Tarnish and Masquerade (Unabridged Selections‪)‬

Roger Bonair-Agard, a veteran of the spoken-word scene and a two-time National Slam Champion, reads several of his poems from Tarnish and Masquerade, featuring a live reading in Munich, Germany. His poems chart an exile's coming-of-age and an increasingly relevant immigrant's experience. Whether set in Trinidad, Washington Heights, Texas, Brooklyn, or other less-fixed locales, these poems written (and spoken) with equal parts joy and fury are full of clarity, compassion and unsentimentality.

Poems include:
"cane brulee""chantuel hymns""The devil in music""Bullet Points""1981""The mandate""photo graph""1986""Bird Watching""weusi alphabet""song for trent lott""truth applies for a green card""the sadness of migration""blue sex prodigy""weusi alphabeti" (live reading in Munich, Germany)"in the same breath as my father" (live reading in Munich, Germany)"how the ghetto loves us back" (live reading in Munich, Germany)"love rev 2" (live reading in Munich, Germany)"naming and other Christian things" (live reading in Munich, Germany)