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Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Cento Between the Ending and the End


 Cento Between the Ending and the End

By Cameron Awkward-Rich

 

Sometimes you don’t die

 

when you’re supposed to

 

& now I have a choice

 

repair a world or build

 

a new one inside my body

 

a white door opens

 

into a place queerly brimming

 

gold light so velvet-gold

 

it is like the world

 

hasn’t happened

 

when I call out

 

all my friends are there

 

everyone we love

 

is still alive gathered

 

at the lakeside

 

like constellations

 

my honeyed kin

 

honeyed light

 

beneath the sky

 

a garden blue stalks

 

white buds the moon’s

 

marble glow the fire

 

distant & flickering

 

the body whole bright-

 

winged brimming

 

with the hours

 

of the day beautiful

 

nameless planet. Oh

 

friends, my friends—

 

bloom how you must, wild

 

until we are free.

 

About This Poem

 

“‘Cento Between the Ending and the End’ is composed of language scavenged from the works of Justin Phillip Reed, Hieu Minh Nguyen, Fatimah Asghar, Kaveh Akbar, sam sax, Ari Banias, C. Bain, Oliver Bendorf, Hanif Abdurraqib, Safia Elhillo, Danez Smith, Ocean Vuong, Franny Choi, Lucille Clifton, and Nate Marshall. All of whom have made for me a world and for whom I wish the world.”—Cameron Awkward-Rich

 

Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016), which was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. He is a Cave Canem fellow, a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine, and his second collection of poetry, Dispatch, was published by Persea Books in December 2019.

Also a critic, Cameron earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University's program in Modern Thought & Literature, and he is an assistant professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Currently, he is working on a book about maladjustment in trans literature and theory. 

 

Just a quick FYI: “Cento” is a piece of writing, especially a poem, composed wholly of quotations from the works of other authors. (I did not know this until I looked it up.)

 

Cameron Awkward-Rich

@cawkward_rich

cawkwardrich.com

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