Friday Feature: a. adenike phillips
- Jae Nichelle
- Dec 5
- 2 min read
a. adenike phillips (she/her) is a poet, cultural worker and collagist based in New Jersey. She believes in the transformative ability of art to heal, disrupt and reshape sight. She writes toward the interior lives of Black people—stories that slip between generations and place, often going unnoticed. Phillips has received support from AWP, Hurston/Wright, POWERHOUSE Residency, Arts by The People, and others. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the North American Review, The Fire Inside Anthology Volume III, The Amistad, Gulf Stream Magazine, and elsewhere. Her visual work was exhibited through the Community Scholars program at Rutgers, Newark. Phillips is completing her first full manuscript of poetry.
saint handyman
damn us all for never praisin’ the working
saints, minor as they may seem. like mr. jesse
of south tenth street, common relic of fixin’
& buildin’—hands might could heal
anything he touched. his long salt & pepper
beard, nest for lost washers & morsels of last
night’s cornbread. in desperation my family
petitioned the patron saint of plumbers,
jesse needed of a pair of good fittin’
pants, sturdy suspenders or a king-sized belt
to spare us from basking in the black moon
each time he bent over. but mostly jesse needed
his wife to hold him up, to unfurl the worlds
that coursed through his hands.
hands that knew the angles of wood
& the angles of her body, hands
that could smooth her out from her shoulders
to the soles of her feet. jesse a man so handy,
each finger a saintly instrument.
praise be—
the cuts, praise be the cracks, praise be
the grease, praise be the splinters, praise be
every nail that pricked his palms. bless his
broken down holdin’ on
holdin’ up, holdin’
out each night beholding
to what was unsayable. in his arms,
a bottle of 80-proof pillow-talkin’
him at the altar of dreamin’
where his wife was still
keepin’ house, tendin’ to kids,
her voice tenderin’ all
their card game disputes
& sawhorse rodeos.
she got to hummin’ a hymn,
to skillet cornbread. she got
to her way of fixin’
of healin’
everything in her wake.
praise be—
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Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.
