Savings Time: Poems

The activist and spoken-word dynamo Roya Marsh returns with a searing exploration of Black rage, solidarity, and healing.

what will come of what you leave behind?
do you
remember that time
you survived?

The poems in Roya Marsh's second collection, savings time, wear their raw feeling and revolutionary forcefulness on their sleeves. Alternating between confrontation and celebration, Marsh trains her unsparing eye on the twinned subjects of Black rage and Black healing with practiced, musical intention.

In poems flitting between breathless prose and measured lyricism, Marsh contemplates the contradictions and challenges of Black life in America, tackling everything from police brutality and urban gentrification to queer identity, presidential elections, and pop culture, all while calling for a world where self-care, especially for
Black women, is not just encouraged but mandated. "no one told the Black girl," she writes, "'see you later' was a prayer / begging us survive our own erasure."

As unforgettable on the page as when recited in Marsh's legendary spoken-word performances, the poems in savings time are focused on both revolution and self-love, at once holding society accountable for its exploitation of Black life and honoring the joy of persisting nonetheless.