Nicolas Hyacinthe’s “Hard Edges & Soft Embraces”
Nicolas Hyacinthe is of two cultures, countries, and languages. Every day he straddles the vast chasm within these identities. His story isn’t unique of the Haitian diaspora, but his perspective is. Photography and film are bridges that allow him to navigate from his world to ours. Hard Edges & Soft Embraces is a multi-media meditation on returning home to Haiti… Read more →
Snapshots of the Haus of Glitter’s Practices, Performance, & Petition
We often forget the vitality of breath, of true togetherness, and conscious reflection, which is why The Haus of Glitter Dance Company’s “Decolonizing Creative Practice: Defensiveness Retreat” on March 18th, 2023 and March 25th, 2023 (in cooperation with The School of Embodied Praxis) came as a divine blessing. The Haus of Glitter Dance Company (based in Providence, RI) works, through… Read more →
Eastpoint
Perched on the bowone of the zinc-faced men spittingthrough vacant teeth, tweezing shellfishoff the bottom, now clerking at Dollar General.Oysters gone with a fresh wind, shells crushed driveways.Mullet still flip, avoid the hook. Storms from the futurethreaten small skinned houses, twisting curtains,banging those back doors off their hinges.No more lines of women fronting deep sinks,knives twitching, slime gauzing freckled forearms.Investors… Read more →
The Trouble with Punctuation
This morning, cloisonné clouds turnthe wings of gulls into lyricalpatterns against the sky—a meditation in pinks and apricots they spiral above and around me,unreachable, then follow me downthe street to my emptied house. I pass other people’s children hop-scotchingwildly, freely—with unstable movementsthey teeter toward the safety of home square. From the long shadow of a statue over-looking city hall, their… Read more →
Vanilla
Let loose, the comet trails darkness,scratchy bright silencebirth canal to IV tubes,preserving the smell. You tolerate the tasteof missing tonsils, floating insidean otherwise piffled universefull of sloshing stars. A few raw hours lateryou’re the grounded pigeon, headstretching to make the ice creamgo down slowly.
You Heartfelt Stab of Glee / O!
see me sliding into this metal tube / head first this zing this friction / means a smell of iodine / means my theta signals / a subterranean chasm within your fluid swirl / where each tiny cell wells up / binding me to your microscopic galaxy / your weekend / a rare sun pouring through trees & a green… Read more →
wintermelon soup
i am plucking seed & skin from my teeth while she stirs, boiling strands of melon flesh you see, i don’t believe my pohpoh knows when to ladle the simmering fat because the pot overflows and still she hums a song about how she was inside the belly of a mare in a past life, as if she was the… Read more →
Shards of Air
Take the mountain chains where the golden plover hasarrived, run your fingers down the grassy green slopes.The shore near the river is green too. Somehow last year’sleaves still hang on in the cracks and crevices; theytremble, they’re awestruck and terrified as the riverchurns. But here in the city, pressed against a wall, allyour features blur and yet somehow the serene… Read more →
Self-Portrait in Church
You sing these hymnals to escape and yet,they still cut your mouth, a prayer bursting your palms open, communion soon,just words across more bruised mouths, fragile wicks unlearning the flameof these psalms and purging lungs of this decaying light: listen, at the altar,your own dry bones and the husk of a shadow sing.