NVN Saturday: RITUAL
by Amy Shimshon-Santo
the year crawls toward an end sharp knife between its teeth & bleeding tongue a year of vowels displaced from their consonants, zipped together by a three letter word that is not good for children & other living things I walk to the edge of language thin stick between my hands holding a makeshift flag colorless as the memory of water scavenged from cotton clothing of the departed it is time to place the year inside an urn, bury it in the Earth lie down beside the unimaginable hear the new year drumming & dreaming itself into being, wanting to be born
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Dr. Amy Shimshon-Santo is a warm-blooded vertebrate with hair. She writes poetry, essays, performs spoken word, improvisation, and choreography. Read or listen to her poetry collections: Catastrophic Molting (2020), Even the Milky Way is Undocumented (2020), and look for her forthcoming book Random Experiments in Bioluminescence (2024). Teaching and facilitating trans-local community arts projects have been central to her social practice for 30+ years. She is available as a guest artist, arts educator, coach, and editor. Dr. A has been nominated for an Emmy Award and three Pushcart Prizes in poetry and creative non-fiction. She was a finalist for the Night Boat Poetry Prize, and earned a place in the U.S. Service Learning Hall of Fame. Connect with her at @shimshona / @amyshimshon