Heard's sojourn in Tulsa and the history of the Tulsa Race Massacre comes to a head in these poems that investigate the incident's resounding trauma with lyric and historic precision. The absence of reckoning a century after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre is soldered together by a series of poems based on Heard's time living on the fringes of the city's art district and what was once Greenwood, Tulsa's thriving Black neighborhood. Heard blends survivor testimonies, myths, and present intelligence with his own lived experience and a farrago of forms to feel his way to a more intuitive truth of what's isn't documented.
Clemonce Heard was born and raised in Uptown and Algiers New Orleans. At the beginning of his senior year of high school, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and his family evacuated to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where he stayed to attend Northwestern State University. A graphic communications major and culinary arts minor, Heard spent most of his undergrad working as a cook at several local restaurants. In 2010, Heard, along with Brandi (White) Gonzales, cofounded the presently active, campus organization, Brainy Acts Poetry Society. After graduating, Heard spent nearly three years working for Apple Inc. before attending Oklahoma State University, where he received his MFA in creative writing. In 2018, Heard was awarded a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. He left the fellowship program early to accept a fellowship from the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. Currently, Heard is an artist-in-residence at Sala Diaz in San Antonio.
"Clemonce Heard's penetrative and muscular debut probes the blatant brutality perpetrated by white men from the towering perch of their self-imposed birthright — with unerring focus on the tragic city of Tulsa, Oklahoma ..." — Patricia Smith
"Heard provides many occasions for readers to meditate on the Tulsa Race Massacre — not as an exercise in wokeness, but as a means of launching grace." — Major Jackson
"This book is elite art born of Clemonce Heard's stank genius." — Kiese Laymon
