Introduction to Every Atom by project curator Brian Clements
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.
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