Echo 3

Resonance* began as a reaction, a response to a global call-to-action, a scrambling to articulate a rapidly changing world. And as we settle into a world in which tumult, turbulence, and transformation are everyday occurrences, we settle into the constancy of our bodies. What is similar about sound (an echo) and the body is that each requires relation.

In the previous iteration, Alma Valdez-Garcia writes, “we must be one in blood, ironpeople,” in response to the prompt: What connections can we draw between the ways we cope (together), survive (together), and thrive (together)? As if in true dialogue, Asiya Wadud reverberates, “anthem and iron-rich.”

Alongside our pumping hearts are our pumping lungs. Alongside our speech is our exhale. In this final Echo, contributors reckon with connection and the potency of a collective breath.

—Jaye Elizabeth Elijah, Nightboat Fellow

 


 

Erica Cardwell

parallels

 

1

 

I wake to thoughts of forgiveness.

A tree, relenting underneath wind,

thrust forward to join the conversation.

 

I forgive you every day of my life.

The lilt in your response.

It’s the situation.

The pang in my throat.

I am praying for your soul,

said the little sister.

Everyone watched her forgive

only me.

 

Forgiveness as violence.

 

I want to know what the inside of my chest looks like.

Layered, mutilated, whole.

Thrumming the rhythm of letting

you get away with hurting me.

How much more before the tree breaks her back?

How much longer do I have with you?

 

2

 

My love cut through weeds in my father’s backyard.

Like magic, they returned,

a fuzzy regeneration, blossoming with “no new ideas,”

as Lorde reminds.

We were on our way out when I noticed this,

when I noticed the way a weed can last forever,

a withering forest of warnings and brief delights.

Somehow this makes the wound at my core,

the one I carry and set aside for sleep,

this déjà vu, this reunion,

causes the wound to ache and wet my eyes.

I peer out of the kitchen window.

Slicing through sweet melon, I leave behind for you.

 

Fred Schmalz

For weeks, traffic ebbed. The porch housed a fledgling clan of finches. Pigeons tried to get in on the act, but Susy rattled them, shouting “scram!”

Electric lines fizzing. Our own pulses throbbed in our ears.

Then sirens. Then chanting and more sirens, a realigning of motion, of resonances.

Faced with a tragedy of the commons, we appear to be muddling through, holding hope that those around us take care.

It is hard not to feel we are on our own.

By April we found in a forest preserve ramp greens sprouting and a marshy lawn where a chorus of frogs a thousand strong called as they crawled over each other, the ground teeming.

The lilacs bloomed and faded. This morning, I noted that the long row of bushes behind the high school is still fragrant.

We mourn the dead around us.

In March, I spoke to a doctor who asked us to care for his children if he didn’t make it through the months ahead, his body a vessel of resolve and fear.

My impulse to motion toward my people, to listen for them, rises to bursting. I reach Minneapolitans, St. Paulites, those marching up Flatbush to the Manhattan Bridge.

How close together are you? How close right now can we possibly be?

 

Paul Hlava Ceballos

This patient’s severe heart failure

doesn’t make my feet less sore

it is midnight, I hold back

a yawn on tiptoes reaching across him

 

his ECMO machine churns pink blood

that returns in clear tubes to his body

his fever radiates, a slow sweat bead

rolls from my armpit to waist

 

and then I see her there, his person

sprawled on a corner of the floor

with a glass of water by her head

and black backpack as a pillow

 

maybe a small suffering always lived

as compassion’s tough root

before leaving, I dab with a washcloth

the clear pool gathered in his neck

 

outside, bubbly hearts decorate the sidewalk

drawn anatomically incorrect

but with an artistry

that makes me think of plump clouds

 

Rosamond S. King

Image of a miniature bottle with a note inside, and a strip of transparent paper on a wooden surface. The transparency is upside down, so the words read backwards: “I send you breath/ whether/ your lungs are full/ or shattered/ whether your gasps/ are for pleasure/ or through sobs/ whether yours/ are deep or/ shallow”.

 

Jasmine Gibson

Before I was a poet, I was an organizer. I stopped organizing because it pulled so much from me that I could no longer recognize myself. Recent news like Oluwatoyin Salau’s premature and preventable death strike me. I am not Oluwatoyin Salau, but it hurt to see a beautiful and bright 19-year-old organizer pass away. I think a way we can cope, survive and thrive together is abandoning the illusion of “over there” or “distance from event/incident x.” This moment of upheaval and insurrection provides the question —“How do we protect one another?”—and the answer: that we are responsible to each other.

One’s hesitancy to engage with uncomfortable conditions that lead to violence keep power dynamics and violence ongoing. The death of Oluwatoyin Salau and recent developments within NYC activist circles regarding police collaboration and the protection of sexual predators remind me of my own experiences with organizing. Both incidents call into question how we define “community.” Because power is coveted within activist organizations, under capitalism, we then create the conditions for events like Oluwatoyin Salau’s death to occur. Some organizations would rather seize power at the expense of empowering the Black revolutionaries that will usher in a revolutionary future.

