Forbidden City

Peggy Hamilton

Peggy Hamilton’s debut volume is located in a series of closed-off places: an imperial walled garden, individual Miami neighborhoods, bedrooms, churches, and children's hiding places. In these settings, the language and languages used allow some people to speak freely and bond with each other—but also mark them as “other” as they close out outsiders. The passionate and disparate voices of this volume belong to individuals within these communities: people in their daily lives—lives many of us can’t see.

“Forbidden City is a book of complex and visceral virtues, where the implicit meets the explicit, and dialect becomes dialectical. Peggy Hamilton’s poetry is alive, authentic and empowered, not to mention formally inventive and full of conviction.”—Campbell McGrath

Peggy Hamilton, a native Miamian, is recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Grant in Literature for Poetry. A freelance writer, she has taught middle and high school students, many of whom are in residential foster or substance abuse programs or correctional facilities.

A sample poem from the book

from Miami

Girl, girl

what you doin

here

that baby

a yourn ain’t

sick

Not this lil

mule

We here for Daddy Lou

you too

They done took

his talk box out

Nobody gone miss it

but him

His wife say maybe they is

a mercy after all

shame she had a get

so old a see it.

hoo

Doctor tell her he could put

a machine in a help

wit some words

She say naw he

don't want no metal

in his th’oat

fraid he get electrocuted

say he too damn old

done said what he want

by now

least twice.

So she tell him doctor

say a new talk box

mess up his tv

they grandkids jes put

the cable in they house

He shake his head no

he won't have it then . . . .