into Harlem. The getting over
never begins, but there
is always the get down. Our DNA
sheet music humming
at the bottom
of the ocean.
Published:
2021
Length:
Regular
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2022
Themes:
Family
Memory & The Past
Racial Injustice
Strength & Resilience
Literary Devices:
Alliteration
the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession
Anadiplosis
A device in which the last word or phrase of one clause, sentence, or line is repeated at the beginning of the next.
Bleeding Title
when the title of a poem acts as the first line
Chiasmus
the usage of words in a clause that are repeated in reverse order
Internal Rhyme
A rhyme involving a word in the middle of a line and another at the end of the line or in the middle of the next.