(MUSIC PLAYING)

Ashley M. Jones: (READS EXCERPT FROM “A Case for Reparations”)

Sometimes, I’m singing a song, and you make that feel like death.

Fred Sasaki: Welcome to the Poetry Magazine Podcast. I’m Fred Sasaki. This episode was really special for me, because I was invited to interview my friend and my colleague, Ashley M. Jones. Ashley guest edited the spring and summer issues of Poetry magazine during a really remarkable time in this publication’s history. And her issues have provided us so much light and breath and clarity. You know, Ashley told us she was going to open the doors, the windows, our hearts and our minds. And she did. In this conversation, we talk about Ashley’s new book, Reparations Now! I asked: What are reparations, and what do they mean? When did that idea materialize in our own minds? We also talk about playing with Barbies, being God, and those times when we’re just too cool for school. And with that, here is the incomparable Ashley M. Jones.

Ashley M. Jones: Something that I always tell people when they ask, you know, “What is your process? How do you find the poems that you want to write?” It really has everything to do with listening to the spirit, is what I call it. But the spirit means so many things. It means those ancestors and recognizing the lineage. I don’t know that I always knew that I was in that lineage. You know, you look at some of these writers who you admire and you think, “Oh, that’s them. I’m never gonna be, you know, like them.” But as I got older and started finding my own voice in the voices of these other poets like Sonia Sanchez, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Kevin Young, even, and so many others, that’s when I started to realize that, okay, yes, I am walking in their footsteps. I’m descended from sister Sonia. I’m descended from Miss Lucille. I’m descended from Phillis Wheatley. You know, all of these poets are speaking to me and through me, which maybe is a little woo woo, but you already know how I am, so. (LAUGHS)

Fred Sasaki: No, I hear all that and I hear all them. And what I also hear in this book is “too slow,” which I feel like is really brought to bear in these poems. So, without further ado, will you read for us “A Case for Reparations”?

Ashley M. Jones: Yes, I will. I should say to you that this part of the poem is from a larger piece called “Reparations Now, Reparations Tomorrow, Reparations Forever.”

(READS EXCERPT)

“A Case for Reparations”

When, Governor, can we enjoy the full richness of the Great American Dream?

My grandmother was a sharecropper. My grandfather beat his Black wife and Black children. My uncle was arrested for a crime he didn’t commit—in America, even the shadows of Black people are black enough to hide all innocence. Some nights, I dream of being killed like Emmett Till or Trayvon Martin or Sandra Bland or [INSERT BLACK PERSON’S NAME HERE]. Some nights, I insert my name there. Is that the American Dream? Governor, President, Mayor, Boss Man, Woman With A Cell Phone or a Police Badge or a Bank Account and The Skin Tender Enough To Make Murder Legal, when will you be tired of the taste of Black blood? Sometimes, I’m singing a song and you make that feel like death. Sometimes, I’m dancing a dance and you make that feel like shame. Sometimes, I’m sitting on my porch just trying to eat a damn melon and you make that feel like I’m selling my Black soul. My parents told me I could be anything, even God. That’s the least I’m owed—to know I’m worth heaven, yes, but also worth a life on earth. My mother told us we were pretty enough to be dolls, pretty enough to be praised in the Book of Barbie. That’s the least I’m owed—a face, skin, hair so obviously, inherently, objectively beautiful it’s frozen in plastic and sold to kids all over America to hug and love and look at with the eyes of dreams. What, you think all I want is money? What, you think money can ever repay what you stole? Give me land, give me all the blood you ripped out of our backs, our veins. Give me every snapped neck and the noose you wove to hoist the body up. Give me the screams you silenced in so many dark and lustful rooms. Give me the songs you said were yours but you know came out of our lips first. Give me back Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. Give me back the beauty of my hair. The swell of my hips. The big of my lips. Give me back the whole Atlantic Ocean. Give me a never-ending blue. And a mule.

