We Inherit What the Fires Left: Poems

by William Evans

William Evans, the award-winning poet and cofounder of the popular culture website Black Nerd Problems, offers an emotionally vulnerable poetry collection exploring the themes of inheritances, dreams, and injuries that are passed down from one generation to the next and delving into the lived experience of a black man in the American suburbs today.

In We Inherit What the Fires Left, award-winning poet William Evans embarks on a powerful new collection that explores the lived experience of race in the American suburbs and what dreams and injuries are passed from generation to generation. Fall under the spell of Evans’s boldly intimate, wise, and emotionally candid voice in these urgent, electrifying poems.

This eloquent collection explores not only what these inheritances are composed of, but what price the bearer must pay for such legacies, and the costly tolls exacted on both body and spirit. Evans writes searingly from the perspective of the marginalized, delivering an unflinching examination of what it is like to be a black man raising a daughter in predominantly white spaces, and the struggle to build a home and a future while carrying the weight of the past.

However, in beautiful and quiet scenes of domesticity with his daughter or in thoughtful reflection within himself, Evans offers words of hope to readers, proving that resilience can ultimately bloom even in the face of prejudice. Readers of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Hanif Abdurraqib will find a brilliant, fresh new talent to add to their lists in William Evans.

Genres: Poetry, Race, Nonfiction, African American, Audiobook, Ebooks

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 24, 2020

About the author

Librarian note: There are multiple authors with this name. This profile is for William^^Evans, founder of Black Nerd Problems.

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Evans captures the experience of being black in America, and parenting the next generation (his daughter features prominently.) Favorites included:

NIGHTMARE COURT
"...but I know what it
feels like to be rid
of the monster
and still fear
the sword
that slayed it."

EVERY BLACK KID OVER 30 HAS A STORY ABOUT PICKING THEIR OWN SWITCH
"...You know
the world wants to hollow you out because you
loved someone that was once your age and now
they no longer have an age...."

ACRES
"...Can you haunt
a home you never laid your bones in?..."

LORE
"You laugh like everything
is not burning. ..."

This collection came out March 24, 2020 and I had a copy from the publisher through Edelweiss.

[Hiba · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heartily believe that not all poetry belongs to every reader. This has been a pleasant overnight ride.

Though they wilt   as well let us
forget about trees for a moment
the sometimes-tended garden
bushes with modest   thorns
pricked-proven fingers with love for the grasp
and   pretend that blackness were   a shrub

once cured   ready for the earth fresh start little black
flex like you don’t owe   anyone a
language
or a service   If I knew
the dirt would          hold me like a secret
I might
not fear
its embrace
*******************************
Between the fences grows everything
hard to reach. Full of thorn twisting
through the gaps of the planks, some
pricking the wood while the stem

continues skyward, caught
on other weeds. Dew collects
on the stiffened leaves, translucent
then purple like its host.


This was the fourth book of my O.W.L.s readathon (Arithmancy, because I rarely read poetry).

[Nick Reno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obviously this collection is mostly about the black experience in America, so I'm looking in from the outside here. Take my review with a grain of salt I guess, as a dumb white boy.

There's some really great imagery in here, and an overwhelming feeling of a tempered, weary, joy. Hope for his daughter clashes with intense melancholy for what he and his have been through to get here. It's beautiful and honestly almost too much to take with the world the way it is right now. (Is it ever not?)

[Wyatt Kerns · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the message and the heart of this poetry collection, but I am kinda particular when it comes to unconventional format for poetry: it has to have a purpose. I wasn't able to comprehend the intention of the different formatting of the poems, which really affected my experience reading this.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning and powerful. Breaking my heart, these poems capture what it feels for the poet to be a father of a Black girl and how it feels to walk in a world that judges and kills you based on skin color. It hurts so much to know we live in these times, still.

“Every nightfall is a black they can’t murder.”

