Urbanshee by Siaara Freeman (5⭐️)

‘Urbanshee’ is a poem collection that discusses themes of family, blackness in aemrica, and grief. 

This is such a beautiful, raw and sad collection. I often struggle to read poetry but Freeman’s writing style really worked for me. Many of the poems are very honest, raw, and personal and it really makes you feel like you’re inside the author’s brain. I really appreciate the author sharing their personal experiences and struggles. This was such a thoughtful and beautifully put together collection. I’m excited to check out Freeman’s spoken word work. 

My favourites were - ‘Fearless Sounds Like Fatherless On The Right Tongue’ and ‘It Is Hard To Tell Someone On Fire That You Are Drowning’. Some quotes I liked were:

“If you kiss her, you may wake up in a new religion.” 

“I am a bakery with little sweet left in it.” 

“Most days I am an alley that no one should enter alone.” 

“Even when the flies came, I simply introduced myself to the rot.” 

“What if there is more to me than a place you run to when you are cold inside?”

“it’s a thunderstorm somewhere with your heartbeat & everyone is afraid to hear it but you.”

“Someone made my jaw drop & I liked it enough to let them

do it again & again—until the ground beneath me wore hellish lipstick in my shade.”

“All I got is this fatherless fortune of bones. All I got is a chest, but the treasure is for the drowned.”

“sometimes no one even notices a person’s problems until they set themselves on fire”

“I bled my way back to myself, left crumbs of myself to remember where I came from.”

“Sacrifice is not a shattering of glass, it is blood on your hands for getting someone out alive.”

“My mother clouds when she don’t want nobody to see her pain, which is how

I inherited my blur.”

“my heart is a Band­Aid for other hearts that have been bloodied by other hearts & once they heal, they rip me away.”

Rep - Black (Author); Dyslexic (Author); Lupus (Author); Queer (Author); OwnVoices

TWs/CWs - Alcohol; Animal Corpse; Animal Mutilation; Blood; Bugs; Cheating; Cultural Appropriation; Cussing; Death; Death of a parent; Dissection; Dog breeding; Drugs; Generational trauma; Grief; Gun Violence; Marijuana; Misogyny; Murder; Piss; Police Brutality; Protests; Racial Profiling; Self Harm; Serial Killings; Sexual Content; Sexual Harassment; Slavery; Slaves; Suicide Ideation; Tuberculosis