Fred Sasaki: Thank you so much, Ashley. Such a great reading. So much to talk about in this wonderful poem. This poem is resonating with a poem I was just reading yesterday by Patricia Smith, “What You Pray Toward.” And in the last section of this poem, she asks, “Are we God?” And I love this line, “My parents told me I could be anything, even God.” And I’m wondering if you could speak on that?

Ashley M. Jones: I can. First of all, it is an honor to be mentioned in the same breath as Patricia Smith. She’s everything, period. But yeah, that line, in my poem, at least, goes back to the way that I was raised, which, the older I get, the more I’m just so grateful for my parents, and how they somehow saw what it took to raise Black people, Black children, to be proud of themselves. They always would say, “We didn’t know we were doing,” but somebody was telling them something, you know, they had Jesus on the main line, or whatever, you know, to tell them exactly how to raise us. And so when we were young, we were always told by our mom and our dad, that we were beautiful, that Blackness was great. We only had Black dolls. My mom did not allow us to buy any other doll but a Black doll. We were able to branch out into the Latina doll, Teresa, and we got a Mulan doll, which was pushing it. I mean, she didn’t want anything pale. You know, she was like, “You gotta know that you are enough.” And it wasn’t because, like some people I tell this story, to, they’re like, “Oh, so your mom was like, racist?” And I’m like, “Well, no.” Well, first of all, maybe we are all a little bit racist. I think we should all admit that. The world would be a better place if we admitted a lot of things. But she wasn’t racist, necessarily. She just knew, having grown up in the ’60s, ’70s, when she did not have Black dolls available, her mom would bring home the white dolls that other white people would throw out or whatever. Let me rephrase that, because I can hear my mom listening to it. I’m gonna say it differently. She didn’t have Black dolls. She only had white dolls that her mom would bring home. I mean, she didn’t grow up with low self-esteem. But she knew when she had us that she didn’t want us to feel like we had to aspire to whiteness in any way. So, from even something as seemingly small as a Barbie doll, or a baby doll, whatever doll, paper dolls, any doll that came in our house was Black. When we talked about God, we knew that Jesus could be Black to us. Santa Claus was Black. My dad bought a Santa Claus decoration, and literally painted him brown. That’s how deep it was in my household. And I didn’t know how important that was until I became an adult. And I started teaching students and meeting just even adults who did not know that they were enough on their own. And it just means so much to a child to hear a parent say, “Your God is Black. God, the biggest thing we could ever think of, is Black like you. That’s how good Blackness can be.” And that’s a part of reparations to me, just giving us back the idea that we can actually mean something to ourselves and to others.

Fred Sasaki: I love the answer you give to, you know, “What, you think all I want is money?” How many times do we need to say that? I also, I love what you’re talking about with Barbie, “pretty enough to be praised in the Book of Barbie.” And so, you know, I have two daughters. And Barbie is a fixture in our lives. And so are the … is the ever present swell of white dolls. And I actually, you know, had a—it wasn’t an argument, but I had to put my foot down and I think I said it too loudly in a store: “No more white babies!” (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHS)

Fred Sasaki: I was like, no more. I’m not buying another one. That’s it.

Ashley M. Jones: Yeah.

Fred Sasaki: You know, and always trying to steer my children toward dolls that look like them, or darker, you know? And just like, you know, cut it out. And of course the children don’t understand, you know, exactly. They do. But they said, “What, you don’t like white babies?” you know, loudly for everyone to hear.

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHS)

Fred Sasaki: So it’s not about that!

Ashley M. Jones: Right, we love white babies. (LAUGHING) We love everybody.

Fred Sasaki: And I will send you a picture of the Fred Barbie I bought to complete the child’s family. They were very excited to see Papa come in the mail.

Ashley M. Jones: That’s amazing. Please send that.

Fred Sasaki: Yes. “Give me the screams … Give me the songs you said were yours but you know came out of our lips first.” So, can we talk about, when did you first sort of learn what reparations are? Like, when did you, when do you feel like you knew what reparations were? When did you learn about that? And I could tell you when I learned about my own family receiving reparations for their incarceration during the Second World War as Japanese Americans. But yeah, you go first.

