Black Girl at the Intersection

Poetry February 2023 ISBN 978-1-936628-98-8 108 pages Softcover, 6" x 9"

Accents Publishing is proud to bring to you LeTonia Jones's brilliant debut. The poems in Black Girl at the Intersection speak from the intersection of social justice and personal heartbreak. Past, present and possible future interact and dare to hope for a better world.

"LeTonia Jones's Black Girl at the Intersection is at once heartbreaking, haunting, and uplifting. The people in her elegantly wrought poems are wounded, lost, and some are gone, but Jones deftly makes us feel how they mattered, and still matter, how they were loved, and how the essence they shared shimmers on in the triumphs of those still here. It's remarkable, a deeply moving debut."—Toni Ann Johnson, Winner of the 2021 Flannery O'Connor Award for Light Skin Gone to Waste

From the Book

Black Girl at the Intersection

I see you skeleton walkin
flip flops flippin floppin
thong between bony toes

I see your blue jean shorts
wedged between the crack of
your barely covered ass

your ass bare hollow-cheeked
flesh droopin spillin into thin
thighs fallin into spindle-
shanked legs

I see you extend your raw-boned arm
scratch the back of your pebble like
neck run gaunt fingers through
parched hair

I see you Black girl skeleton
standin at the intersection see you
look left then right then left then
right

see you go nowhere

I feel the tensity creep up
our spines want to cry out
but realize my voice is gone too

I want to save you but
recall neither of us gets
out of this thing alive

We are Black girl skeletons in
need of attention—messes eaten
up by
a tension

We keep tellin mutha fuckas
we gonna break tellin mutha
fuckas to give us a break

but we are Black girls we don't
get breaks even when we are
broken no justice no peace

flip flop swivel left then
right then left then right
then nowhere

What Others Say

LeTonia Jones's Black Girl at the Intersection is at once heartbreaking, haunting, and uplifting. The people in her elegantly wrought poems are wounded, lost, and some are gone, but Jones deftly makes us feel how they mattered, and still matter, how they were loved, and how the essence they shared shimmers on in the triumphs of those still here. It's remarkable, a deeply moving debut.

— Toni Ann Johnson

Winner of the 2021 Flannery O'Connor Award for Light Skin Gone to Waste Black Girl at the Intersection is a powerful woman's prayer. It is the poet LeTonia Jones's passionate request that we listen; really listen. Elegantly designed as eight supplications, the poems take us on LeTonia's heroine's journey through initiation and the dark night of the soul, through rage, shame and pain, and ultimately to redemption and empowerment. Arising from deeply lived experience, this poet's words wield a gravitas that is to be reckoned with. Indeed LeTonia Jones writes like her hands are on fire! We would all be wise to take heed.

— Gail Straub , Award winning author and co-founder, Empowerment Institute

Jones's poems are large—even the small poems are expansive. Here is a revelatory debut collection that moves seamlessly from the width and breadth of racism in this country to the intimate complexity of Black family rooted in Kentucky. The lives of Eric Gardner, George Floyd, Eric Richardson, Nina Simone, Jones's nephew, matriarchal ancestors, unnamed Black women who need more reasons to be lauded, and little Black girls who need more reasons to rebel, all share the same space on these pages. From justice to celebration, from the legal system to the kitchen, Jones is a poet who can hold all these things simultaneously and hurl them one by one at your heart.

— Crystal Wilkinson , Poet Laureate of Kentucky, author of <em>Perfect Black</em>

About the Author

LeTonia Jones

LeTonia Jones is a lifelong Kentuckian who has used the alchemy of arts and activism for over 25 years. She has led public arts campaigns and projects with the purpose of centering the lived experiences of those pushed to the margins, while at the same time stirring emotions, facilitating space for insight, and moving audiences and communities toward greater acts of care and love. In 2007, while employed at the Kentucky Domestic Violence Association, she collaborated with author and award-winning playwright Eve Ensler and V-Day to produce and pilot a two-week statewide arts and activism festival and awareness campaign to end violence against women and girls in Kentucky reaching 1.2 million Kentuckians. In 2009, she cocreated and co-facilitated SwallowTale Project, which entered correctional institutions. The project culminated in a book called SwallowTale Project, which featured writings from incarcerated women in Kentucky. In 2020, LeTonia co-founded Bloodroot Ink, a writing circle for Black, Indigenous, and Womyn of Color. LeTonia Jones lives in Lexington, Kentucky with her two dogs, Mojo and Peggy. Black Girl at the Intersection introduces her as a poet who believes acts of witnessing and acts of being witnessed are revolutionary.