Tender Headed

The assured debut from Osinaike puts Black masculinity under the microscope in poems full of humor and vulnerability. With impressive sensitivity, Osinaike unmasks the insecurities that hide behind the performance of Black male identity, as in the poem “An Inconvenience,” in which the speaker writes, “I do my job/ the same as any man with a need to provide/ for his need to provide.” Poems rhythmically swell to convey how personal struggles transmute into larger concerns for an entire community: “A horse loses a race.// A race/ loses its culture. A culture loses its place. A place loses its mothers. Mothers lose// their babies. Babies lose their wonder.” It would be easy for the critique to turn satirical, but Osinaike’s verses charm with their inquisitive tone and direct address: “Fellas, what does it/ mean to you// to be the bigger man? I haven’t/ figured it out for myself.” A sense of possibility permeates the poems as they reorient the place of the individual within the collective: “We were deliberating all of what we could make from scratch.” This insightful outing points the way toward hope. (Jan.)