Black History Month, back posting

 Lines on Love’s (Loss*)
~Erica Hunt

what we do not dream we cannot manufacture

Art follows ear and echo

covers/chooses
selective
eyesight searches the dust
and is surprised by love’s
apophatic blinking


what love sees in daily light
holds open color—ink, roar, melody and quiet
is its own steady gaze
to better endure bumps


“always more song to be sung” between the words
jars memory and its subatomic _____________
moving at the speed of thought _____________
 
in random thirsts rise_____________
name the sensations, _________________
to fish for breath, ________________________________
combing through hair as tangled as nets, as__________________


thick as the beat of blossoms’ _____________
 
a fine line between mind and senses spinning ________
in which her/my/their body becomes expert________________
without waiting for unified theory,
 
loving the body of one’s choice and _________________________
 
to live so surrounded ______________________
with fewer asterisks and ____________________
more verbs and _____________________
fewer security alerts __________________
 
there eloquence before ____________________
and above
__________________the grave.
 

*For Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor

Copyright © 2020 by Erica Hunt. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 1, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.