Or Oreo, or
worse. Or ordinary.
Or your choice
of category
or
Color
or any color
other than Colored
or Colored Only.
Or “Of Color”
or
Other
or theory or discourse
or oral territory.
Oregon or Georgia
or Florida Zora
or
Opportunity
or born poor
or Corporate. Or Moor.
Or a Noir Orpheus
or Senghor
or
Diaspora
or a horrendous
and tore-up journey.
Or performance. Or allegory’s armor
of ignorant comfort.
or
Worship
or reform or a sore chorus.
Or Electoral Corruption
or important ports
of Yoruba or worry
or
Neighbor
or fear of…
of terror or border.
Or all organized
minorities.
—
‘Or’, Thomas Sayers Ellis
The poem is based on the repetition of or, but as we read through it, what seemed like a formal constraint becomes a principle of transformation, a hinge that keeps flexing. http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/01/12/or/