1 ritual & poem
This poem comes from "Resurrect Extinct Vibration," a (Soma)tic poetry ritual in 9 parts. The main ingredient involves inducing a trance by saturating my body with recordings of recently extinct animalswhile lying on the ground across the US. Another ingredient is drawing the animals on index cards with request for correspondence, leaving them across the nation in laundromats, coffee shops, etc., and I reply as ghost animals. "Saint Francis Safe Passages" is an activist ingredient,writing to elected officials to convince them we need thousands of land bridges across the US-highways for animals to cross into safety. This is one of 108 poems resulting from the ritual.
Impaled By Sharp Points of Wonderment
he
insisted
I should know
names of extinct species
as though taxonomy ever meant preservation
telling someone who they are
instead of asking is where
extinction gets its start
in a game of
Russian Roulette
I won a pair of
glasses that can see the wind
I walk around town each night watching the
slightest breeze approach dry leaves like a premonition
My Darling I watched you call tails while the
double-headed coin flew through the air
exorcise fly swatter covered in ghosts
at the concert someone dances with
abandon as only a true believer can
new furniture cannot combat
the death of your bedroom
study design of the owl's
feathers to study arms
race of the night
you started using
your therapist as
a weapon against your friends
another window into the
carefully ornamented shadow
flower as non sequitur for conversation that refuses to blossom
my uncle let the cow live another year
patted his ignoble self on the back
one year older congratulations he
told her through the bars of
her prison he calls a barn
CAConrad is a 2019 Creative Capital Fellow, and the author of 9 books of poetry and essays. While Standing in Line for Death(Wave Books), received the 2018 Lambda Award. A recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, they also received The Believer Magazine Book Award and The Gil Ott Book Award. Their work has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Polish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Danish, French and German. They teach regularly at Columbia University in NYC, and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam and they can be found online at http://bit.ly/88CAConrad