Below DC’s Black Poverty Line Poetry Reading & Discussion with Kenard Johnson

In the opening poem of Kenard Johnson’s eye-opening book “Below DC’s Black Poverty Line,” one speaker admonishes another, “Just don’t stop on I-95.” As a reader who has traveled I-95 from Baltimore to Washington probably 1000 times in my long life—I mean Gosh, I have friends in Georgetown, Foggy Bottom, Bethesda, Anacostia—I now can see a new and deeply poignant DC. Kenard Johnson’s book has shown me close-ups of places I never saw—maybe never bothered to see.