The Black Napkin Volume 1 Issue 4 | Page 3

About The Black Napkin

Black Napkin Press is a non-profit organization founded in 2016 to support emerging print and visual artists. We work with artists from across the spectrum of cultures, races, religions, ethnicities, and gender/sexual identities. The Black Napkin is our monthly online publication, meant to showcase the recent work of both upcoming and established poets.

The Black Napkin Poet’s Circle was founded by Southern California poets Matt Rouse and Torrin Greathouse on October 28th 2015. In an attempt to motivate themselves to produce poetry at a prolific rate, they challenged each other to produce two poems a week. After several months of doing this successfully, they began to invite other poets from across the U.S. and Britain to take part in their challenge. They called this group The Black Napkin, after a line written by Rouse (from “The Final Word” included in his upcoming chapbook of the same name). Now their venture is expanding to a full publishing operation, giving other poets the chance to show their work to the world.

This is the poem that

was too big for only

one of us to write,

the one that at this moment

does not have an ending.

This is the poem we wrote

in black ink

on a black napkin.