At the Colby Museum’s event, Art&: The Poetics of Atmosphere, Dominic Bellido ’24 read his new poem, “Thinking Of The Key.” Bellido wrote this poem in response to Lorna Simpson’s Cloudscape, a video on view in the exhibition The Poetics of Atmosphere: Lorna Simpson’s Cloudscape and Other Works from the Collection. You can watch a recording of the event, which includes a reading of this poem by Bellido, here. “Thinking Of The Key,” along with Bellido’s poem, “Son of Amauta,” can also be read below.
Thinking Of The Key
Inspired by Lorna Simpson’s video installation, Cloudscape
Why do men on silk screens
remind me of prayer?
Why do the voices ring
around my mind in
scattered circles, like skipping
stones on slack rivers?
What of the waves
from that forbidden sea?
Notice his eyes are
always closed; straight
legs sprouting from shadows
like black flowers. Petals
curling their edges at
penumbras; but, this light
is not dull enough
to dungeon me. It’s not
enough to cage the sound
of my mother’s song, or
those spirits of Sunday
mornings clung to her
tongue. Her whistles pierce
even the toughest of God’s
rain. She rejects the myth
of time. Like, how we used
to wipe wooden floors
to Eddie Santiago, when
I knew her arms as warmth
rather than words. She
always let me ask questions
I couldn’t yet answer.
Like, is sound only alive
when it touches us? Like stars
projecting into the midnight
curtain above me?
Or does it stack
itself in patient squares
when we refuse
to listen? Like water, it runs
down the ceramic tub,
splashing at hair curling
into question marks
my mother wipes. She whistles,
and the notes carry
the lullaby she stowed
next to my ribs. The cut
of sleep she promised
each night, that if I prayed
and if I thanked my
Angel de la guarda,
dulce compañía, no
me dejes solo ni de
noche ni de día, I
would be saved. Can you
save the disappeared, God?
Or are you still not
listening? Even when the fog
envelops us, we return
with our hands intact.
Our lips open
and plump. The thread
between us kept
winding around the lungs
of this Earth. Because to be
loud means there is breath
left in you. There is time
to let her take your hand,
and cup your head,
whispering into your hair
Sana sana,
colita de rana.
Si no sanas
hoy, sanarás mañana
Son of Amauta
