American Sonnets For My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes

Some titles are the signifier and some are the sign. This title is verse itself with its built- in juxtaposition of past and future; its complexity. If we’re in the future, then the poet is already dead. If we’re in the past, the poet is a ghost. The title is the same for each sonnet in this remarkable, violent, loving, tender outpouring to all the people and things that both kill and sustain black people in America. I read it in one sitting and its cumulative effect is stirring.