Friday, February 29, 2008

Leap Year

Hey Febreros:

Well, I just made it into this month! Since, from what I hear, Leap Year is a time when things are done in reverse, I'm actually letting you perusers know about a gig I'm doing *before* it happens, for a change...

It's at the Stone in NYC and it'll be old work and new. Here's the details:

3/7 Friday (DB)
8 pm
Tracie Morris
avenue C and 2nd street

So if you're around, stop by! My band will be Val Jeanty and Marvin Sewell.

Meanwhile, I had a wonderful time introducing one of my mentors, Fred Moten, poet, philosopher and provocateur as part of my University of Pennsylvania CPCW fellowship. Here's a lovely poem of his from his new book: "i ran from it but was still in it" that he read from last night. They're a series of 11-line poems:


I burn communities in shadow underground up on the
plateau then slide with the horny horns. duke remains
enfolded in the overtone series which is a belled cat
stretched out inside his instrument, an underprivilege of
sheets of exposure curled up around an outlaw corner.
curling round corners puts me in mind of Jean Toomer.
think about what it is to be a gene tumor. I want to be
a stream tuner. unfurled in tongues that don't belong

to somebody else either, to make a new sign about God
and theft and the bent starry stars of all love inside. you
can't sit still and fly? can't curl? you go find your thing.



Nice, huh? Well, speaking of "communities in shadow", of people finding "their thing", guess who came by this sweet soiree? The inimitable Mr. Samuel R. Delany, professor and legendary fiction writer. Here's my bad snapshot of two friends. Black future month.

;-)
T