Abstract
This review examines the exploration of the traumatized consciousness occasioned by the constant and brutal denigration of black life, as faced by the persona/e in Lauren K. Alleyne’s collection of poetry, Honeyfish. It explores the ramifications of this upon consciousness, and also the means of redemption from this impasse in a consciousness surfeited on images of the absolute and persistent “physicality” of life, to a greater, more complex, more humane and truer reflection of the relationship black people and human beings bear with our body. The review maps this journey in Honeyfish, from the stranded, dispossessed and denigrated black body, to a redemptive re-membering of complex black being that goes beyond the—many dead—bodies.