Listen to Cortney Lamar Charleston read “It’s Important I Remember That Even Beyoncé Got Cheated On—” from Shō No. 5 (Summer 2024).
About this poem: Despite its seeding in popular culture, this poem is part of a larger project concerned with the ascent of fascism and, resultingly, how rips in our relationships limit our ability to respond to it. I couldn’t approach the subject without turning the lens on myself at times, as I did in this poem.
– Cortney Lamar Charleston
Cortney Lamar Charleston is the author of three full-length poetry collections: Telepathologies (Saturnalia Books, 2017), selected by D.A. Powell for the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize; Doppelgangbanger (Haymarket Books, 2021), named a best book of 2021 by the New York Public Library and The Boston Globe; and It’s Important I Remember (Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press, forthcoming). He was awarded a 2017 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and he has also received fellowships from Cave Canem and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Winner of a Pushcart Prize, his poems have appeared in POETRY, The Nation, The Atlantic, The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review and elsewhere.
This poem appears in Shō No. 5 (Summer 2024).
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