by Kimberly Reyes

It’s #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIMEvery Day‘s archives!

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More than AIDS, Arthur Ashe said
his true burden was being Black.
C.C. DeVille said being a junkie
was sexier than being fat.

Everything I know I learned from TV.

So my narration is jerky,
preemptive, unreliable.

I know Madonna said power
is being told you’re not loved
undesirable
and not being destroyed

between commercial breaks.

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Kimberly Reyes is an award-winning poet, essayist, pop culture critic, and visual culture scholar. Her work has earned honors from The Poetry Foundation, The Fulbright Program, the Academy of American Poets, CantoMundo, Cave Canem, Tin House, the Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, and many other institutions across the world. She is the author of the new poetry collection Bloodletting (Omnidawn, 2025), vanishing point. (Omnidawn, 2023)—featuring the award-winning poetry film We Are All Drowned Out— and Running to Stand Still (Omnidawn, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award. She is also the author of Warning Coloration (dancing girl press, 2018), finalist for the Two Sylvias Press 2017 Chapbook Competition, and Life During Wartime (Fourteen Hills, 2019), winner of the 2018 Michael Rubin Chapbook Award. A recent Ph.D. graduate, Dr. Reyes recently joined the Creative Writing faculty at the University of Miami as Assistant Professor of Creative Writing—Poetry.

by Kimberly Reyes

More than AIDS, Arthur Ashe said
his true burden was being Black.
C.C. DeVille said being a junkie
was sexier than being fat.

Everything I know I learned from TV.
So my narration is jerky,
preemptive, unreliable. 

I know Madonna said power
is being told you're not loved
undesirable
and not being destroyed

between commercial breaks.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kimberly Reyes’s poetry appears widely online and in journals, including poets.org, The Feminist Wire, The Acentos Review, RHINO, Columbia Journal, Yemassee, New American Writing, Juked, Cosmonauts Avenue and Eleven Eleven. Her chapbook, Warning Coloration, was recently released by dancing girl press. Her full-length manuscript, Running to Stand Still, is forthcoming from Omnidawn.