Thick Black Lines by Christie Cruise

Christie Cruise’s collection Thick Black Lines is a vibrant reclamation of voice, a taking of space with poems that sing and sting the psyche into deep compassion. “I found a sacred place within me—fat, Black, beautiful me. And, oh, the heavens I hold…” Both achingly tender and raw with rage, these poems are unflinching anthems of a Black woman, writing defiantly from the margins, with verses on grief’s stranglehold, the struggles of being human, depression, body image, loss, sexual abuse, systemic violence, societal oppression, history’s repeating cycles of Black genocide, and the overwhelming and inextinguishable magic of Blackness. “My Black is the firmament! It is the canvas from which the stars hang. It is vast and engulfing. It is nothing and everything. My Black is Black! So black it’s blue-black. I wish a MF would, Black. Black sorrow, Black tears, Black blood, Black. My Black is bold! It is unapologetic. It is fearless, it rages on. It is resilient! It never gives up. It never fails. It is love.” Thick Black Lines stands as a brave and glorious act of resistance and power. I proudly stand beside every word.

–Kai Coggin, Hot Springs Poet Laureate, author of Mining for Stardust and Incandescent

“In Thick Black Lines, poems are incantations of what can awaken and what can break – Black girls, the idea of magic, grief, depression, and how we uplift ourselves when the world says we’re “too dark to matter.”  With observations on Black bodies and the cultural margins of America, Cruise also leads us to the natural world of wind, water, and the music that shapes us. These are poems of a life well-lived and leaves us looking for more, while wondering, what else does she see?”

–Cynthia Manick, author of No Sweet Without Brine