Thomas Kneeland

Thomas Kneeland’s poems appear — or are forthcoming — in Prairie Schooner, Columbia Journal, Modern Language Studies Journal, The Rumpus, The Amistad, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook, We Be Walkin’ Blackly in the Deep. A finalist for the 2022 Frontier Poetry Global Poetry Prize, he has received grants and fellowships from the Indiana University-Indianapolis Speculative Play & Just Futurities Program and the Central Indiana Community Foundation. He was recently named a 2025 Emerging Scholar by Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. Kneeland was previously a Writing Faculty member for the LEDA Scholars Aspects of Leadership Summer Institute at Princeton University. Originally from California, and raised in Mississippi, he holds an MFA in creative writing from Butler University and is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Anderson University. 

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BLOOD RIVER

A name is more powerful than the body

that contains it. Call it a miracle, an act of God

to be the embodiment of letters

combined to make meaningful

the reasons for birth & breath.

I know them well.

◉

Obsidian girl was born within

four walls of a robin egg blue room

& when she took her first breath,

membrane a pale ember

layered atop a frail body

of seared rouge & sienna,

I saw her glow for the first time,

fingers curled into cinnamon rolls

& unfurled again, searching for answers—

feeling for what her eyes could not yet see.

◉

& when obsidian girl discovered walking,

I stood in awe, mimicking a kodak picture:

my grandmother’s smile, wide as the Mississippi

& warm as the morning breeze

in a San Jose backyard I hardly remember.

◉

She remembers everything: the old apartment

affectionately referred to as the white house,

chocolate chip cookie baking, worship songs

during bathtime, being ripped from my arms half-asleep in twilight in the dead of winter,

returning to me the next day & I, unable

to tell her I did nothing wrong, because

it’d be years before she could understand,

singing along with Tori Kelly in her perfect

three-year-old voice, the nightly reminder

that I was her pal to the end and she,

my favorite girl.

◉

She has many names, some of which

she finds embarrassing now being

a little less wet behind the ears—

Boober. Peanut Butter Baby.

Mama. Honey. Girlie. Pretty Girl.

Reya. Claire. Mija. Mami.

◉

Obsidian girl has her own poetry

notebook. Jots down donut discourse,

dreams what a little girl should

& I let her because haiku aren’t

as important as memories

of high tea dates with dad

at the white house.

The day will soon come

when she’ll write her first haiku

& love all the words.

Until then, I’ll watch her

bloom & whirlwind.

◉

Years from now, I’ll be old enough

to bring in tides of fish before the swell,

seaweed trapped in the net’s throat

& my daughter will be on her way

back to a culinary school after rapping

her slender foot on the dock—

How many more

waves, Daddy, before you’re done?

Until they stop waving—

until they stop waving back.

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BLOOD MEMORY

A Bop for Monica Jo

I have fed the sky all the stars behind my eyes,

watered soil in my backyard, plucked up dandelions

just to see them return tenfold, planted my hands

hoping my fingers would gently soak up memories

left behind by foot & knee for the earth to keep

until my blood could muster courage to speak.

This blood river wants me to know something.

Josephine would’ve told me I am not a monolith,

some one-dimensional being destined only for death,

but a network of tributaries flowing into a larger body

of water, whose currents have no choice but to deliver me

to a tangerine house & jazz blue door. Inside, there is a letter

folded in half & yellowed from stale air:

We are all learning who we are while teaching others

to love who we will become.

This blood river wants me to know something.

Turmeric yellow was her favorite color.

She wore a sunflower in her hair

& its earthy middle was more valuable

than the emeralds she wore

on her earlobes. When I turn to look

in the mirror, all I hear is the ocean singing.

This blood river wants you to know something.

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ODE TO CALLE OCHO

To a street where color & love means the same thing: Ode to tobacco-cutting Cubans rolling cigars between their soft, callused hands. To the way our skin comes from the same weaving loom. Ode to white roosters & the rouge ones. To cafecito & heart palpitations. Ode to matriarchs whose silver crowns mirror those of my grandmother. Ode to the vulnerability of speaking my ancestors’ mother tongue & being okay with sounding like an American. Ode to Goodwill, where I bought my first tostoñera for three dollars. To the Cuban flag that hangs above my daughter’s bed like a sacred heirloom. Ode to Señor Angel’s kindness to loan me a plátano until the next day. To his tattered portrait of Jesus hanging in the store to remind me that even when I don’t have enough money, the sheer effort of bringing what I have in earnest yields a blessing. Ode to waiting on the wrong side of the street for a bus that travels west. To late arrivals to poetry readings. To the death of censorship. To expensive button downs for silver-bearded tíos. Ode to forever families & sunsets melting through chain-link fences to warm my skin when I’ve forgotten to wear a jacket.

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