BILDUNGSROMAN CONTINUED IN (I) THE DARK AND (II) THE LIGHT*

I.

The dusk is an orb holding highway hums.

It totals cars and kills bears.

Holds you naked, here, looking at your private parts, your knees.

The dusk is expecting to be done and having to keep on.

More non-silence, more cars, elbows, and blood.

No bones or bugs or beloved

birds. Just hard dirt. The end

is not bright. But cold.


The face of love is the face of dusk and cold bodies.

🝢

II.

The self is the full belly at Thanksgiving

grateful for food and aware of the holiday’s history,

trying to unconglomerate itself from its other selves

while giving the alphabet new life, praying

for those without food and family and good

memories. It drinks in its own way enough

in moderation. It gets seconds and plays Euchre

and watches men pray before and after they bash

the heads of other men wearing helmets and an apocalypse

is ongoing. A part of the self, the part acknowledging

that dusk and sleep immerse themselves, or try to,

in peace, in perpetual light will be fine with it;

the end of everything. Friction. The self

at some point is, God willing, a glad thing on Earth, enough

that the self won’t kick the self for dying too

soon or for not being loved and isn’t Heaven

real, Lordy, for everyone who hasn’t lived, hasn’t lived like us?


The face of judgment is the face of the self and the divine.

MY TURN AT THE MIRROR WHILE WATCHING
MY LIFE FLASH BEFORE MY EYES*

I.

There’s a lighter
in my right hand.

The left wants
to break my sternum.

Then stomach.

II.

I encourage myself
through the screen:

boy you are
a boy

and you look
good.

III.

I sob, I demand
with my knuckles—

FIX and TAKE and BREAK
and GROW and LEARN—

I see black.
I see black.

IV.

I’m studying, trying to develop
a larger frame, to outgrow
a frame with little muscle so

if I’m caught in a sundown town,
or if they travel and get to me,
I can confidently attack

hovering and burning hate;
bludgeoning a head, a head, a head,
and more

with a wooden bat.

V.

The men on cologne advertisements
in the magazines I stole—I need Vs and chests
like them so the women next to them

in lingerie or the woman who took her shirt off
in the B movie about a mutant serpent

will consider helping me
remove my clothes so I can think of

nakedness as riddance.

VI.

I don’t want to,

but,

I eat. In my birthday suit.

VII.

Take my robe, listen
to my confession.

Break my calcium-fed bones,
kick my sand foundation house,
and hit me with a brick.

Until my last day here is one
of solitude or with others
in a collective nest-grave.

And let us all vomit
while remaining
anonymous.

VIII.

What I wish for myself is to not always get what I wish for.

I’ve learned I am what I don’t eat too.
I’m only who I am right now. No longer

a fridge or a preemie or a vessel for underwear;

a vessel for barbs.

---

Chris Crowder is from Flint, Michigan, and his debut poetry collection, The Kin of Nakedness, was published by Four Way Books in March 2026. Managing Editor for The Adroit Journal, his poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, The Georgia Review, Best New Poets, MQR: Mixtape, Mark, Indiana Review, the Poetry Foundation’s Poetry Off the Shelf and VS podcasts, and elsewhere. chriscrowderwrites.com

*These poems appear in Chris Crowder’s The Kin of Nakedness and are reprinted here with permission.