Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

It exists in knots but nobody will say 

how it appeared there, why, who snitched 

and stitched it up, or when. 

It makes the shark’s teeth cut as they do 

when they slit enamel into bone easy 

as plugs into coy sockets.  

Does the K have a temper? Perhaps it should 

because it sounds like a can’t. Switch the a to 

a u and it sounds like washing your mouth out with  

Listerine. This is a litany against the commonwealth  

of anger displaced onto the K. 

The K is not okay – 

the K is the most misunderstood, ignored, indentured 

letter of all. But K is a creature  

unlike any else. Insouciance magical. 

What and why and where did it never exist 

until now? Until now. Till before, where when Kemetic, 

Kush, Khan, Kryptos, Knight, Afrika, Amerikkka – hey bambaataa  

you three Ks in a row that mean death. K where a C  

used to be – watch me now – means a new life 

existence evicted from exile into now 

into the before-now, 

don’t ask how yet, but, 

home again. 

Not all pretty words end in Cs and easy-Es. Not all  

language is Romantic but all language is 

loved and lived through so 

don’t touch her hair 

don’t say her name, it has a K in it 

that don’t belong to you.