Poetic Proliferations

Abstract This essay begins with the question, What might poetry do with/to the theater of violence that is a court trial? To approach but not necessarily answer this question, I explore four poems by Camonghne Felix that renarrate the court trial of George Zimmerman following his murder of Trayvon Martin. I consider how Felix's poetry offers a space in which free associations proliferate and expand meaning across time and contexts, challenging the courtroom's desire to contain and exclude affect, information, and perspectives. Through her poetry, Felix offers an alternative sociality that is not built on the right to exclude, as is the courtroom, but the right to connect, slip, and feel together — an alternative sociality that cannot be accommodated by the law. In doing so, Felix asks her readers to consider what is and is not possible in a courtroom, bringing the legitimacy of the entire legal system into question. As such, I read Felix's poetry as an abolitionist praxis of its own kind — as one way to reread, renarrate, and confront criminal law itself.