All the littlest man wants is to be pulled away from the rest of the men, the rage, the women, the wife, the boys, the faces floating under the lights, the words I write with the man underneath who lives with his knife at my throat. He wants something beautiful, pure. He wants the tunnel to collapse but the tunnel is a bad good, it’s a place where the men run free, where I keep the knives, where the rage is so clean and pure and like fire that no matter how hot it burns it can’t burn me up, I can’t escape it. It is like the den of that dying animal, and it has been abused all of its life and is only alive long enough to hate more. Getting away would be like death, a clean, lovely thing, like when I was young and I could look around at the reservation, the people I had come not to trust at a distance, but they were beautiful anyway, my mother somewhere waiting to put me in her arms. But I am pulled back. By the rope, by the women, the knives, into the tunnel. By the blood. I do not understand what purgatory means.

I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once.

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my own mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for in my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid?

I hide myself behind simple objects so you may find me,

if you do not find me, you will find the objects,

you will touch those objects my hand has touched

the traces of our hands will mingle.

The August moons gleams like a tin kitchen kettle

(what I am telling you becomes like that),

it lights the empty table and silence kneeling in the house

silence is always kneeling

Every single word is an exodus

for a meeting, cancelled many times,

it is a true word when it insists on the meaning.

I have never known a closeness like that.

The fist clenched round my heart
loosens a little, and I gasp
brightness; but it tightens
again. When have I ever not loved
the pain of love? But this has moved

past love to mania. This has the strong
clench of the madman, this is
gripping the ledge of unreason, before
plunging howling into the abyss.

Hold hard then, heart. This way at least you live.

Being born is like this: The sunflowers slowly turn their corollas toward the sun. The wheat is ripe. The bread is eaten with sweetness. My impulse connects to that of the roots of the trees.

We lose power.    Frogs rise

              to a fresh pond.        Scented candles burn to perfume

            we wouldn’t buy.

                                No clawfeet,   but      pillows,    the possibility

          of petals.

                                            Shoulders born from suds.

                                  Pages turned by a wet finger.

                               I know you like to read in the tub.

 Eye makeup.

                          You’ll mar me if you kiss me.

                             Cold plunge.                         I mean

                                         you might want to kiss me.

        A five-inch scar on my right knee.     Temperatures changing

rapidly.         Petunias bite my lip.                         Spices muss

                               your cowlick.                   Thighs   and towels,

      the imprint of thumbs.   Swamp              pink.   Bookish

                         swallow.      Steam

                        casts off glasses,

                                                           a feisty splash.

Isn’t the water supposed to be doll-eyed?

                                             I’m saying      we should take a bath.

I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin

Dance me through the panic ‘til I’m gathered safely in

Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove

Dance me to the end of love

All the nights spent off our faces

Trying to find these perfect places

What the fuck are perfect places anyway?

I raise my head

And lower it

The sun at times

Hardly seems like the sun

But still it insists on shining on me

The road at times

Hardly seems like a road either

Still it tries to dissuade me

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Words: Erika T. Wurth, Ocean Vuong, Audre Lorde, Yannis Ritsos, Anne Carson, Derek Walcott, Clarice Lispector, Anna Morrison, Andrei Tarkovsky, Leonard Cohen, Lorde, Ren Hang.

Images: Robert Mapplethorpe, Hicham Benohoud, François-Xavier Gbré, Marcus Branch, Kehinde Wiley, Marcus Branch, Simone Quiles, Amy Sherald, Ji Yeo, Georgia O’Keefe, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Hicham Benohoud.

Moving Image: Shuji Terayama.

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Curated by Olakiitan Adeola.