Ashley M. Jones: I think that maybe I first learned wrongly what they were, if that makes any sense. Like you hear about, we deserve 40 acres and a mule, from slavery. Like that’s kind of all you hear. You don’t really learn about it—I didn’t learn about it in school or anything. And then as I got older, I would start to hear people in different circles talking about reparations. And recently, there have been some, like, political discussions about them. So I think maybe the real answer is, I didn’t really learn fully what they were and why they were necessary until I was writing this book, honestly. Before then it was all just like, “Oh, the government’s gonna give us a check,” you know, or something like that. And it is super not that. Like, the check is the least of my worries, honestly. I mean, I’m not gonna say no to a check, let me make that clear also. (LAUGHS) But it’s not about a check. I want to be able to walk down the street and not feel like I’m going to get killed because I’m Black. I want my children to feel like they’re represented. I don’t have any kids yet. But if I have them, I want—or at least I want to imagine my children feeling secure, feeling safe, feeling supported. I want to imagine a world where it’s not some sort of political act, a radical act to teach Black texts or to teach texts by Native Americans, by Asian Americans, by people from the queer community. I don’t want that to be radical anymore. That’s what reparations are. I want everyone to be liberated, free, you know, given what they are owed, which is just basic humanity. But yeah, I didn’t, I didn’t really learn about that until I was, you know, writing this book, and sort of thinking about it in that way.

Fred Sasaki: Thank you. That’s such a great answer. And so, so honest and true, like, you know, because I feel like even reading this poem, you learn more about what reparations are, just even in that sort of ending. Like, you know, “Give me back the whole Atlantic Ocean. Give me a never-ending blue.” The idea that we’re talking about, not about a check, right? And that never-ending blue, like the American dream, which you referenced earlier in the poem. Yeah, and so I asked myself, when did I learn what reparations are, and when did I learn about my father’s side of the family receiving reparations for being incarcerated in American concentration camps during the Second World War. Of course, the memory is very vague. But I remember being in my grandma Mona’s. I remember the old Japanese man living in my basement who had been incarcerated, who was no relation, but, you know, he sort of just kind of held on with the family during resettlement. And then he just became Jerry, who lived in the store during the week, and in my grandma’s house on the weekend. I remember something about money, maybe an apology, you know, but it was more so about the money. And then a lot of the conflict and confusion within my family about what it is that happened. And so, I feel like, at that time, and even maybe now, like, at that time, I had no concept what reparations are or what the damage was. Like what exactly was lost. Also, we have a certain obligation to speak to the youth and to work through these things, to reckon with it. And you are a teacher, you work with the youth. I would love you to tell us about your role as a teacher, and how do you grapple with those obligations, with those responsibilities, with those readings in those spaces, while you’re reckoning with reparations and white supremacy, and saying all the things that need to be said to people who might not be ready to hear it.

Ashley M. Jones: I mean, it’s hard is the simple answer to that question. It’s definitely difficult. Yeah, being a teacher … I said earlier, I don’t have any kids, and maybe that’s not true. I am a teacher of many grade levels. And those students are very much like my own children. And I feel like maybe I use the Jones method of parenting, you know, with them, where I just let the spirit lead me, and I keep in mind that I’m here to make sure these students, these people, are liberated in some way. I feel like I can’t let people leave my care—and “in my care” means in my classroom, in a reading, in a conversation, anywhere I am, in a poem that I’ve written—I can’t let anybody leave my care without having tried to at least tell them the truth, which is uncomfortable most of the time. I definitely have had some interesting run-ins with people being averse to a political education, so.

Fred Sasaki: Sure, you know, and, so I was with my—I was walking our puppy with the kids, you know, just having a nice time out in the sunshine, you know, meeting other families. And we met this nice family, we loved the puppy together, we talked. And the next thing you knew, the mom was going off on me about how our teachers—we’re both at Chicago Public Schools—are trying to turn our children into little activists and brainwashing them. She didn’t say, “critical race theory,” but it was getting there.

