About the Book:

Cover the Sky With Crows is haunted—by shadows, lost love, lost lives. Osayande fashions doors into mirrors and invites readers to see grief for what it plainly is–an embarrassed sword swallower. This work walks the line of the interior and exterior landscapes of Detroit while boldly naming the complex realities of blackness on fire in America. You will walk away quaking at the fragility of what it means to be human in a world so populated by all of death’s names. —Casey Rocheteau, author of Knocked Up On Yes (Sargent Press, 2013), Winner of Write a House

“Osayande’s images are not only vivid, they show emotion that strike the reader like swords to the jugular. The open nature of this collection of poems begs the reader to open themselves up to join Osayande in battle on the front lines of black life, complex love, and family matters. While the writing seems to have come with ease, the topics covered are tough, helping the reader understand that though Osayande is a fantastic artist, he is just as importantly, human. —Justin Rogers, author of Finding Borders in Pangaea, CWP coordinator for Inside Out Detroit