When he is not paying artistic homage to Diego Rivera and Balthus, or inventing the myth of how masculine and feminine relationships are held together by butter, or creating a “Gospel of Two Sisters” which chronicles the loss and reclamation of language, or exercising the limits of his Anagram poetic form; Terrance Hayes—in Hip Logic—employs the African-American rhetorical trope of signifying in order to examine the historic and contemporary role of the African-American male as victim, as heroic-icon, and as father by using real and imaginary Black-masculine figures. My collection, I Mean to Signify, employs signifying to engage with topics of Black male victimization and Northern elitism. Additionally, my collection depends heavily on the Gospel tradition of African-American domesticity, and engages with the universal topics of fear, death, and romantic relationships.