Her parents continued to live in the house with the new homeowners and their 13-year-old daughter, Lytta, who began to baby-sit Moss after school.
After enduring bullying and racism from both her peers and teachers, she withdrew from social interaction at school and did not speak freely in classes until many years later in college.
After finishing school, Moss taught English at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.
Her early work is considered part of the legacy of the Black Arts Movement, taking influence from West African praise poetry and concerning themes of racial justice.
[6] These experiments with form culminated in her development of Limited Fork Theory and the invention of the POAM (product of act of making).
Moss's POAMs are combinations of film and poetry, emphasizing how text placement and movement, among other sensory elements, can enhance the meaning of a poem.
[6] Moss contributed to experimental literary theory by introducing the metaphor of a fork to conceptualize how people internalize art and literature.