How does this work? This poem, a collaborative study in tressing and pooling, was gathered and scattered from writer to writer over the span of several months.

Sid Ghosh writes—

Gestation

Generosity of deep
rivers deems us
worthy of life.

Again the rivers
find the sea.

Again and again.

Can you tell
the river to let go?

There is nothing
to be found.

Come away now.

Adam Wolfond hears, Adam Wolfond writes—

Is this not the thinking
that is the crux of wanting
the ways of people
and that world was really
the love we need
for bringing vortex
of pace and pattern
the way of typing this
treatise of relation?

The dance this takes on
is the living muses
of teaching knowing
neurodiversity
so faces of making
is living bodies minding
and moving together

I think that the ways
of varying the answering
bodies is the bringing
people rallying wanting
that fast feeling of inspiration
not language of instruction

I am that open person
who needs offerings
of the ground and the sticks
and the open atmospheres
are nattering for my attention
so using inspirations
being of need of thinking
and grounding is the way
of open field can break
in my movement

I’m not about school
make this about real ways
we learn and are prizing
knowing for the ways
mad breaks of pacing
people to the same rhythm
uses closed doors
challenging for varied feelers

I am going to say that I am
not about school but about
the way of open feeling
and closed doors of school
very hard for having open mind

Starting in steps
of atmospheric attention
is like isolating rhythm
but asyncopation is the way
of going to the varied paces
of the makings and the olfactory
wafts in easy calm ways
that lie in the air
practicing asyncopation
is what I do easily
because I can feel
the multiverse

Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves hears, Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves writes—

until we break
the river in
two open portals
pass worthy only

if their spill grows
branching braving breaking
reverse it and discover
pools of mingling study

ease of pooling
ease of study

pooling work we
stranger ants march
down our hills each with
our speck of marble

in the future on the world’s
newly ancient marble beaches
our babies tell their babies
of the rivers we had to move
the sand we had to claim

dodging lies
grain by grain
we unmade the prisons and
gave all the ivy new life
at sea

Imane Boukaila hears, Imane Boukaila writes—

Listening thoroughly
to motions hitting truths
by reasoning waves
unsettling sedimented layers
smothered thickening

mistakes

yearning to home
their longing purpose
reaching introvertedly
toward rising tides
trespassing free daring

streams

tracing tilting roads
stressing time
to redefine thresholds
trusting the shift
damping mindfully

hesitating

muttered testing
loitering trials
waiting to boat mission
to inhibited motivation
truthfully tressing

voids

filling generously
trespassed plots reuniting
in hidden estuaries mingling
truths and trials and mistakes
trusting bonding saddling

modes

troubling calm waters
reviving meaning
piling treasures
regenerating thorough
findings excavated

Lauren Russell hears, Lauren Russell writes—

Hoping to boat
a wanderer beneath
sunset’s pink-chalked cross-

hatched altocumulus
perlucidus posing
for a photograph

some waves wear
the code of rope and sail—

pummeling rocks
in sacred formation, straddling
unease and flirtation—

until sky’s patchworked
from navy and cloud:

such stars dangling
in the quilted night?

Hannah Emerson hears, Hannah Emerson writes—

Makes makes makes makes beauty
become reality nothing become
the beauty getting beauty beauty
grow into the beauty heaving beauty
making beast become the beast
looking becoming beast that universe
needs to just needs to help beast
become reality that is becoming universe
reality that helps make thought tree you
into the beauty that is getting born yes yes yes

JJJJJerome Ellis hears, JJJJJerome Ellis writes—

After hearing Sid, Adam, Adjua, Imane, Lauren, and Hannah, I sat down at a hammered dulcimer and played. Here’s a translation of what I played:

to trust a gallop fruiting full upward in deep winter

left astride the syncopated foot of a newly ancient dance

split pivots too quick to write but wide open to forgiveness

o star, o wandering, o ladder of tressed ephemera

we will hold close to the crossing of the pink channel of morning

the unseen upholds

a chair, uninvented, a year rolling back to swaddle shame

the high fruit calls search, a thought to tree toward

what can open multiverse in bodies?

Chris Martin hears, Chris Martin writes—

generosity of deep
come away now

is this not the thinking
of the multiverse

until we break
at sea

listening thoroughly
findings excavated

hoping to boat
in the quilted night?

makes makes makes makes beauty
nothing that is getting born

to trust a gallop
that can open bodies

a body that can open rivers
a river that can let go

Sid Ghosh hears—