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Stephen Mead is a multi-media artist and writer. He is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations, and allies predominantly before Stonewall. https://thestephenmeadchromamuseum.weebly.com/
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New Letters
Never for keeps,
this heart heavy because it’s full:
Anne Sexton’s Damariscotta blue berries
bunching up knuckle-ripe with stock
sentiments really genuine.
Wine come from bleeding
& ink as well,
this pressure cooker harvest
relieved by steam, the perspiring shine
hiding wrinkles.
Alright, so I lied.
Keeping occurs, is a trade passed on
holy as oil stains speckling the drop
cloth for a painting in progress.
Thus letters, pictures, conversations arrive
in memory’s mail slot, stuff of biography
while it happens
later processed, processed:
the tough bloom’s unction,
the frail fertile flesh,
the moody human laughter
& some whisky-scratched voice
familiar as cigarette burns
in a favorite sweater
the inheritors finger
as a photograph.
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Sacred Fish
They swim in God’s circle, the ripples
a circumference feet walk upon, feet,
nearly invisible amid the reflections &
fins casting light.
Swish, swish, the radiance comes also
from without, distilled in little pearl drops,
in the membranous gel of waves so concentric
they soothe every ache, showering crescendos
from above.
Breaking, breaking—–
Oh, but it is all a toast proposed, this font,
this oracle liquid, these feet, this fish,
an ordained divinity, sensuous as nature,
the fluid rhythm of gospel
(Poetry-art hybrid also available)
*****
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