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MULTIMEDIA POETRY.

I'm a poet who works with text, image, and video files to create work addressing gender, sexuality, and in-between spaces. My past work has been published in The Cauldron, Cellar Door, and Issue #5 of Apricity Press. My undergraduate thesis, a multimedia poetry collection, earned departmental honors from Kalamazoo College. An excerpt from that collection, "I've wanted to build a boat, to sit in it," is included below.

Flight

Do we re-learn to swim? Do we love 

the floating, do we pee in it? Do we know 

the current will pull us in circles? Do we choose 

to drown instead? Do we look up through

the water at the sun and remember warmth?

Do we smell the stinging in our face, do we taste

lake as our swallows hope for air? Do we cool

as we sink deeper, do we forget our arms

and jelly legs when we touch soft loam? 

Do we bury our body, do we feed the leeches

living in the decaying decay? Do we like it?

Do we rise, abandon squishy shell, do we 

unfurl leathered wings and splash through the surface? 

Do we see gnashing water turn to glitter 

underneath our claws, deep down, do we feel

the sun on our backs and breathe out out out?

Do we hear the fisherman happily paddling

just above the crashes, do we hear him tell us

Hey baby, smile for me?

© 2021 by Madeline Lauver

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