Every Atom | No. 73

Introduction to Every Atom by project curator Brian Clements

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On the Occasion of His Birthday, Whitman 

  

Whitman was a Gemini, loyal and easy-going.

Also nosy, untidy, and prone to prevarication.

 

He was gold, a wall of forevers, a tidy room

inside a house with one room. He fractaled

 

into plots of synesthesia and chutzpah, a man

in a time of many men, a time inside a time.

 

When he pivoted and sang, the ya-honkiness of 

his voice swayed men into hats and talismans,

 

footholds, and spotted hawks. He lay on his

deathless bed and left the world glowing.

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Neil de la Flor is a writer, educator, artist and Executive Director of Reading Queer, a Knight-funded organization dedicated to promoting queer literary culture in South Florida.

 

Maureen Seaton has authored twenty-one poetry collections, both solo and collaborative, most recently, Sweet World (CavanKerry, 2019) and Fisher (Black Lawrence, 2018). With Neil de la Flor, she edited Reading Queer: Poetry in a Time of Chaos(Anhinga, 2018). Seaton is a professor of creative writing at the University of Miami. 

 

Cover art by Brian Pals

 

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