I sometimes laugh at how Black queers aren’t even welcome in organizing “spaces.” If you call out harm that has been done to you, you are called “middle class” or “divisive,” and if you are silent, you “waited too long to speak your truth.” But when movements grow, people scramble to find the voice of “the young Black queers in the street.” This see-saw of desire led to the failure of Toyin’s community in her last days: the desire to witness her voice but not witness her life. This failure is still present in the ways we want young Black people to embody Black insurrection, only to be heard and seen and never cared for. The challenge I offer to everyone is to critically self-reflect on how they can abolish forms of power, white supremacy, and the state’s stranglehold on our lives as a means to move toward a new present that is liberation.

https://copfreenyc.com/

 

Ica Sadagat

litanies for our future/now divine

(after Mark Aguhar)

 

fuck apologies

fuck apologists

fuck racists, abusers, and rapists

fuck trauma and the trauma from dealing with trauma

fuck oppressive traditions

fuck transphobia

fuck virginity what the fuck

fuck virtue and valor

fuck the normal

fuck your normal

fuck your normal home, your normal body, your normal nervous system

fuck your full night’s rest and bottomless brunch

fuck your “i’m still learning” and useless guilt

fuck this country

fuck that i am tired of everything

fuck that you are tired over nothing

fuck the state

fuck your peace and the military

fuck fascists and good cops because fuck all cops

fuck prisons

fuck optics and the panopticon

fuck holding it in to keep it together

fuck grieving because it never ends

fuck that you are okay

fuck you for i am not

 

amen

 

BELOVED are the firestarters

BELOVED are the rude

BELOVED are the pangs wrought by exhaustion and moon

BELOVED are the terrified

BELOVED are the lazy

BELOVED are the beaten

BELOVED are the confused

BELOVED are the ever weeping, my kith and molten kin

BELOVED are the unforgiving

BELOVED are the bruised

BELOVED are the nights like years filled with panic and demons

BELOVED are those demons

BELOVED are the drowning

BELOVED are the flightless

BELOVED are the steel-bound with every or zero hope

BELOVED are those who can’t escape, won’t escape, will never escape

BELOVED are those tired from keeping it in to hold it together

BELOVED are those who are forced to break apart

BELOVED are the lonely

BELOVED are those who want to forget but cannot forget and won’t forget

BELOVED are the forgotten:

whom i didn’t remember, couldn’t remember,

will learn to remember and to respect,

honor and hold

 

AMEN

 

Venn Daniel

WHAT’S NOT WHOLEHEARTEDLY VESTIGE WITHOUT THE THROW OF WEIGHT. FRIENDS TILL FAMILY TILL HERE I AM IF I GIVE YOU ALL MY FEAR, WILL YOU GIVE ME YOURS WE CAN HOLD IT. HOWEVER WE WANT WE CAN FLOOR, CANDLE, HEART, HOLE. ONLY MUTUAL CONSENSUS. US IN APPREHENSIVE US, JUST MAYBE MOUNTAIN VIEW JUST MAYBE PINK CARNATION. NEVER I, TRYING ALWAYS FOR AN EVER CHANGING. YOU AND ME ARE A SQUIGGLY LINE & I NEED SOME TIME. THINK THIS THROUGH CAN WE NEVER GO ANYWHERE ALONE, IDEA, CHAOS, CHILL, FRAME, PIVOT, STREET, PILL, CAN’T. THE FLAMBOYANT NOTHING NO WAY NO HOW, THRESHOLD. ONE STRONG NO, NOW COME. NO LONELY AIR. NO ROOM NO LANE. NO ONE WAY BOOT NO STRAP NO HOUSE NO. NO NO NO FUCK, MORE GOD DAMN PAPER WORK, WHAT BROWSERS WORK WHAT IT IS IS I WON’T TAKE YOUR SHIT. YOU NEVER DID IT ALL BY YOURSELF AND IF YOU SAID YOU DID THERE’S NO TRUST JUST BLINDING LIGHT, I WILL NOT. BUT STILL SUBMISSION. STILL JUST SITTING SOMEWHERE WAITING, PAY CLOSE ATTENTION. EMERGENCY ALERT, DON’T FORGET FILL OUT A CLAIM TILL DEATH TILL WATER TILL EMPTY DRAWER STILL OVERDRAFT STILL I DON’T CARE I LOVE YOU STILL WE WILL FIGURE SOMETHING OUT LET’S GET SOME FOOD AND WATCH THE INTERNET TILL NOT TILL YES TILL THE INFORMATION’S THERE TILL STILL, TUMULT. TILL YOU NEED SOME MILK TILL THERE’S ALWAYS YOU AND ME AND FURNITURE, SOMEWHERE ELSE IS NOT ENOUGH. AND IF WE WRITE OUR NAMES AND WRITE THEIR NAMES AND WRITE ANY WORD WE WANT TO HOLD THE WAY WANT TO LIVE AND IF WE MAKE A CALL AND IF WE DON’T WHAT WILL HAPPEN