The poems cover a lot of ground, a universe of meaning and feeling and depth, and there are killer lines in each one, more than one. I have no idea what the literary experts thinks of poems, but these move you and shake you and illuminate the beauty of love, in a time and land of systemic racism, and yes, overwhelming white supremacy, and that is worth all the awards.

“The ground is better at giving us names/than the sky ever was.”

Nothing here surprised me, the fierce love, the fierce pain:

“The elders want us to raise
Girls with a song in their heart, but we only respect
The classics if they respected us, which is why
If you ask me how I’m doing, I say still breathing.”

And the insight into not being able to be yourself not just because enough want to fit in but because it was life or death?

“Do you know how many
classrooms i either dulled my my sharp or dulled
My black until I got tired of being the only
kingdom without its own campaign?”

Death, always a possibility in this culture that is ruled by a current of white people being superior. I am also reading Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands, and he talks about this white body supremacy as residing in our lizard brains that lead to the brutality and fear, and it has to stop. Just has to. However we need to make it happen, we have to make it happen.

“Lord knows we have put enough potential into
The ground to make a college of prayers.”

“I know now why
The Babylonians invented days of the week; their worst
Day never ending scared them to death.“

“I have left
So many behind I feel them like a parachute.
The wind is always angry, or maybe I am the wind,
Or maybe I am always...”

Poems:

The Engine

The sun fell out of the window
And my daughter caught it with her teeth.
Every nightfall
is a black they can’t murder.
The days my car makes it
to the garage are the days I can live forever.
Even flattened not the street, an officer’s
Knee against my back, I look young for my age.
They say you can chart time by stargazing or
Knowing all the stars you see are already dead.
If the tops of the trees are the newest life, everything
From my father’s land looks like the future.
When I retrieve the mail, I am reminded
Of what can outlive me.
When I was a boy, we gathered
Sticks that resembled bones
We tried to resurrect our ancestors but they refused.
We have given you death once, why would you give
That back?
I had a cut above my eye once,
And assumed everything I saw was bleeding.
The ground is is better at giving us names
Than the sky has ever been.
————
Clean

Still wet from the bath/ a girl has a song/
Caught in her skin/ she moves side to side /
Limbs sprinting out/ like new animals/
Stop child/ I warm the lotion and try/
To apply it /to a moving target in and out/
Of my reach/ hit an elbow and a calf/
The giggles don’t stop/ and I practice/
Aging while trying/ not to fire blanket/
The atomic girl/ who laughs at everything/
Including bedtime/ and I finally glisten/
An arm, chest, left/ smiling cheek not/
Because I have/ gotten better but the child/
Has slowed with age/ and now a playful hand/
Is a potential fist/ a scarred knuckle/
The one leg will/ get less perfect after/
A fall remember when/ I wore crutches, Daddy/
Not yet am I witness/ she grabs the car keys/
My empty handed / objection, the house empties/
When she leaves/ the first time, a collapse/
Of myth, I will remember/ before I became/
A ghost ship, wasn’t always/ a bedtime or my/
Once confident hands/ glistening, holding/
A brand new sun/

————————

Explaining racism to my seven year old

One weekend my in-laws visited
And they brought their dog Peanut
With them, who lays herself out on every
Floor of the house unless there is food
Present and the Peanut can’t be still,
Can’t be oblivious to whatever has been
Fixed on a plate even if it ain’t
Her. Each night when the witching hours
arrives, Peanut begins to bark for no
Apparent reason, and the girl asks me
If I can see what is scaring her, but my
Best guess is everything else that can bark too.

