PARKER'S FIRST COLLECTION (2015) includes a poem called "Young, Sassy, and Black." It's easy to imagine Parker frequently hearing this trio of adjectives; she was 28 when this collection came out, she is often audaciously funny (e.g., the five poems here with the title "Miss Black America"), and many of the poems foreground Black culture, history, and experience. It's easy to imagine her getting weary of those adjectives, too. The entirety of the poem "Young, Sassy, and Black" reads:
I use these words
to distract you.
I'm not sure whether the "I" is Parker talking to the reader or some embodiment of the literary marketplace talking to Parker, but the clear message is that Parker is not going to be pigeonholed--she has a lot more arrows to her quiver than being young, sassy, and black. Verbal invention, for one thing: "Somewhere in Jersey, the wood house / cowers around me like a smell." Fearlessness, for another: "I'm thinking, what would happen / if I started masturbating on this subway car?" Put the two together and you have a gift for laying it right on the line:
Baby think of my skin
as the best part of the song. Take me
by the ribs and lay me at the bottom
of a dirty creek where I can
get a good view.
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