pThe electrifying body of poems in Tony Medina's emDeath, With Occasional Smilingem speaks with blood-soaked lips. The poet pulls us up from our knees, from the ashes of American history, imagination, and memory, so that we can listen to the clarions of what we must all face if we are ever to be free. Facing language and self at once, Medina's intelligence, spirit, humor, and symphonic powers make language breathe in rhythms that resist bullets and blackface. These living poems are always-ever needed, as part of the threshing and reckoning we are burning down and rewriting in our time.em-Rachel Eliza GriffithsemppbrppIn this sweet revelation of a book, Tony Medina writes Racism is an heirloom passed down through Generations like a retrovirus. It just keeps ticking, doesn't it Sometimes, it's a time bomb, sometimes, it's an alarm clock. Sometimes it burns, sometimes it sings. Sometimes, you can can't bear what it has to say, sometimes you can't hold in your laugh. Bullet, guitar, truth