Testament V: Black Light Fandango

Black Light Fandango finds Rashid Darden writing with increasing confidence and freedom. Set against a backdrop of city life, friendship, attraction, and unexpected moments of recognition, these poems explore the ways identity is revealed and sometimes transformed through encounters with other people.

Included as the fifth volume of The Testaments 1995–2025, this collection marks a period of creative expansion. The poems move easily between the intimate and the public, reflecting a writer whose voice continues to grow in range and ambition.

One life. Eight books. Thirty years of poetry.