A Map of My Want by Faylita Hicks is centered on desire and the grief embedded in it, as wanting something is based in lacking. Hicks is the author of the acclaimed 2019 collection HoodWitch, a collection detailing a Black nonbinary femme experience in the contexts of mysticism and Afrofuturism. A Map of My Want has a similar spirit, framed by a post-incarceration narrative in the rural South. Early in the work, Hicks identifies "the year our young grew past their progress," identifying the constancy of time and the damage it deals to our lives. That poem, titled "Coasting", states that the narrator's life is "coasting from one fatal moment to the next." It characterizes lives as simultaneously minute but significant, lived against the damaging tide of time, with an optimism for a more progressive future.
The author's desires are practical and her actions are effective. Hicks is a member of the Statewide Leadership Council that works with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition and Detention Watch Network. She is an active voice for incarceration policy change, with immigrant detention and deconstructing cash bail in rural Texas as recent areas of focus. Hicks is uniquely positioned as a poet and activist, using the desires in A Map of My Want as ideals for a better future. The work reflects her belief in radically renovating established systems (such as jail or the sexual binary) to obtain a meaningful sense of wellbeing. In her poet-activist role, Hicks demonstrates that the written word has great power in the process of meaningful change.
A Map of My Want uses desire to compare and contrast dynamics, such as its reference of politics put against interpersonal relationships. In "Finger Hut," Hicks references sex and the antidepressant Doxepin in the same breath. "I am quietly unzipped / beneath Netflix and therapy sessions," Hicks writes, expressing a deep unrest extending beyond the sexual theme of the poem. This dissatisfaction—evidenced by Hicks' line that she "forget[s] who I was" preceding the anti-depressant name drop—has dripping teeth looking for something satisfying to sink into. Referencing synthetic light, she "Growl[s] beneath the glowing screens, all fang and grunt," ultimately ending up ruminating in a scalding shower. The poem's narration is seeking something that it is ultimately unable to find, complementing the work's overall theme of moving from desire to desire to establish meaning.
Hicks' interpretation of desire is both physical and abstract, using both forms as a loupe for social and political issues. As such, Haymarket Books describes the text as an "offspring" of Audre Lorde's work. In The Uses of the Erotic, Lorde identifies "the chaos of our strongest feelings" as a powerful force. A Map of My Want uses this power to pair personal desire with broader social change. Hicks' queer nonbinary femme perspective produces a narrative longing for this shift. Her poetry contrasts identity, love, and longing against the oppressive influence of systemic oppression. Like Lorde, Hicks challenges the orthodox.
However, A Map of My Want is also distinguished from its spiritual predecessors through its references to contemporary emotional fatigue. In "A Liberation All My Own," Hicks lists desires that are presumably currently out of reach. She wants "To have a single dime / to my name" and "To be finally settled / in my grief," personal hardships that connect to the larger collective struggle of the modern American experience. However, this compassion fatigue does not eclipse Hicks' desire for social change. The work's theme of desire presents personal and political wants as intertwined, suggesting that her individual well being (and the world's) is connected to societal transformation.
A Map of My Want connects desire and grief, using the intrinsic link between wanting and lacking to address both personal and political realms. Her poetry, working in the inevitable trajectory of all life, transforms loss into a cautious idealism for a progressive future. By pairing her lived experience with a broader social commentary, A Map of My Want is an evocative and dialectical accomplishment complementing her existing writing and social justice work. Her dual identity as both poet and activist challenges others to work for a more egalitarian status quo.
POETRY
A Map of My Want
by Faylita Hicks
Haymarket Books
Published July 9th, 2024
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