The Dark Seed of Walt Whitman

Project Info

Written by Kelvin Holland
Publication Black Warrior Review
Category Writing, Poetry

About BWR (Black Warrior Review)

Established in 1974 by graduate students in the MFA Program in Creative Writing, Black Warrior Review is named for the river that borders the campus of The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The city, the river, and the magazine all derive their names from the 16th-century Indigenous leader Tuskaloosa (also spelled “Tushkalusa”), whose name comes from two words of Creek or Choctaw origin—tasca, meaning “warriors,” and lusa, meaning “black.” In 1540, Tuskaloosa battled the Spanish colonizer Hernando de Soto at Mabila, a fortified settlement perhaps in the vicinity of present-day Selma. Tuskaloosa was likely among the thousands who perished in the resistance effort, which is thought to have stopped the advance of de Soto’s campaign.

BWR publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, comics, and art twice a year. Contributors include Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners alongside emerging writers.

— BWR Editorial Board

MASTHEAD

EDITOR: Glenn Mott MANAGING EDITOR: Dale Prince

FICTION EDITOR: Nicola Williams POETRY EDITOR: James H.N. Martin

GRAPHIC ARTIST: Donald Baxter PRODUCTION MANAGER: David O. Benson

ASSISTANT FICTION EDITORS: Madeline Brown, Dan Childress, Glenn J. Dwiggins, Michelle Fredette, Ellen Gandt, V.E. Link, Leigh Ann Sackrider, Ron Sielinski, Kim Trevathan

ASSISTANT POETRY EDITORS: Timothy Geiger, Jeff Hardin, Roger Scott

FICTION
Alison Baker: The Kidnappee

Lisa Borders: Sarah in the Tornado

Alicia Delserone: Imagining the City

Rachel Hall: T’ai Chi

Dan Leone: You Have Chosen Cake

Tom McNeal: Murdock’s Wife

NONFICTION
Hank Lazer: Technician of the Social: Gil Ott’s Public Domain

POETRY
Walid Bitar: A Northern Reply to Vallejo’s Twilight

Joseph Chaney: Orange

Jeff Hamilton: Broken Off Correspondences

Christopher Z. Hobson: The Burning of McCormick Place 1967

Kelvin Holland: The Dark Seed of Whitman

Boris Hristov: Solitary Man

Vladimir Levchev: Athens

Henry Jeronimo Morro: Somoza’s Teeth

Eric Pankey: Serenade

Gail Shepherd: In Theory | By Available Light | Between 20 and 20,000

Megan Simpson: Letters Following Travel

John Taggart: Star Dust | A Number of Times

Diane Tierney: Sundial

Nancy White: Confection

Ekaterina Yosifova: Beneath Winter’s Roof

The Dark Seed of Whitman

By Kelvin Holland

I sing the passion electric:

I am the offspring of those

vital, athletic, and artistic women;

raised in a black womb

of survival nurtured from

the seminal white milk of your songs

I am the offspring of those

bodies electric sold by sloven

who did not know their job

half well

I am the song

hummed on slave women’s lips

stirred by the swaying of dark brimming hips

I am the melody

of 15 scores and 8 generations

of Black fallen angels

with analgesic songs

the conglomeration of notes

like bodies black stretched

over leaves of white

cotton and time

I am those

heavy shadows swinging

from trees in a broken song’s sling

in the age when Swing was king

I am those

choruses of carrion

mouths open wide

the vibrato of rope and limb

eyes spilling out to see

what they cannot find

O Father, O America, O Walt

I vomit your white heavenly

songs of these democratic states

your milk and honey

rot my teeth

and my bowels

crust and sugar over with

your songs syrupy sweet

My sin and crime:

I cannot find

content in your form

I accept the penalty

“It is better to

rule in hell

than to serve

in heaven”

So O passion

O electric Watts

Burn, Baby, Burn

till we scorch and smoke

the sun lit sky

Did you forget

O American highness

O spontaneous and naked majesty

when thou plays God

it necessitates

that you spawn

your destroyer

your anti-God

your anti-glory?

I am your Satan

Did you ever think

you were safe or free

from me

O land and home

of mom and apple …?

I will not shame

you with your nakedness

but rather

with new clothes of night

I will not kill you with fire or water

but with a syncopated song

to make your white heart

clap off beat

It is the rule

of phallic thum

that one becomes

the slave of what

one tries to master

those things you

reduce with deduction

rise, expand

and gulp you with seduction

so you red blooded American boy you

meet your

Massa Nigguh

Massa Passion

Massa Pussy

Massa Night

My hate is the hate

of a lover, it

is an unrequited

love and desire

to have you

your songs

their fruits

lying beside me

to feel your lustful clench

your love and caress

flushing through me

your body and soul, a great wind

and mine, a great flute

O Walt

it is not

that I lust for you less

but my loveless love song

makes me ache and quiver more.

KELVIN HOLLAND