FICTION & POETRY

Blue Milk is a mood: A concoction of poetry for your collection. The eighth book of poems by Kelvin C. Bias emerges from the idea of creating personal libations—with actual liquids or metaphorical ones. A drink may start with something as simple as a glass of milk, and end with something profound far beyond our blue planet. The choice is yours.

THIS COLLECTION OF POEMS conveys my anger and sadness over the current state of America—black, brown, yellow, red, white, and blue. On May 25, 2020—Memorial Day—a white woman named Amy Cooper walked her dog without a required leash in an area of Central Park known as the Ramble, and Christian Cooper, a peaceful, bird-watching black man, asked her to leash her dog. The legacy of slavery writ-large in the astounding fact they had the same surname. Amy responded by calling 911 to say that "an African-American man" was threatening her and her dog. Christian calmly recorded the incident. (Imagine what might have happened if he hadn't.) The video went viral and provided a painful reminder of the tradition of white women falsely accusing black men of a crime. Later that night, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a black man named George Floyd, who was not resisting arrest, was pressed face down into the pavement with a knee to his neck for seven minutes and 46 seconds—seven minutes and 46 seconds—by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Floyd died as he narrated his own death. "I can't breathe." Protests over Floyd's killing raged in cities across America for days, weeks...forever? On July 17, John Lewis, civil rights icon and Georgia Congressman, died from pancreatic cancer, and a few days before he passed, he wrote an essay to be released on the day of his funeral. On July 30, it ran in The New York Times. In his essay, Lewis wrote: "When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something." The Last Will & Testament of the United States of America is the poet's way of saying and doing "something."

When everyman Calder Boyd starts to lactate, the Manhattanite becomes a media cause célèbre nicknamed the Milkman and old and new problems spill forth. The son of a former NBA star and a Norwegian artist, Calder copes with his strained marriage, losing his copywriting job at a boutique ad agency, a male-empowerment espousing mailman and a porn-star performance artist who wants to exploit him. He also deals with his late father's legacy and his wife's past indiscretion—all while breastfeeding their newborn daughter. Calder eventually becomes a pawn in the battle between a feminist organization and a militant men's society as he tries to become a better husband and man. The Fourth Estate, sex, art, love, memory, marriage, and family converge during the snowiest winter on record in this commentary on contemporary American fatherhood.

Love is a liberation, an act, a rebellion, a restriction, a communion. This poetry collection covers the universal topics of love and sex. We don't always get it, but we all crave it. From erotic to platonic and from marital to familial, love comes in many forms.

Is eternity a quantifiable entity? An existence that can be divided into smaller particles, assembled and disassembled like a puzzle? Can it be bent? Borrowed? Recycled? Eternity is elusive. It constantly seems beyond our grasp yet always within our reach. 21 Particles of Eternity, the fourth poetry collection by Kelvin C. Bias, covers topics as disparate as Mars and pornography, and ranging from the environment and parenthood to politics and death. The poet posits this: perhaps there are hidden portals where eternity can be glimpsed for fleeting moments, and the quest to find them brings meaning. How many particles will you find?