Worldly Things
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About this ebook
Finalist for the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in Poetry
“Sometimes,” Michael Kleber-Diggs writes in this winner of the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, “everything reduces to circles and lines.”
In these poems, Kleber-Diggs names delight in the same breath as loss. Moments suffused with love—teaching his daughter how to drive; watching his grandmother bake a cake; waking beside his beloved to ponder trumpet mechanics—couple with moments of wrenching grief—a father’s life ended by a gun; mourning children draped around their mother’s waist; Freddie Gray’s death in police custody. Even in the refuge-space of dreams, a man calls the police on his Black neighbor.
But Worldly Things refuses to “offer allegiance” to this centuries-old status quo. With uncompromising candor, Kleber-Diggs documents the many ways America systemically fails those who call it home while also calling upon our collective potential for something better. “Let’s create folklore side-by-side,” he urges, asking us to aspire to a form of nurturing defined by tenderness, to a kind of community devoted to mutual prosperity. “All of us want,” after all, “our share of light, and just enough rainfall.”
Sonorous and measured, the poems of Worldly Things offer needed guidance on ways forward—toward radical kindness and a socially responsible poetics.
Additional Recognition:
A New York Times Book Review "New & Noteworthy Poetry" Selection
A Library Journal "Poetry Title to Watch 2021"
A Chicago Review of Books "Poetry Collection to Read in 2021"
A Reader's Digest "14 Amazing Black Poets to Know About Now" Selection
A Books Are Magic "Recommended Reading" Selection
An Indie Gift Guide 2021 Indie Next Selection
Michael Kleber-Diggs
Michael Kleber-Diggs was born and raised in Kansas and now lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. His work has appeared in Lit Hub, the Rumpus, Rain Taxi, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Water~Stone Review, Midway Review, North Dakota Quarterly and a few anthologies. Michael teaches poetry and creative nonfiction through the Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.
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Reviews for Worldly Things
7 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Amazing collection on a breadth of topics. Glad MKD is a local talent, but he should be read widely.
Book preview
Worldly Things - Michael Kleber-Diggs
ONE
END OF CLASS
Black boy in the backseat of a cop car
across the street from my daughter’s jr. high,
hands cuffed behind his back: hard to see
him like that. It’s an attractive afternoon
here among the thriving—snow glistening, sun
descending on the best block in the city. I have
friends who live nearby so I’m sure I fit right
in with the rich folks and professors. But him?
He’s barely surviving the day, and looks at me
from his sick situation as if to say: Fuck your pity!
Canary in a coalmine, negro in the pipeline,
his life is full of cages. He’s in the wrong
system too soon—tragedies intertwining.
In the rearview mirror, I meet my own
targeted skin and sigh. I’m angry, chagrined.
Until my sweet kid climbs in next to me,
as happy as she can be before I point to
the scene to ask what the boy did. Oh, Felix?
He’s pretty cool. Sometimes he can be mean.
I think he’s on probation. That’s all she has to say.
I pat her arm, start the car, and then we drive
away. Our hardy home is not that far from here.
SOURCE OF MY CONFIDENCE
Vast sky, sky blue. Placid dry ocean
sky. I count four cirrus clouds.
I open every window I have
wide. Spring air races through rooms:
a joyous child. My neighbor battens
down for an imminent storm.
She winds in her awnings. She won’t
water her garden. This continues
for more than a week. Every day
we have the same conversation.
Get ready, she says,
I feel it in my bones.
I usually respond with mathematics.
They don’t know, she says, they don’t
know. Night allows me
the smallest violence. I fill
a watering can near to overflowing.
I stand in her dark yard and minister
to her flowers. A gentle wind
surrounds me like a robe.
THE AMERICAN VARIETY
In the modern version, the remix, reboot,
retelling, Echo becomes an Alabama mama
so obsessed with Narcissus that she wants him
to love her baby (which, of course, he cannot).
This time Narcissus is no Adonis. In fact, he’s
grotesque. He has vile teeth and a nasty mouth.
Tangerine flesh. His hair is tragicomedy, but he’s
rich in a land where wealth makes winners, and
winners can’t lose. This is the American way—
screen tested in Encino for maximum play in
Tuscaloosa, and this is not a cautionary tale. This
story is not meant to bring you down; it’s meant
to lift you up. It’s meant to make you feel great
again. So, Narcissus never stops by a river, never
starves. He thrives. He grows bigger and bigger
but never explodes. Instead, he’s fed by every
storefront he passes, every shimmery reflection
of himself seen in the eyes of every Echo.
His legend blooms and blossoms until, eventually,
he becomes a popular flower—easy to plant,
impossible to kill, invasive, perennial.
I LOVE MY NEIGHBORS AS I LOVE MYSELF
I drive around admonishing strangers.
Hurry up! I tell them. Or, Wear a helmet!
Kids needing parental guidance get it from me.
Teens in black clothes at midnight, sensed
but not seen like owls, receive my words as care.
When I spy an elderly woman with her coat worn loose,