 

by taking chance

breathing out entirely

I a trembling lull in weather

i impossibly transformed

by wednesday’s morning

glory’s

vibrant blue

in combination just one inhale

all the time

with no exception

chorus

pull

cry

(light comes, doors open)

 

Drue Schwartz

 

Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta

 

EVERY NIGHT FROM 11 TO 1, A NEW LOVE, OR:

AN INCOMPLETE PLAY,

WITH NO DIALOGUE, ONLY NARRATION,

IN THREE COMPLETE PARTS

PART ONE:

The Disappearing Man

 

CAST

Pink Zote Soap as The Boyfriend

Rosa Venus Soap as The Girlfriend

Silver Chrome Hand Shaped Ring Holder as God

&

Lemon & Tangerine as The Couple at the Beach

 

The delicate hand of God, resplendent in Her demonstration of

likeness, reached down & grabbed the Boyfriend, wasting away among

the waves. The Girlfriend watched from the shore, realizing, with horror,

that she could see herself as she watched her lover disappear.

 

 

PART TWO:

The Bisexual

 

CAST

Plastic Diamond Ice Cube

                                                     as The Bisexual

Diamond Shaped Prism

Desert Rose Quartz as The Boyfriend / The Closeted Theyfriend

Mirror as The Insecurities

& featuring

The Hannah Wilke Sculpey Players as The Biphobic Unconscious

 

She fell in love. With a man.

But it was his aura, his curves, the crevices of his psyche, that

lured her in. She was stronger, bigger than him. But it didn’t matter. She

loved him.

When she was alone, however, her Biphobic Unconscious crept

in. Her mirror only showed her Insecurities in aggressive detail. At night,

in her nightmares, she was swallowed by genitals, surrounded and

mocked, then tossing her boyfriend back and forth, playing keep away,

as if he was a ball. She felt smaller and smaller, suddenly plastic,

suddenly lighter, her edges dulling and her insides freezing –

But then, she would wake up, come to her senses, knowing her

desire wasn’t so brutal, so essentialist. The morning sun would remind

her, as it cut her good morning, with a rainbow onto the face of her

Boyfriend, her Closeted Theyfriend, and remember that her love wasn’t

so complicated.

 

 

PART THREE:

A Wolfwoman in Paris

Jack O’Lantern Electrical Tea Light as The Wolfwoman

Small Plastic Lion Figurine as The Visitor / Lust

Turquoise Toothbrush as Undying Affection

Large Spherical Prism as The New Moon

&

Butterfly Linocut Cut-Out, Butterfly Earring, and Butterfly Enamel Pin

as Bloodlust

 

Once upon a time, in the Capital of the white Imagination, before

I was born, and before you could remember, a woman was asleep in her

apartment in…let’s say…Paris. You’ll have to believe me; and besides, all

the interiors look the same to me in the Global North.

In any case, she was asleep, when a Lion walked into her room.

The Lion simply walked over to her – still asleep! – and lay down, against

her rhythmically rising and falling form. The Lion’s heat expanded deep

into her body, deep into where her dreams and sorrows lived and worked.

It so happened to be The New Moon, and this sleeping woman

had a condition that caused a shift in her way of being in the world that

was triggered by such celestial events. So difficult, so lonely, so

predictable was this cycle, that she had long abandoned hope for any

kind of connection. Instead, she maintained in her heart an altar to an

undying affection, her memories of an experience not even her own, that

rose to the enamel of her teeth as a regrettable Bloodlust.

 

 

Jimena Lucero

March was when I last hugged

someone that wasn’t me.

Birds chirp, high up on trees.

Follow the white butterfly for a video.

I return to Earth with intention.

My body is full of transitional pain

ongoing, repetitive, dream & rebirth.

Jen & I FaceTime,

Technologically distant.

Our healing is participation.

Beyond this – a place – unfamiliar – unexpected

our liberated womanhood.

Always, we will find each other.

 


 

Erica Cardwell is a Brooklyn-based writer, critic, and educator. Fred Schmalz is an artist, poet, and the author of Action in the Orchards. Paul Hlava Ceballos is a poet and echocardiographer in Seattle. Rosamond S. King is a creative and critical writer, performer, and artist, and the author of Rock | Salt | Stone. Jasmine Gibson is a Philly jawn based in Brooklyn and the author of Don’t Let Them See Me Like This. Ica Sadagat is a writer and care worker between coasts. Venn Daniel is a poet. They live in Sunset Park. Drue Schwartz is a fine artist whose personal work focuses on the vulnerability of the trans experience. Tatiana Luboviski-Acosta is an artist and doula living in California, and the author of The Easy Body. Jimena Lucero is a poet and sister (and former intern!). She was a 2019-2020 Emerge-Surface-Be fellow at the Poetry Project.