February 2024
Zoeglossia Poem of the Week Series: A Rainbow of Shadows
By Leslie McIntosh
The poets I’ve gathered for this February’s Zoeglossia POTW, are Said Shaiye (Feb. 11) and Joel Dias-Porter (Feb. 18).
I’m currently interested in the appearance and disappearance of voice in a poem—who is speaking and from where? What relationship does a reader–or listener–have to the voice of the poem? You, reader, are you being addressed or ignored? Do you have an expectation either way? FYI: These poems don’t owe you anything.
Sorry, not sorry.
The poets gathered here join me as fellow black autists, writing from the vantage point of sensorial brinks, lyric raptures, and existential duress. Our poems contain the force of neurodivergent endurance, but don’t claim to own the world of developmental difference. Even when they speak, they find a way to mind their own business. Not even the 2nd person POV can disturb their introversion.
When I was approached to curate the February POTW, I was also asked to contribute a poem (Feb.4). I chose a poem that opens the conversation of what it means, socially and politically, to oscillate on the verge of presence vs. non-presence, admittance vs. inclusion, not knowing which side will prevail. What is the danger to a dominant culture when assuming its dominance equals wisdom? What are the dangers to outlaws who trade their hard-won scrappiness for the comfort of recognition? My poem walks us to the conversational door leading to a more irreducible question: What if the outcome means life or death?
Walking through this door is the domain of Said Shaiye’s (Feb. 11) poem, Heaven is all goodbyes, but I hope it’s soft. It gives us a story so tenderly honest, it sprouts from the poetic ether as a “Softness of skin, softness of thought.” It then climbs (whether up or down depends on you) across a treacherous topography of social identities within a single person—particularly when many of those identities are marginalized. The pleasure of the sentence is alive here. This poem wants clarity of narrative to lay its troubles and hopes upon. However, it doesn’t play nice with the page—the poem’s form, the visual container of its voice and story, wrestles with space. It both crams itself into corners and bleeds across the visual field, pushing itself from the tyranny of the left margin while always ending with a period—its guerilla. These feints have mortal consequence: “And we know every traffic stop could be our death.” But they also carry an interior survival that subverts mortal consequence: “But is that such a bad thing?/Hell is hard &/Hardship leads to heaven.”
Where Shaiye gives a wide, craggy expanse of experience, Dias-Porter (Feb. 18) offers a Coriolis— we are swept down a linguistic and sensorial whirlpool, funneling us away in the opposite direction of where and how Shaiye left us. The poem is written in a form created by Dias-Porter called a “colorpuntal” which he describes as “a contrapuntal poem where the alternate poem appears in a different color text. Similar to an erasure, but one where the base text is still visible.” The choose your own adventure of this form heightens the satisfaction of readerly engagement—but only if you care. Dias-Porter isn’t forcing you to, even though this poem is written in 2nd person. His THE RUMI IN YOU maneuvers between torquing and relieving the sonic and lexical pressure on his carefully chosen words. His attention to the line is sharp enough to find the hidden “nation” in “rumination”, reminding us of a deeper truth; dwelling is both a noun and a verb. Where you stay? comes to my mind. Not a question directly from the poem, but under it. The where is illusory. The true meaning might be closer to how, when, what, or why…who. This lyrical verse rejects totalization so completely, the poem even positions it as a cousin of annihilation:
“how some become lovers
of the sound of rain,
but others simply lovers
of the sound of ruin?”
This voice isn’t trying to be honest—that's exactly why I trust it. The same as Shaiye’s poem—but very differently. These poems are utterly divergent, against the world and each other. They are so utterly siblings. So what does that make the poets? I already had an interest in highlighting black autistic poets as this month’s curator. Many of the unasked questions I have about my own experience are influenced by that angle of my identity. And accepting myself as I do at this point—it’s unsurprising to me that I didn’t remember February was Black History Month in the USA until less than a month away from this curation.
This month’s curation, especially falling on this historic month, is fraught for me. In early November 2023, three staff members of Zoeglossia abruptly departed the organization. Two of them were black disabled poets and the only POC of the organization. The other was the interim-Executive Director, who is a white disabled poet. The reasons the black staff members gave for their departure included anti-blackness, transphobia, hostile work environment, to name a few. Many fellows echoed my visceral reaction to this wound to the Zoeglossia space—a space I came to see as a community for me. Calls were made for the Board of Directors to pause programming till a restorative process could be convened to heal the injury not only to those directly impacted by the violence, but to the entire Zoeglossia space. The Board heard our voices, but didn’t meet our request. As of the writing of this curatorial statement, programming is continuing, and no restorative process has been presented to the Fellows community. Rather than address the root of the harm, the Board chose to install a transition committee to determine its next steps. A call was made requesting Fellows representation on the transition committee. Again, Fellow voices were heard, and again, our needs weren’t supported. I strongly considered stepping down from this curation in response to the Board’s (in)actions, but I decided to persist. While the Board may feel it can sidestep our attempts at meaningful redress, our voices yet remain. On this month of all months, I refuse to disappear.
Business shouldn’t go back to usual.
A mortal wound deserves more care than an adhesive bandage.
Choose people over organizations.
Choose progress over damage control.
Respectfully,