Within Diamond Forde’s Loving Suite, we may find both the world that is ours and the world that preceded it and, oh, how little and how much has changed. “and I think at least our love is legal now like the/ law never legalized the wrong” writes Forde in The Lovings Left Their Door Unlocked. In these poems Love is so many things: acceptance, legal conflict, safety, resilient and defiantly naked. The speaker of these poems contains, as all Black women do, multitudes upon multitudes. We cannot be surprised by this, as the speaker states in Why We Don’t Wanna Marry White Guys (But Do Anyway): “A black woman / is everything”.
And yet with Forde’s tremendous gift for enjambment, we see the whole of this statement. Via Forde’s command of caesura it is clear that when one is a Black woman, it is not even enough to be everything. “A black woman / is everything her mouth can do / but talk.” Here is a voice that knows “trust / is to leave yourself open / to dogs with teeth / called law.” Here is a voice that is deserving and knows it. “is that too reductive / for your comfort? / I want comfort / too.” Here is a voice who hears that Sheriff Brooks Wanted To Catch Them Having Sex and responds “I wish you would/walk up in my house” who says with unimpeachable grace and ferocity “I’ll show you / all my human parts / Show you my teeth.”
Black men are not blameless in these poems, our daily and casual violence too is fair game and rightly so. "He’s begging our lips/be rimmed more beige than brown, a light- / skinned shawty: black men’s want/ born from 300 years of white masters and rape-" Within these poems Forde takes aim and no portion of history is spared examination and it leaves me unshakably grateful to have witnessed. Diamond Forde is a true gift to American letters, to American history, these poems stand as testament, as testimony, as a trust worthy, always, of our admiration.