CACONRAD

CAConrad fell for poetry as a child, rummaging through library shelves to absorb the words of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Emily Dickinson. In 2005, Conrad began developing their (Soma)tic Poetry Rituals, structures that instigate an “extreme present” in which to write. Today, they live just up the Connecticut River from the place where Dickinson spent her life: Amherst, Massachusetts. This summer, their work—nearly five decades’ worth—will be honored with a show of poetry as art objects at the Batalha Centro de Cinema in Porto, Portugal. To mark the occasion, they share a poem from their forthcoming book, Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return, a collection of odes to yearning, the weather’s consequences, and the passing of time.

it was sexy how you politely declined the larger halo ocean waves travel thousands of miles never revealing the source of their power enough poems have been wasted on human cruelty we dig hard to find the other world press pen with everything in us write Gate to open 9 pages at once stay open ignore how much you want to close I love you it must be said I love you can you hear it arriving after countless miles hold my hand as we feel relief with the crashing waves