Category: Uncategorized

6/7/21: Billy Porter

“That is the gift that [Pose & Covid have] given me: It made me sit in [the trauma]. Sit in it and go through it, so that I can heal it, and maybe be a blessing to somebody else.”

****

“That’s what I speak of when I speak of the gift that Pose has been for me: the idea of understanding that trauma is not something that you compartmentalize or disassociate from – which I am SO good at doing – the trauma started so early for me, the only muscle I had, until recently, was to disassociate and compartmentalize and keep moving forward. My trauma therapist said to me – thanks to Covid, I had a minute to sit down – She said, ‘Billy, you have been able, in action, to manifest a life for yourself, while your mind is still stuck in the trauma. We gotta catch your mind up to your actions.’ That is what Pose has done for me. That is the gift that it has given me: It made me sit in it. Sit in it and go through it, so that I can heal it, and maybe be a blessing to somebody else.” (10:13)

5/28/21: They/Them

Yes, it takes getting used to 
using “they” and “them” 
to refer to Demi Levato 
or another person who 
identifies as non-binary. 
Yes, the English Lit. scholar 
in me wrestles with it. But 
it’s not a hard thing to do. 
A hard thing to do 
is grow up in a world 
that doesn’t reflect 
your personal truth 
through its media 
and language. 
A hard thing to do 
is live in a world 
that tells you in both 
subtle and blatant, 
sometimes life-ending ways 
that you are less than human 
because of the skin you’re in. 
Quit rolling your eyes
and try it. When you forget to, 
say oops and sorry. 
It’s okay to feel uncomfortable. 
What if the bothersome work it takes
makes the world a better place 
for you, too? 
And take a closer look
at those feelings 
their request 
is bringing up in you, 
because your reaction 
is not about THEM, 
it’s about YOU.

4/28/21: Five A.M. in the Pinewoods

Five A.M. in the Pinewoods

by Mary Oliver

I’d seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night

under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp
tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.

This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them—I swear it!—

would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like

the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone,

I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,
so this is how you pray.