WATERMARK

a poet’s notebook

Established 02004

COVID

October 21, 2020

220,000

I continue to be word-struck. What can be said? The more accurate estimates, based on "excess deaths" over expected, based on previous years, is 300,000. Excess deaths, of what seem to be extra people. Old people, sick people. Black/brown people. Those of us who count mostly, only, in big numbers, numbers that bury us… Continue reading

Art Journal, Pandemic

COVID, Pandemic

Ancestral (Artificial )Intelligence

I do not use AI to write. For me, writing is how I think, and I prefer to do it myself. If/when I post anything here that I suspect or know to be AI generated, I will tell you.

I have changed this from Artificial to Ancestral, after Abi Awomosu @ Substack. This medium was made with human history, human thought. All of it, bright and dark. It is ancestral.

Poems

Please do not assume that I am the speaker/ subject of my poems.

In these times of creative nonfiction and fictionalized memoirs, I think of the poem itself as true fiction: it is most likely not factual, but it must be true.

It is likely to be — it is best if it is — a truth I did not know before I wrote, and may not understand even then.

A poem is my way of discovering (dis-covering) what I feel; sometimes, what I think — but it is not necessarily biographical.

COVID

220,000