CORONA DAZE 95
CACONRAD
we had much
to leave behind
in order to follow
the river to the sea
my grandfather said
always remember you come
from people who wash after work
migration can
change a family
some die before the end
others born along the way
I know my
poems by
their shapes
and have felt
their edges in
my dreams the
side of a poem
rubbed against
my cheek like a
bone comb or
a lover's toe
CORONA DAZE 96
CACONRAD
in this poem
the words I give
you will run out
there is
nothing
I can do
about it
from the
moment I fell in love
with making the letter g as a kid
I foresaw the peripheries making
g as a conjuring g g g curve and
return g g g all I wanted for Christmas
was an X-ray of my hand making g g g
pleasure in forms united in a life
I choose to love no matter what
Listen to "Chrome Country" by Oneohtrix Point Never, selected to accompany "CORONA DAZE 95" and "CORONA DAZE 96," below:
CACONRAD's latest book JUPITER ALIGNMENT: (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals, is forthcoming from Ignota Books in 2020. The author of 9 books of poetry and essays, While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books), won the 2018 Lambda Book Award. They also received a 2019 Creative Capital grant as well as a Pew Fellowship, the Believer Magazine Book Award, and the Gil Ott Book Award. They regularly teach at Columbia University in New York City, and Sandberg Art Institute in Amsterdam. Please view their books, essays, recordings, and the documentary The Book of Conrad (Delinquent Films) online at http://bit.ly/88CAConrad
"CAConrad's poems invite the reader to become an agent in a joint act of recovery, to step outside of passivity and propriety and to become susceptible to the illogical and the mysterious."
—Tracy K. Smith, New York Times