Combining unsettling imagery with inventive form, this powerful collection explores the inner struggle to resist violence.
In Reconstructing Eden, Indigo Moor performs an exorcism of a childhood shaped by the dizzying racism that once drove him to the brink of murder. Using a poetic form that Moor calls jazz triptych—a tercet followed by a nonstandard villanelle, followed by a rhyme royal stanza—the book is a stunning rendering of a Black child moving through life with a smoldering anger emerging within him. Only through an incredibly violent act while deployed in Operation Desert Storm does the author realize the murderous intent in his heart. Through his lyrical poetry, he begins to cleanse himself.
In Reconstructing Eden, Indigo Moor performs an exorcism of a childhood shaped by the dizzying racism that once drove him to the brink of murder. Using a poetic form that Moor calls jazz triptych—a tercet followed by a nonstandard villanelle, followed by a rhyme royal stanza—the book is a stunning rendering of a Black child moving through life with a smoldering anger emerging within him. Only through an incredibly violent act while deployed in Operation Desert Storm does the author realize the murderous intent in his heart. Through his lyrical poetry, he begins to cleanse himself.
Table of Contents
I. Second Birthing
Rebirth Through Anger
During Desert Storm
Storm Years
II. Complicated Endings
Sleep
Twinned Bastards
Ties
Trust Unwrapped
Dear Mother
My Mother, Theresa
Forgotten
My Personal Man o’ War
My Son in the Mirror
Stance
Fear of Violence
Southern White Saints
They Are Still Muscled in My Head
Training Day
Bussing Black
Degrees of Hate
How We Came to Be
The Inner Works
III. The Trifling Years
Lost in Fields
Death As Another Name For Love
Shaping
Cartoon Dreams
How Black Was That Flower?
Reliving the Future
Remembrance
Whistlin’
The New South
Broken Like Cane
Underdog: The Shoe-Shiner Speaks
Master and Slave
The Search
Handcuffed to the Past
What We Remembered
The Almighty’s Microscope
Between
Drowning
Risen from Soil
What I Bring with Me
Lamp
IV. Unsettled Beginnings
Country Emblem
Our New Home
Shipboard, I Dream of College
Reflections
Mail Drop
Symbols
Hearts Fluttering
Bombing Iraq
Dirt Clods Tonguing Uncle Sam
A Break from the Deck Cards at Play
A Knife Through Magic
How I Never Killed Myself
Forgiveness
The Ethnic Absence
Different Pain for the Same Country
Divorce
Carthage & Anarchy
My War Grinds to a Beginning
X-Man
Rebirth Through Anger
During Desert Storm
Storm Years
II. Complicated Endings
Sleep
Twinned Bastards
Ties
Trust Unwrapped
Dear Mother
My Mother, Theresa
Forgotten
My Personal Man o’ War
My Son in the Mirror
Stance
Fear of Violence
Southern White Saints
They Are Still Muscled in My Head
Training Day
Bussing Black
Degrees of Hate
How We Came to Be
The Inner Works
III. The Trifling Years
Lost in Fields
Death As Another Name For Love
Shaping
Cartoon Dreams
How Black Was That Flower?
Reliving the Future
Remembrance
Whistlin’
The New South
Broken Like Cane
Underdog: The Shoe-Shiner Speaks
Master and Slave
The Search
Handcuffed to the Past
What We Remembered
The Almighty’s Microscope
Between
Drowning
Risen from Soil
What I Bring with Me
Lamp
IV. Unsettled Beginnings
Country Emblem
Our New Home
Shipboard, I Dream of College
Reflections
Mail Drop
Symbols
Hearts Fluttering
Bombing Iraq
Dirt Clods Tonguing Uncle Sam
A Break from the Deck Cards at Play
A Knife Through Magic
How I Never Killed Myself
Forgiveness
The Ethnic Absence
Different Pain for the Same Country
Divorce
Carthage & Anarchy
My War Grinds to a Beginning
X-Man