The Truth About Families

I used to think that every parent
Believes their child to be one of one
I know a lot of parents say this but-
And what they are really saying is
This is the best that my body can produce
And this child is the best future
That my insides have wrought
Is your galaxy vaster
than mine? I wouldn’t argue
That once my wife and I lay in our
Too-many-roomed house when the power
Failed and the open windows let in
A winter air but not enough noise,
So we created a night’s sky in our image...
Once I watched a show
Where a man’s daughter stopped breathing
And his grief crashed two planes together
Maybe we make stars in the sky
After it no longer looks like us, too. Maybe
This is what it means to say your child is like
None other when when everyone who was once
Someone’s child ceases to exist. I wonder
If i could be so vacated by loss
That I would make everyone’s best
effort fall from the sky, which i guess
I am asking, would I be so hollow
That i could stand to stare
Above me and watch the sun pull
My child away where I can’t follow?
Or am I simply too old now to believe
In everything that produces light?

Pledge to Raising a Black Girl

You would’ve thought we set that girl on fire
How she got so cocky, smart as a broken window.
We kept telling people how hard it is to raise a child
Who keeps figuring out how to make more trouble
And they just laughed like wonder where she got
that from. Wasn’t much of a question as much
As politely calling us a problem with a solution
barely worth the effort. Do you know how many
classrooms i either dulled my my sharp or dulled
My black until I got tired of being the only
kingdom without its own campaign?
How do you know what you have a taste for
If you’ve been told never to show your teeth?
this time I swaddled her in old blues and new
blues and several choruses I didn’t plan on
Being present for. The elders want us to raise
Girls with a song in their heart, but we only respect
The classics if they respected us, which is why
If you ask me how I’m doing, I say still breathing.
If you ask me how I’ve been, I say less...
I mean if there’s anything I am perfect
at, it’s still being alive and maybe that’s worth
Passing one, maybe she doesn’t mind reminding
People everyday how impossible that is.

I Never Got over Tre getting out of Doughboy’s car

Because Boyz in the Hood was a passage...
Lord knows we have put enough potential into
The ground to make a college of prayers...
Dear reader, I have worn black and driven
Into a night’s percussion looking for something to
Empty... I have been at the wheel
Of my ending where all the wisdom I hear
Last escaped from the throats of dead things...
And yes,
My father spent godless nights waiting to yell
At his still alive boy. He had seen sons get into cars
And transports and cruisers and bar windowed buses
And never return or at least never call home
But mostly, reader, I guess I am almost
always the car itself carrying the bodies
Toward the end of things or being left when my toll
is too high. I can only let death ring
out from me for so long until I
Start to look like death itself.
I can only suffer the seal
Of my doors closing
So many times, so many last rites
Before I refuse to open them again.

I Will Love You the Most when I Barely Remember Anything

My first two crushes are fifty yards apart
In the same Ohio cemetery. They never knew each other
But now I connect them like a bowstring. I keep
Memories like a modeled city, the tallest buildings
Enacting themselves between my shoulders...
I drop my daughter off at school. An officer
Pulls me out of my car as the sun goes down. Something
Dies in between. When aging, the only thing
that becomes agile is time. I know now why
The Babylonians invented days of the week; their worst
Day never ending scared them to death.

There Is Another

Me, I suppose. You may call it
Another world, but it’s me
When i am not
Here. Maybe it’s the one that
didn’t get this far. He never
Loved the night’s opening, took
All the chances. Maybe he never
Married, maybe be married endlessly,
Taking into himself over and over.
I am exhausted by him. He has
Answers for all my rooms.
He has several daughters. Not just
The one, scared sometimes, all limbs
And jubilant all the time. She doesn’t
Ask him things he doesn’t know.

Maybe her questions are easier
For his comfort. Maybe he’s
Made every question into a hymnal
She can hum back to him. Or maybe
He lies and only I can tell the difference.

After

During the second hour, with the sun still
stuck in the sky, my father and I hold the cross
Bow of our swing set above us as he tightens
A screw. Then, our arms still extended above
Us, he hands the tool to me and I try to make
My side mirror his. We have done this for decades,
The span of me...He says they don’t build things
To stay anymore, and I know he is
Apologizing how he left our home, built
One without us. Once my side is tightened, we let go
Of the swing set to stand on its own, a bar above
our heads, steady as a firm hand. He reaches out
For the tool, and I know I should call more
Often, that i have built a house between
us and filled it with years. We begin to hang
the swings, the plastic horse, the slide, green
And wavy, extending its new song down into the grass.
He comments how I have taken care of the yard,
And he understands I won’t let him die alone.