Ashley M. Jones: Mm-hmm.

Fred Sasaki: And I was like, I’m just trying to walk our dog like, wait, what. Even, you know, my daughter was just like, looking at her like, what is happening?

Ashley M. Jones: (LAUGHS)

Fred Sasaki: So I can only imagine, Ashley.

Ashley M. Jones: I want to know what it is that people look at, like when—that’s happened to me, too. I’m like, what about me has told you that this is the conversation I want to have with you?

Fred Sasaki: (LAUGHS)

Ashley M. Jones: Is it on my face? Like I’m clearly, I’m not this person, but you have seen me as someone who is “the one,” as they say. You know? Like, I’m actually not the one.

Fred Sasaki: I’m not the one. That’s right. So yeah, so, take us through this reading. And if you could read your poem, “Poem in Which I Am Too Political to Read at Your School.” Yeah. And then we could talk about it after, because I got some questions.

Ashley M. Jones: Sure. I know you do, Fred. (CHUCKLES) All right.

(READS POEM)

“Poem in Which I Am Too Political to Read at Your School”

A rose, single, silent, and soft, opens—
red petals tender, innocent, fragrant.
What beauty! How holy! Peace, unbroken
in the rose’s solid stem. O, ancient
wonder, rose of unsullied joy, I sing
to the majesty of your sun-loved face—
your color so pure, petal fine as wing,
leaf’s thin veins a natural puzzle of lace.
Even your thorns are worthy of my praise,
their spikes but soldiers keeping you from harm,
a stab could set my fingers all ablaze,
but still your grace would silence all alarm—

except the rose was black and you killed it, black and you silenced it, black and you raped it, black and it could not vote, black and it got in the wrong garden so you had to use pesticide, had to poison its water and all the little black rose babies, had to stop teaching it to read, it was black so you pulled it up by the roots with a knife shaped just like America, just like the government, just like white Jesus, just like your mouth leaking bless your heart, you severed its roots and you chewed them whole and you smiled as it withered, searching for home.

Fred Sasaki: I just love the setup, especially imagining you reading it at a school. This just worked for me on so many different levels. You know, I’m, you know, very familiar with school-like spaces, being around kids and teachers and poetry readings, and the expectation of a poem. What people have come to hear, you know, roses are red, violets are blue. And they sort of sit into, they sort of ease into the poem, and begin nodding their heads and appreciating life and beauty and all of the flowering things around them. And then the poem hits. Midway through this poem, it takes that turn and I—it’s like, it made me laugh, you know, imagining that scene. I also feel a little worried about asking, because this is nothing to laugh at, but that was my reaction. So yeah, when you’re reading this poem, like, do folks ever laugh in the middle of it?

Ashley M. Jones: It’s funny, they’ve never laughed in the middle of this one. They’ve laughed at the title, but not in the middle of the poem. The laugh that you’re talking about, I think, is not one amusement, per se, or of this sort of aloof, out of tune, you know, feeling that some people have but they don’t get it. The laugh you’re talking about, I think is one, a knowing laugh of, okay, it’s time, it’s time to talk about this thing that I’ve wanted to talk about for so long. But there is that other laugh, that other laugh where people really don’t understand what’s happening, or they somehow find amusement in other people’s pain. And it reminds me of a recording of Lucille Clifton reading, “cutting greens,” where people start to laugh, just at the mention of the title, at the mention of greens. And it’s not funny. The poem is not funny. And that’s an experience I think a lot of us have, at least as Black poets. Maybe others experience it, too. Where we are just trying to say, “Here I am, here’s what’s happening.” And it’s met with, “Ha ha ha,” which maybe represents the history of this country.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(RECORDING OF Lucille Clifton READING “cutting greens” PLAYS)

Lucille Clifton: This is a poem called “cutting greens.” I’ve read it before and I’m pleased to see that what happened that time didn’t happen this time. When I read it before, I said, “cutting greens,” and people laughed. To which I said cutting greens, greens aren’t funny, greens are good. Anyhow,

(READS POEM)

“cutting greens”

curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black,
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and I taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.

