American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin -- Terrance Hayes

Terrance Hayes is showing us how to live and love in the age of Trump, and beyond. Written during the first two hundred days of 45’s presidency, these seventy sonnets of the same title give heart, humor, gut, rage and meditation to what many of us may be feeling; they deal with the shadows of America's history with racism with meteoric metaphor: “I make you gym & crow here. As the crow/You undergo a beautiful catharsis trapped one night/in the shadows of the gym.” (#11) Hayes has re-woken the sonnet so we can dance with it.