Lore

You laugh like everything
Is not burning. Make me pinky swear
To sleep better. You say, It’s ok Daddy,
When i have believed myself
invisible. Waste not your powers,
Love. I don’t say this. I say less every day.
I stare mostly. Be nice and say I observe
To the point of obsession. Everyone
Has a science, but yours is a spell. Yes, also
Because it’s mine, too. Your mother
Is weaving a forgotten lore, too. I forget
She is a dream I once wandered through too.
You do the cartwheel when it’s gymnastics season.
Until it is all you can do in the living room,
Garage, backyard, half dry from the bath....
What i want to say is that I write about dying
less than I used to. There is less room
For its ballad, the wailing, the persuasion.
What I want to say is that I have died so
many times. I have emptied
Because I didn’t trust
What tried to fill me. I have left
So many behind I feel them like a parachute.
The wind is always angry, or maybe I am the wind,
Or maybe I am always...
The night is a starless void,
Until you can seem them, the star, winking
Like a secret, the great-great relative
Someone older is always talking about,
And I realize this is how
Things don’t die. They are loved on by those
Too young to believe in death’s
Argument. Thank you for not allowing me to die yet.
Even though I have asked so nicely.

[Matt Kantor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally with a book of poetry, there will be a few poems that have me grinning by the end of it after a clever turn of phrase. Evans’ collection had plenty of this but also one poem that stood out to me: “Coriolis Effect.” By a dozen lines in, I was actually laughing out loud, but this made the whiplash of the poem’s ending all the more startling.

[Fearyl · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I was once a beautiful bouquet of new stalks, but no one told us what it takes to bloom. So many of us are pulled up, root and all. You don't wait for something to flower if you were only taught what the ground will take "

[Martine · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Litwithlove · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this so much. The poems were horribly executed in this attempt at magical realism? The blending of what is actually being said as a story element and the emotional reaction that it is expecting are a garbled mess. I love poetry, and especially poetry written by bipoc. I am a black lady. I very much love it when people go on tangents about white people and "the whites". Productive or otherwise, I love seeing this perspective. But man William Evans really includes and blames white people for seemingly not a whole lot, and I am not trying to help out the wipipo on this one. But it feels like it is a forced perspective over and over again, because I never even felt an established ground as to what the fuck was actually evening happening. Then he threw in some white people.

[Genee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ouch, this struck a cord in my heart and it hasn’t stopped ringing. Evans told the real stories of generational racism his family has endured. Truly touching.

[Dom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of poetry not often honored by white society. Worth rereading; would dig to have a physical copy to compare what I heard through the audio version.

[Scott Raphael · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s too pop poetry for me. The second half is better, more obscure with some better imagery and metaphors, more interpretable obscurity. The first half is a little too in-your-face obvious. Some of the second half is, as well. I see that Evans has experience with slam poetry, which makes sense to me, as I often felt like I was reading slam poetry (which isn’t really my favourite style). There’s value in the messages, there’s value for those who like slam and modern pop poetry (not to be confused with modernist poetry). But it’s not really for me.

[Sam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nope nope nope. Not for me.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoy poetry about parenthood, and this collection is chalk full of it. While I cannot relate to being a parent or being black, I was truly moved by many of these poems. This collection gained a lot of points with me because it’s modern poetry that isn’t structured with 2 lines that have 3 syllables each (lol). The only thing I didn’t love about how some of these poems were structured is that some of them read like a short story, or a passage of prose just edited to be in stanzas for the sake of being put into a poetry book. That’s not to say the writing wasn’t beautiful, it just didn’t read like a poem on all the pages.