Ashley M. Jones: I think the reason that I constructed the poem in that way, to go from a traditional sonnet with lines, like, traditional lineated sonnet, to this, like, prose block in the middle, is to do that thing, to let people get lulled into, “Oh yeah, we love roses, nature, this is safe,” and then you’re hit—like you said, it is meant to hit you—into this block of prose where you can’t really escape. But yeah, people usually laugh when I say the title because they’re like, “Oh, ha ha, that’s so funny.” But then they hear the story behind it, and then they hear the poem. And they’re like, “Oh, no, no, no.” And the story behind it, maybe I should say, is that I was invited to do this, like, author day at a local school. It was a Catholic School, which maybe matters to the story, a Catholic private school. And the lady who invited me was all cool until I sent her a link to my website. I was like, “Oh, well, here’s some information about me.” And she came back, like maybe an hour later, and she said, “Oh, I think you’re not going to be a good fit, you know, because of subject matter.” And I was like, first of all, girl, I’m a teacher. Like, how do you think I don’t know how to choose poems for kids? First of all, like you’re questioning my professionalism, for one. For two, what content exactly are we shielding our children from? That’s where the previous conversation comes into play, about when do we teach kids about these things, when do they learn? A lot of people I think would rather they never learned about politics, about people being murdered. I always tell people, I was five, when I first experienced racism. And I think even younger than that, when I first learned what racism was. If I can experience that—and some people are even younger than five, you know—if I can experience that, as a Black child, every other child has the capacity to learn about it. Learning about it’s not the same as experiencing it. And these people who are going to all these school board meetings saying, “We can’t teach critical race theory, blah, blah, blah.” They’re not understanding that there are children already traumatized at a young age. I enter a room, and there’s trauma there waiting for me, no matter how old I am. And the same is true as an adult now. Like, people, once they learn what I write about, like in this case with this poem, that was a traumatic experience for me. I’ve never been disinvited to anything, because in my world, everybody knows that I care so much about everybody. I care about children. I care about poetry. And that I’m always going to do my best job. And for this person to decide based on either the fact that I was Black—I don’t think she knew who I was, you know, and she looked at the website and you could see my face, you know, and read some of my poems. And I guess she was scared that I was going to talk about race. Perhaps. She didn’t even ask me, she just made an assumption, just like this woman who came up on you and your dog, you know, she made an assumption that was harmful. So no, to answer your question, nobody has laughed at the poem. And it has happened to friends of mine before. Like, they’ll read a poem that’s, like, not funny. It’s about race, or whatever. And there’s people in the audience giggling. But that goes back—not to be this person, but it really goes back to reparations, too. I should be able to read a poem about my experience, and you not take it personally. There’s a limit to me, too, of people coming up after a reading and just being so, like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m so broken down by this, blah, blah, blah.” And like, yeah, I’m glad that you’re broken down, because, I mean, you’re experiencing emotion. But can you also consider what I felt to have to write that poem? It’s not about you and your tears right now. I’m trying to tell you a truth. And then you can go home, to your own space, and do all of that work yourself. I’m not here to do that work for you. I don’t know how this became me talking about my frustrations with people at readings, but that’s where we are, we’re here. (CHUCKLES)

Fred Sasaki: I’m so glad that you’re saying that. And, you know, I felt reading your poems, like, the toll of these poems, you know. You’re addressing, you’re grappling with so many difficult, difficult—so much atrocity. And telling that story and telling the detail, I was thinking about, you know, of course, how difficult that is to read, but how you have embodied that. And the toll that that takes on you as a poet, as a person, reliving that, embodying it. And just that is so outrageous that that person disinvited you in that way. And it reminds me of, you know, things that we experience at the Poetry Foundation. We’ve made recommendations, for example, to include “We Real Cool,” Gwendolyn Brooks’s great poem, in curriculum for children, and it being rejected, you know, for being too dark, or—

Ashley M. Jones: “We Real Cool”?

Fred Sasaki: Yes! Yes.

