Listen to Elontra Hall read “Hagakure” from Shō No. 5 (Summer 2025).
“While back at home in Detroit, after my younger brother and I had finished playing one on one, I watched from a distance as he spent what felt like both a moment and an eternity, working on his jump-shot. It was summer and dusk was approaching and as the wind blew, I realized that this was my brother’s essential nature: to do everything as if it is the only thing. It was very moving for me and inspiring to witness, so sitting down to write this, I focused on being as present as I possibly could and stopped the moment I felt my mind drift, to make sure I was being as respectful to my craft as my brother is to his.”
– Elontra Hall
Elontra Hall — a Black-American poet based in Northampton — centers much of his work around fatherhood, basketball, relationships and identity. He has been published in HeadFake, Butcher’s Dog (16), Magma (82, 87), Propel (6) Shō (5), Prairie Schooner, and had work broadcast on BBC 4’s Poetry Please (Christmas 2022). He is a student on the Poetry School MA in conjunction with Newcastle University as well as the holder of its Scholarship to an outstanding candidate for the 2023 – 2025 cohort. He is an Obsidian Foundation Fellow and a member of both Griot’s Well and The Watering Hole.
This poem appears in Shō No. 5 (Summer 2024).
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