I knocked two stars because while I loved the content, the themes, and the structuring… the figurative language wasn’t there for me and some of the poems felt lacking. Additionally, I have to be honest, poetry that uses spaces (what looks like a tab in the middle of a line) throughout a poem to create a visual effect or to add emphasis to words isn’t really my jam. It wasn’t everywhere throughout this collection but it was in places for sure. Maybe I just don’t get it or the purpose of it!

Overall, I did enjoy this! I will be coming back to these, for sure.

[Adam Bowman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A truly powerful read. Sobering to hear the lived experience of a black man in America in a city only an hour or so from me. Honored to have beared witness to a small part.

This collection explores topics of race, white suburbia, trauma, generational progress, parenthood, death, and how to cope throughout it all. The poet often names his own cynicism overtly in what it is like to face racism daily but maintains tone that is hopeful in the face of great wrong. He often reflects on his experiences through his daughter's eyes, which is what brings him back to hope; or rather brings him back to the better parts of himself, daring to live a life of hope.

This covers heavy ground of racism in America today but also is tender as only a loving father can be with his daughter. Left with a feeling of triumph & resilience in the face of great difficulty.

[Marley]

A very cohesive collection which I unfortunately did not enjoy too much. The poems are universally about the struggles faced by the author raising a black family in white America, and offer some scathing insight as to the damage that can wreak.
For me-and I know my opinion on this work matters precious little-some of the language feels overwrought, like some of the metaphors or devices are too far a reach to include in the poems here. I also felt the poems tended to feel a little samey-I know the collection is centered around a few closely related themes, and I admire the dedication to this idea, but the poems don’t vary in structure enough to make each one an interesting, separate experience.
I’m glad I read this, but I didn’t enjoy it too much. Maybe some other time I’d get more out of it.

[Jeremy Brundage · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of poems will take you on a whirlwind of emotions through its brutally honest depiction of life for a black father. His vulnerability in each poem expresses so much pain, fear, but there is still hope. There are parts that will make your heart break, some will make you curse under your breath, and some parts that will make you laugh.

“I was once a beautiful bouquet of new stalks, but no one told us what it takes to bloom. So many of us are pulled up, root and all. You don’t wait for something to flower if you were only taught what the ground will take.”

“Have you ever descended into a bathtub, or an ocean trying to disprove a baptism? Have you ever been dying of thirst , only to discover that you are the drought.”

[Celeste Loia · Rating 3 out of 5]

For most of this one, I felt like I was back in my AP Lit class, when everything we read just went right over my head. (I picked this one up from the library for my "genre you don't read often" bingo square, and I felt how little I read poetry in my understanding.) However, the poems that I were able to understood really packed a punch.

***excerpts***

"If I'm honest, I don't know

what idols to keep
and what blood oaths

to break--I don't love
anything enough

to forget its birth."
Inheritance (20)

"I was once a beautiful bouquet of new stalks,
but nobody told us what it takes to bloom.
So many of us were pulled up, root and all."
My Lyft Driver Says You Shouldn't Call Your Children Smart (73)

         "We are all aging out
                   of someone else's dream."
Acres (142)

[Mara]

Poems in this collection I really liked include “Inheritance,”(note: there are five poems in the collection with this title) “Waves,” “Might Have to Kill,” and “Explaining Racism to My Seven-Year-Old,” and “Sacrificial.”

“But I am fury and I don’t want to leave.”
--from “Inheritance”

“Besides,
Building a heaven doesn’t mean
you get to stay.”
--from “Passing for Day”

“I would wish you luck
but there are more stories about love
than there are those willing
to die for it”
--from “Looking Over My Shoulder, She Discovers a Lynching”

“I know what it
feels like to be rid
of the monster
and still fear
the sword
that slayed it.”
--from “Nightmare Court”

[Regan Strehl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lines that stuck with me:

"If I say I need a new workout, I'm asking which animal is the hardest to kill." ~108

