“Come Out the Wilderness”

“Come Out the Wilderness” is a full-length performance poem that situates “queer” sexuality in the history of American slavery. The performance, as it is here presented, is a work in progress; I am currently expanding and revising its story. This particular recording was done one week after an intensive writing session in which I devoted all my time to “channeling” the poems as they came to me. In this version, they have undergone very little revision, but after “birthing” the concept, I urgently needed space and opportunity to share the work. What you hear is a perfomance that took place on the CLUBHOUSE digital audio application, a medium I turned to during the pandemic when social gatherings were limited by the prevalence of COVID-19.