Ashley M. Jones: I mean, it is, but like, come on.

Fred Sasaki: And this was just in the last couple years, you know, so like, when do we stop, when do we, when do we listen? Now. Exclamation point.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

(RECORDING OF Gwendolyn Brooks READING “We Real Cool” PLAYS)

Gwendolyn Brooks:

“We Real Cool”

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We   
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We   
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We   
Die soon.

Ashley M. Jones: I think people who are … people who are so concerned with not teaching children about race, I wish they would just like maybe do more in their regular lives to stop racism. Like that’s an easy solution. If you don’t want us to teach about it, maybe stop doing it. Very easy.

Fred Sasaki: Oh, wow. Thank you for that, Ashley.

Ashley M. Jones: But yeah.

Fred Sasaki: I love listening to you and learning from you. I was hoping that you could take us through “Summer Vacation in the Subjunctive,” and begin as teacher Ashley in explaining to us, what is the subjunctive mood?

Ashley M. Jones: Oh, Lord. Well, let me, let me start. I am not a grammar teacher. Grammar teachers of the world, please, you know, be patient with me as I give this answer. Because it’s not my ministry, as they say, I’m just a creative writing teacher. But the subjunctive tense is like a conditional, I believe, tense where you’re, you say things like, “if I were, if I would, if I did.” It’s based in this “if” moment. So, these things have not yet happened. You’re sort of imagining that they happened, or you’re—it’s conditional, like I said, so “if” is the base. And I have to give credit to the poet Carl Phillips, and the poet Monica Sok, because that’s where this poem came from. Monica was at the Kenyon Writers’ Workshop working with Carl Phillips. Monica is a good friend of mine, and she was texting me about all the exercises that she was doing. And she told me about this one, where Carl Phillips asked the students to write a poem totally in the subjunctive tense. I did not go to the Kenyon Writers’ Workshop, but I got my little free exercise. I wrote this poem in the subjunctive tense, and it was attractive to me, this tense, because it sort of seemed like magic. Like I could erase something from my future or my past by just saying, “if I were, if I did this.” Now in reality, and in this poem, specifically, something really did happen. I really did have this horrible time with this horrible man. So that’s where this poem comes from, which is happy, I think, in a way, to my earlier point, because it is, I think, giving power back to me or to whoever reads it, to let them know that you actually can erase things as if by magic. They did happen. You don’t have to forget they happened. But you can sort of imagine a different past or future for yourself, just using language.

Fred Sasaki: Ashley, that was so brilliant, I’m so glad I asked. And so excited to hear you read it. And so when I, you know, had to look up myself the subjunctive mood and was so captivated by thinking about this mood, this unreality, or the wish, the emotion, the possibility, are the words that are used to describe this mood, and I was really feeling that. And also feeling, not that this is a light poem, but there’s a lightness to it, or I felt like a remove, in comparison to the other poems. And I just, I really loved that floating feeling. So yeah, without further ado, if you would bless us with this poem.

Ashley M. Jones: Yes, I love the word “bless.” Poems are blessings.

(READS POEM)

“Summer Vacation in the Subjunctive”

If I were a woman. If I were a wanted woman. If I were a woman with
soft fingers. If I were on a beach with a man—if he was a man, if a
man can be a man before he acts like a man. If I were on a beach with
a man and he held my hand. If I liked my hand being held, even if it
was held at the wrong angle. If my wrist was wringing in pain but I
kept it there. If my heart were held wrong, like my hand. If I kept it
there. If I was kept. If I was kept in pain. If I were pain. If I were a
woman—if I were a woman before I was a woman. If I were a woman
who knew her body like a woman knows her body. If a woman knew.
If I knew. If I were on a beach with that man—if, this time, that man
dissolved into sand. If the sand became hot under my feet but my feet
were gold. If a woman were made of sun. If I were made of sun. If I
burned the world around me until it shone beautiful and brown. If this
burning was called healing. If the healing made light. 

