“What is a poem but a prayer? A sermon in verse, writ large and clear and Black for alltosee? Black poets have always told the truth with God in one hand and blood in theother, and Jacqueline Trimble sits squarely in that tradition with How to Survive theApocalypse. Her poems, which come from the gut, which come from the throat, whichcome from the beating heart of a Black woman making meaning out of the soured mealof America, are a wonder to behold. This book has no time for tea-party pleasantries or
the curling of a politician's, or legal document's, or colonizer's tongue. It is a book of urgency and ultimatum—get on board, or get behind us.”