Bryant & Kearney

Radio is the first story in The Black Automaton and it describes how people love the radio and everything that comes out of it, whether it's good or bad, at least this is what I imagine for the first poem. It describes how radio means blood, this could mean that a lot of songs and raps on the radio are about violence and how it gives you power. Radio means love and it lures you in means that there are tons of love songs out there and people enjoy them so much because it brings them comfort in their relationship or it makes people want to fall in love even more. The poem also says it was the first black you had dreams about and it fucks you every night could mean that many songs are about sex now a days or that we keep the radio throughout the night to bring us comfort and make it easier to sleep.

The rest of his work seems to deal with the negativeness for being black in the old days. When the poems reaches the part about the lions, each one has their own little meaning. The black lion seems to be a fool by trying to be something bigger in life. It says that the black lion is a rook passing for a king and that he is a circus act gone wrong. The red lion seems to be some type of machine of destruction, this is seen in his quote, "I move and don't live, what made me?" It also says that every time he works there is a city of skeletons and that he basically brings chaos and destruction. The yellow lion is the one that just goes on with his life without showing expressions of being annoyed and tired and that he just needs a drink to get rid of all the stress going on in his life, to just escape from it all.

Tisa Bryant's Unexplained Presence seems to talk about African Americans too, but in a way that they seem to be in a movie. In the story Darling a black man tries to be a doppelganger of this beautiful blonde actress, and people ask him if Diana, who he is trying to be, has changed. In When London Burns... Violet Is Blue  the story starts out again as a movie. Sammy is sleeping with an American photographer and then they end up running through the house and the police arrive and shoot the black woman.  Danny meets Rosie and describes to how hard African Americans have it. Another scene closer to the end has yet another black woman shot while the white women get laid. At the end, Danny's royalty associated with his color is lost and Violet's name doesn't even appear in the credits. This shows how African Americans still had a hard time in these days.