“Publishing is, dare I say,” (she does), “awful.” We talk about the truly immense list of her ongoing projects-it takes up three pages in my notebook-an eleven-city book tour, two reading series (“Reparations, Live!” and “Poets With Attitude”), a YA novel, an informal service she calls “Therapist Yelp,” a formal relationship she calls “Mom of Braeburn,” writing more essays, finishing her second book of poems, her work as an editor. “My interior is whatever, sassy black woman, my aesthetic,” she gestures to her outfit (she favors boldly patterned suits) “is old man smoking in a jacket in a chair.” We talk about where she’s from-southern California, San Bernardino-and what she’s doing now-editing Amazon’s literary journal, Day One, and books at its imprint, Little A. We’re talking about jazz now-she listens to a lot of jazz. We talk about a whole lot of other things besides. We’re there to talk about her second collection of poetry, There Are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé, out from Tin House this month, and we do. She tells me people give her “random apple stuff,” the types of gifts teachers receive from students.
“It isn’t.” Instead, the fruit is “a kind of totem”: an apple was her first tattoo, is her Twitter handle. “A lot of my friends here thought my middle name was Apple,” she says. He’s named after a variety of apple-Parker is really into apples. “I’m a 29-year-old, five foot tall, single black woman.” She lives in Bed-Stuy with her beloved miniature poodle, Braeburn.
We are sitting in June on Court Street on a Saturday night in early February, it’s loud, and we’re drinking.
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