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