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Dante Micheaux

Website
Years: 2003 | 2006 | 2009

Biography

Dante Micheaux is the author of Amorous Shepherd (Sheep Meadow Press, 2010). His poems and translations have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Bloom, Callaloo, Gathering Ground and Rattapallax—among other journals and anthologies. He has been a guest of the Poetry Project and the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. His honors include a prize in poetry from the Vera List Center for Art & Politics, the Oscar Wilde Award and fellowships from Cave Canem Foundation and The New York Times Foundation. He resides in London and New York City.

Poem

Lover

 

Tether to that which is not earth,

if I could explain, it would not be so—

 

the utopia of us, with its small space

for anarchy, the humming

 

of those outside and beneath

our own humming, marigold,

 

singing your pretty violence,

seduce me and be slain, or, better yet,

 

let beauty call the shots;

I dare you, kestrel, to dare this

 

and would not cast you off

to never catch you again,

 

for, in time—scarred by the pleasing battle,

the marks of you, their summations all over me,

 

there will be more of me in you;

take that, ambivalent one,

 

with nothing but everything to say.