Poetry. African & African American Studies. "Aaron Coleman's undeniable ST. TRIGGER breaks open the conflicted masculinities in the fist-heavy spaces around Black America. Through his hard-hitting, sonic verses, all of the frustrations pushing against Blackness in 2016—the insistent danger, the unforgiving partisanship, the violence—are transformed into necessary resilience. There is so much beauty here, too, in Coleman's dexterous imagery. But even in the elegant spaces, these poems are looking over their shoulder just to be safe. As the speaker of 'Elegy for Apogee' asks, 'How close is absurdity, is irrelevance, is danger?'—Adrian Matejka "The spirit of danger that permeates every line of St. Trigger makes Aaron Coleman a poet to watch and admire." -- Jericho Brown, author of The New Testament A Fulbright Scholar and Cave Canem Fellow from Metro-Detroit, Aaron Coleman has lived and worked with youth in locations including Kalamazoo, Chicago, Spain, and South Africa. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis' MFA Program and Kalamazoo College in Psychology, Aaron most recently taught Poetry Writing at Washington University in St. Louis, worked as Public Projects Assistant at Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and was co-poetry editor for The Spectacle . His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Apogee, Boston Review, Fence, The Greensboro Review, Meridian, Pinwheel, River Styx, Southern Indiana Review, Third Coast, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. A two-time semifinalist for the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest and winner of the Tupelo Quarterly TQ5 Poetry Contest, Aaron is currently a PhD student in Washington University in St. Louis' Comparative Literature Program, where he is studying translation. Her Song a Cliff a Cage How did it end up in that house. Hand-forged burl and bole and shoulder. Figure sheathed beneath cloth. What sunk and became the room. What was draped and standing taller than this woman who made the woman who made me known. Restless wire sacrament. A hole made of music comes wide, inhuman from a crooked instrument, a torso almost hollowed, rimmed in shades of pink and ivory. Nothing black about this anchor. Beyond memory, she touched its strings, spilled improbable sound. I will always be a child to that harp. Confused. Never allowed to touch. A deafening gleam when its music moved through lightless rooms, through walls and bodies alike. I became silence. I've become cumbersome as love I cannot hold. Then let me be that music that consumes midnight. Let me make chords with what comes from this blood.