Telepath (PB) (2026)

In Telepath, award-winning poet, Akua Lezli Hope offers poems reporting from those with the remains of the gift that we all once shared. Telepath wrestles with the promises, possibilities and constraints of this endowment.

This exploration sojourns beyond witness bearing to affirm, strengthen and enlighten.

Telepath examines realms of experience and understanding from the perspective of those who retain, accept and have integrated the mind skill of reading others thoughts with empathy. Through this speculative lens of alternative sight, an array of concerns are engaged. Akua Lezli Hope conjures the mythic from the ancient past, Middle Passage, 20th century American familial scenes, card playing college tournaments, urban transportation, commuting, low income life challenges, and resilience.

Telepath shape-shifts, occupying varying poetic forms, and personae, all possessing the unseen mind skill of hearing the unsaid, interrogating the realm of intention and patrolling possibilities of truth rendering, by using the speculative to navigate unfolding realities.

There is a wry and wistful nostalgia; sharp, poignant, recollections, and homages to a place-time where bonds of friendship and family mediated the world's assaults. The poems inhabit an array of forms: from concrete to haibun to micro-acrostic to a sonnet crown.

Introspective and slyly subversive, the joyful agony of memories of times past and the challenging present are manifested in Telepath for edification and enchantment.

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