"She says I know this isn't really a question because of course it was hard, I have the markings to prove it. I search her face for absolution but she hasn't heard my voice for some time now." ~134

"I hope that once someone rips everything useful out of me, I will still haunt them." ~135

"We are all aging out of someone else's dream." ~142

"All love is sticky to the touch." And "I have emptied because I didn't trust what tried to fill me." ~145

[Ben Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every poem has a gut punch, full of emotion, full of vulnerability and pain and joy and hunger. For the dreams, fears, and realities of being black that I can't relate to - I felt the punch. For the dreams, fears, and realities of being a father and being a son that I can relate to - I felt the punch. This collection doesn't pull its punches, but it also doesn't hesitate to wrap the reader in a hug as well.

I inhaled each page with ferocity and never wanted it to end. The collection demands me return and fully appreciate every line and give a full accounting of its impact on me. I hope that someday I can.

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about race, identity, family, fatherhood, and America.

from Soft Prayer for the Teething: "Be it the miracle wounding. / Be it the tearing of one's own / body to allow invasion. Be it / the song that won't be suppressed/ / The courtship that only happens / at nightfall."

from Inheritance: "I don't h old any sin // separate from / the father. I take // all the history / into my mouth / and swallow / without tasting."

from Pledge to Raising a Black Girl: "I mean, if there's anything I'm perfect at, it's still being alive and maybe that's worth / passing on, maybe she doesn't mind reminding / people every day how impossible that is."

[Khepre · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intrigued set of poems. However, some poems did not hammer it home like I thought it could have. Also, at first I thought it was the lack of connection to fatherhood where I could point out me not completely interacting with this collection of poetry as positively as I could be but that’s not the case. I have read books that have hammered in that idea of fatherhood with flawless precision. This is not one of those books. I did, though,love this book discussions on race. My favorite poems from this collection include: “The Engine”, “Pledge to Raising a Black Girl”, and “How to Assimilate”.

[Bethany Loper · Rating 4 out of 5]

I so so loved this collection of poems. I only rated it 4.99 stars because "Bone" and "Giving birth to my mother" take up so much space in my heart that I can't part with 5 stars 😂. It was refreshing to hear about black fatherhood in a way that doesn't involve the abandonment of brown children. I also loved how he took on racial injustices in his own voice without the echo of the same metaphors and words to paint the picture. I plan to read the rest of the collections from this author soon.

[J. Coates · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a thoroughly good collection. The poems themselves are in various places concerning, thought-provoking, and comforting, as well as consistent--this collection doesn't have the mix of spectacle surrounded by filler seen in so many poetry collections.

Except for the last poem: "Lore" is jaw-dropping and beautiful, an earned climax to this collection. Good lord that's one of the best things I've ever read.

[Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating poetry is a tall order - do we rate the verse, the cadence....the feeling? Much like rating a still life on a gallery wall, some collection of the experience warrants consideration. These were not my preferred structure of poetry, nor relatable as a child-free white woman. And yet there were powerful words and evocative whispers. What the fires left was a low chant - a haunting. One cannot ask more of art than that.

[Lynn DiFerdinando]

A mix of topics that all tie together. Fatherhood, his father, growing up black, and thoughts about owning a house. A mix of The group of Inheritance poems definitely deserved the title. Other favorites: Good Storm, Might Have To Kill, Descendant, Forty Six Degrees, Nightmare Court, Lore.

[Alison Sea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this, a new favorite poetry collection of mine. It captured a lot of feelings about being Black and having to fear for your life, as well as confronting what death looks like and a fear of it. It's interlaced with pockets of home and joy and belonging as well.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I don't belong to anything that hasn't died at least once, so mark me like the promise you are conflicted about. I have risen from stronger lies”

just an example of some of the beautiful and profound writing contained in this short, little poetry collection

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the consistent threads throughout that tied the poems together. The collection felt long, likely due to skipping versos when possible. Highly accessible. Would recommend and would come back to it, though I'd be more excited to read later works from Evans.