In Black Swim, Nicholas Goodly casts a spell to transform darkness into perfect darkness.

This stunning debut collection is at once “forged from the hurt parts of the ground,” and “proof of a miracle,” spinning ache and sweat and sweetness into a new model of feeling through language. Black people, queer/trans/nonbinary people, flamboyant people, lonely people, gaudy people, kind people, witches, artists, and angry people will meet themselves and each other in these pages. Amidst death and against injustice, Goodly’s poems bear gifts for and from the ancestors—a necklace, a mirror, a form of offered prayer: “If there is a purpose in this life / let me wash my face in it.”