speculation, n.

Shayla Lawz’s speculation, n. is a debut collection that could easily live on the walls of an art museum. An opening note, “Instructions for Viewing,” informs us that “some sections will require your reading, others will require your listening, and all will require your attention.” The book’s four sections are punctuated with sixteen media pieces accessible via QR code. We hear Kendrick Lamar’s “XXX,” as well as other songs that fold us into the struggle for Black bodies—and in many cases the Black femme body in particular—to feel safe in the United States.

Lawz sets blocks of text within larger fonts and utilizes erasure and blacking out text to allow us to observe when the speaker is unable to face impossible truths, both from the news and from her own family history. Each statement made, or question asked, becomes an opportunity to unfold a deeper search for meaning, as in “flight training”:

my nephew asks me why this paper airplane
never really flies        from here

& i ask the same of our bodies
is it the vessel; is it the way that we’re made
was the sky all lilac & orange for you too

In “Technical difficulties,” white text swirls around a silver dial labeled “sound,” set against a black background, so the reader must rotate the book. Instead of music, we hear Lawz’s own voice reciting these lines (“Is everything ok?” “Is the SOUND on?”) with a layered effect.

While we are grounded in horrifying events like the murder of Sandra Bland, what surprises and inspires is Lawz’s refusal to despair: “I / understand living and dying as fact, but the / body that refuses death is a star.” Despite the heavy scaffolding underpinning the collection, Lawz has promises to keep, and so many of these lines actively resist hopelessness, anchoring us with a recurring “HERE”: “i am trying to stay HERE with this image / this is all speculation / some kind of immortal matter.”