Sacred Spells: Collected Works

Sacred Spells is the work of a gay Black poet who indeed possessed a giant mind, talent, heart, and ferocity… when the AIDS pandemic raged as the COVID pandemic rages now in the US and across the globe; when we remember the casualties, the terrible losses, the gross homophobia, racism, and crimes against humanity enacted by our government against queer and trans people; when we think of the beacons, the self-ordained priests who carried us through that time, we often think and speak of Assotto Saint.

The road before us looms as an infernal horizon, then metamorphoses and appears as the cyclical Phoenix at the crossroads of life, an intersection of evolution and revolution, where we—baptized in the righteous anger of the Haitian Saint Assotto—forgive and heal in the knowledge that none of us is a cosmic orphan.

  Je ne regrette rien!

Assotto Saint swept in, like Dorothy Dandridge if she’d been allowed to play Cleopatra: tall, regal, perfectly made up, moving as if on a Milan runway with an authority unlike any poet I’d ever seen. When Assotto spoke, it was like French silk fabric snapped out over you. The sound of his voice was mesmerizing; the weight of his words punched through to your heart and your brain. Now when we read him, we should do so out loud so his voice can echo in our ears. His works are rituals and magic spells meant to draw us in and bend us to prayer. Lines vibrate with an anger that should be heard out loud. And if you imagine the soft lilt of patois the hope is heard too. ‘IT’S ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY/IN AMERICA/A // PARODY OF THE GREATEST COUNTRY/IT NEVER // WAS/BUT COULD STILL BE.’ In his voice, both mellifluous and raw, we find both brotherhood and sisterhood. He said, ‘on my resume write survivor.’