I’m forever grateful to Civitella for the opportunity to commune with awe-inspiring artists from around the world while enjoying the sacred quietude and solitude I’ve needed to complete new work for my next poetry collection and film.
Annus Mirabilis: Your Silence Will Not Protect You
~for 2020
Audre, have you never seen
A double rainbow rise & set in your
Backyard? I just did only after running
Here when breathing anywhere else
Started killing the We in me. Here, I gallop
10 miles like the palamino We is, unafraid of
Hay fields’ dank air after dark. Everywhere
Elsewise outside is death. I shut out the din
Of 55 buckshots ricocheting off sycamore limbs
& stride this wind until Our synapses unchain
They selves. Here, I am not hunted or hunter,
Need no consent not to speak. I will not
Answer calls. I will lie in these sleeves of grass,
Let the garters heal Our heels, coil Our ankles,
Akimbo ussin, as they did all over Alkebu-Ian.
They neither tempt nor taunt like the “ally”
On the Zoom afterparty line I shouldn’t
Have joined last night. You look so sad,
He jeered, his pale mouth’s stink puckering
Like the bum he wishes We’d deign
To kiss. I stare blankly, no grin or grimace
In sight. We owe you nothing. In these bricked
& rowhouses, on this land, paid in full
With whip-smart, bloodied resolve, We
Wrestle not with your feast for our famine.
We so full, we get lost in this never-
Ending kaleidoscope, this color wheel
We’ve willed our way for ever & ever &
