the midwest

i have spent quite a bit of the summer in the midwest. it is a swamp like atmosphere here — humid and rainy. i have been living in a village with other poets. it would be false to say that i have healed in the past year. i haven’t. i mostly often feel out of sorts, somewhere between worlds. unsettled is a good word. hard to conceptualize everything that has occurred since July 18th of 2025. it reminds me of the kind of intense restructuring i had to go through in 2009. a life i envisioned in upheaval. now i turn and twist and pivot and walk up and down this silly little middle path. somehow i finished reading Decolonizing Diasporas: Radical Mappings of Afro-Atlantic Literature, from Dr. Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, whom i met in Chicago when she gave a talk on her new book (a charismatic and brilliant scholar).

a year ago i never imagined i would end up living two weeks in the middle of Ohio, organizing my life around dining and gym hours. i write poems every day — on clowns, on Caliban, on the moon. someone tells me a story about the poet Robert Ohlen Butler that i can barely believe because who really lives in the shadow of a pulitzer?

i had decided earlier this year i didn’t want to be a poet anymore. nor a lover. it does not feel as if i survived whole.

i sent my parents a photo of where i am staying. my dad compared it to a monastery. often i joked that i would reach a point of wanting to be in a convent because i could not take anymore heartache. 2025 has almost pushed me there. except that in small unexpected moments the attention of a beautiful woman catches me off guard.

solitude suits me well though. death my old friend keeps me company.