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Fred Sasaki: Love that poem. So the first thing I wanted to say, after listening to you read that, was how I feel like I could spend a whole episode on this one line, “if a man can be a man before he acts like a man.” But then I thought, wow, that’s such a man thing to do to want to just focus on that line.

Ashley M. Jones: No, there’s a lot in that line, Fred. You’re exactly right. There’s lots, okay, in that line. (CHUCKLES)

Fred Sasaki: But I really appreciate that and want to just read it over and over again and think about it. I love so many of the moments in here, “If I liked my hand being held, even if it was held at the wrong angle.”

Ashley M. Jones: I mean, a lot of it, for me, just talking about liberating myself, you know, from feeling shame around enjoying this relationship with this man who was not faithful to anything, you know, certainly not me. I wanted to relieve myself of the pressure of the shame of being this person who’s, you know, feminist, whatever, self-confident, all this stuff, and still being in this relationship and enjoying it, and being like, “Oh, I’m holding your hand, I’m so glad I’m here with you,” knowing that that you is not great. You know, I felt so many things around this relationship. A lot of pain. But there was a lot of joy, too, and I had to try to figure out a way to exist happily within myself knowing that, that I could think happily about him, while knowing the bad things, if that makes any sense. And that’s another kind of reparations, I think, that I explored in these poems. Because I wrote them at a time in life when I just kept having these kind of terrible experiences with men. And having to really allow myself to give myself time back, to give myself care back, to tell myself, “You’re still worthy of good things and a good relationship, and whatever, even though you’ve been through all of these horrible relationships.” I’m still telling myself that. It’s a daily sermon to myself that I’m still worthy, and that I can still imagine a different future for myself, no matter what I’ve been through in the past. And I did not come here to preach. I always say that to my friends. I didn’t come here to preach, but, it’s coming. It’s coming. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry. But yeah, this poem is a really important one to me for that reason, because it was one of the first times that I wrote about this particular situation, and that I felt like I could end the poem on light and on healing, instead of just on the pain that this person caused me.

Fred Sasaki: Something I’m picking up off of what you said, and I feel like echoes throughout the book is, right, this reminder of how we’re worthy of love, and being worthy of love. And for me too, demanding love. You know, like, and to be comfortable with like, “No. I demand love.” Like, “I deserve this. This is for me.” And going back to what we started off talking about, it’s not about money. Like, this is about love.

Ashley M. Jones: It really is. That should go on a T-shirt. It’s not about money. It’s about love. Because it’s so true. It’s so true in all levels of this conversation that we’ve been talking about, that we’ve been having, it does come down to love. And I don’t mean that in the kumbaya sort of way. I just mean, it does come down to, “I love me. I’d like for you to love you, so that I could keep loving me, alive here on Earth.” That’s really, I think, what it all boils down to. I am in no way, when I ask for reparations, wanting people to change their own worldview. If you want to be hateful in your own corner, that’s your corner, do what you want to do in your corner. But love yourself and your own hatefulness enough to keep it with you. I’ll keep my stuff with me. You know, I’ll spread love how I would like to. That’s all it is. Yeah. And it’s in every facet of our life—in the classroom, in our relationships, in ourselves, in our hearts. It’s everywhere. It’s everything.

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Fred Sasaki: Ashley M. Jones is the author of three poetry collections. Her newest book, Reparations Now! will be out this September. Jones lives in Birmingham, Alabama, where she is the founding director of the Magic City Poetry Festival. She also expertly guest edited the last three issues of Poetry magazine. If you’re enjoying the Poetry Magazine Podcast, let us know. Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. And if you’re not yet a subscriber to the magazine, there’s a special rate for podcast listeners. For a limited time, you can get a full year of the magazine for $20. That’s 11 book-length issues for just $20. Visit poetrymagazine.org/podcastoffer to subscribe. That’s poetrymagazine.org/podcastoffer. This show is produced by Rachel James. The music in this episode came from Resavoir, John McCowen, Rob Mazurek, and Irreversible Entanglements. Okay, that’s it. Until next time, be well, stay safe, and thanks as always for listening.

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