Overview

As a young, Black, queer person in a small town in the South where everyone knows everyone, Orders of Service is a coming-of-age exploration of the everyday fever of fleeting relationships, while capturing the romantic, psychic quotidian of the Bible Belt. This commentary on gospel traditionalism is armed with dreams of helping to reshape lived realities where being your truest self could be shunned or ostracized in deeply religious communities. It ruminates on this Deep South narrative by exploring how the age of social media has created a rich underground counterculture that offsets the surface rituals of grief and shame. The poems illuminate lineages of performance and fellowship for queer descendants of the last Black folks out of the Carolina cotton fields, and features Anansi-like speakers (Anansi is a trickster spider featured in West African and Caribbean folklore) while delving into old-school sensibilities and advice. This gospel-fugue bends language in the backwoods of faith and desire. Pulling figures from the stories of childhood--Icarus, a flying boy wanting to escape; Asterion the Minotaur--the wandering son of someone absent; Medusa, a wronged person portrayed as a mankiller; Cerberus, a beastly guardian intent on being a ""good"" boy-- these poems are punky, preachy, prissy, and pink-collar, and all help create the fever-dream that is Orders of Service.

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9781949944570

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Reviews

Willie Lee Kinard III's astonishing debut collection braids mythology, sex and desire, gutbucket and gospel--defying outdated notions of bodies, binaries, the black church, and the natural world. These verses render testimonies so electric, you can't help but shout. Kinard knows caring begins in language. He knows black boys crafted of fable can become sharp-witted and tender lovers and loving men. Orders of Service cuts so clean and deep you'll find yourself several pages in before you notice blood on your fingers. --Yona Harvey

Author Information

Willie Lee Kinard III (he/they) is a Black nonbinary poet, designer, educator & musician forged in Newberry, South Carolina. With written work appearing or forthcoming in Obsidian, Best New Poets, Boston Review, POETRY, The Rumpus, and elsewhere, he received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Pittsburgh and has received fellowships and support from The Watering Hole & The Pittsburgh Foundation. An avid believer in evening thunderstorms & loose-leaf tea, go see 'bout them at www.williekinard.com.

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