Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight
This monthly series features poems by women of color in the early stages of their careers. It is our intention to create more space at Perugia for the work of BIWOC, and we hope using our modest platform to celebrate this work will expand the readership of the poets we spotlight. This series aligns with Perugia’s mission to support and promote emerging women poets; all the featured poems will be from BIWOC poets with no more than one published full-length collection. We’d love to hear from readers with suggestions for poems & poets to feature.
September 2022 Poet: TZYNYA L. PINCHBACK
And suddenly
I imagined you floating twelve weeks: limbs, skin, a rapid pulse, swimming in tiny sac clear like cellophane, not falling or being torn from me, but raging desire to run, breathe, touch bread (wine, someday), sun to lips. And suddenly we were bone splintered in two, edge pushed through flesh - a wound. And I imagined you a fairy in tiny sac clear like cellophane a swathe of copper and iron confetti, wings glittering, folded beneath your feet, standing on the branch of a boab tree jutting from the lean of my umbilicus.
Source
How to Make Pink Confetti, dancing girl press, 2012
Poet Bio
Tzynya Pinchback writes the Black woman body in nature, in illness, and in joy as a deliberate act. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and recent work appears in Deaf Poets Society, Lily Poetry Review, Mom Egg Review, the 2021 Naugatuck River Review narrative poetry contest issue, and others. She has received fellowships from the Cordial Eye Gallery & Artist Space and the Hurston/Wright Foundation, and she was a finalist for 2020 Plymouth Poet Laureate. Tzynya is currently participating in the Writing the Land Project connecting writers to conserved landscapes across the Northeast. She blogs about mermaids, surviving cancer, and New England winters.