Camonghne Felix

There are new, young poets out there sharing their life experience with us. Time to listen!

Here’s a poem for your consideration by contemporary American writer and poet Camonghne Felix (born 1992).Felix participated in the national slam poetry festival Brave New Voices and was featured in the festival's 2010 HBO series.

She published her first chapbook, Yolk, in 2015. Her poetry was included in the 2018 anthology The Breakbeat Poets Volume 2: Black Girl Magic.

Her debut poetry collection, Build Yourself A Boat, was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award.

Why I Loved Him

I can’t tell you
Why I loved him or
What it meant. When yo
Are a child, you know only
The kind of love your little
Life lacked, so every
Blooming flower is a field. What I know
Is that there were two skies
And under one, I was a shadow. His
Sky was as blue as his eyes. Some
Of that is my doing and the rest of it
Is time. These days, he traces the shape of
The curds above him and I lay out under
A separate sun. Both of us are fine
With this. We picked our place
Under the lid of god and we shut
Our eyes to it every night. That’s what it means
To have loved goodly—to meet
Fate in a lavender hall and walk
Right past it, the white train quivering,
Nostalgia in your wake.

--Camonghne Felix

[Published in the print edition of The New Yorker May 30, 2022, issue.]