Cover Photo: This photograph is a shot looking out to the sea from a sandy beach. The water is turquoise and the sand is golden. The sky in the distance is almost purple.
Photograph by Diane Exavier

and permutations

This poem was written by Diane Exavier in a 12-Month Poetry Collection Generator taught by Angel Nafis

one of us to manage. Management is love.

ashore with men, stones in palms.

They cover theirs with desire.

They aim their pleas too close to our temples.

Their dreams will kill us.

or space between oceans

or a black hole’s outermost skin

Return in this family is reclamation of time.

                      dreaming of
                    legal pads brimming
                         with cursive
              word processed feelings
                bound by spine
              to the highest power of
                         dressers stacked with pill
                  bottles and cologne, reeking

gummy grains of rice. a breathless chest.

*

’sThe Math of Saint Felixthe3rdthing.press

Dispatching from the Caribbean Diaspora, Diane Exavier is a writer, theatermaker and educator working at the intersection of performance and poetry. Diane concerns herself with what she recognizes as the 4 L’s: love, loss, legacy and land. She is the author of Teaches of Peaches published by TAR Chapbook Series in 2017, and her writing can be found elsewhere in such places as The Atlas Review and The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. A 2021 Jerome Foundation Finalist, Diane holds an MFA in Writing for Performance from Brown University. She lives and works in Brooklyn.