Sheila Maldonado, Mashup Poem & Video

copy rong

in this pod

this vessel

a crack known only to mice and waterbugs

reverting to rollercoaster origins one high hour one low 

(world that’s so cold world that’s so cold)

 all the music they leave behind 

 i hope i leave enough music behind

 it is as wrong to think you are nothing you have nothing to contribute

 as it is to think you are everything that none of it could be without you

 i am the nightkeeper timebreaker shouldn’t go to bed without singing

all we have is our devotion

how we earn our spots on the floor

flesh answering rhythm in waves

body cracked dumb

(i put in work and watch my status escalate)

disciple of spin 

tame a loose planet

in the orbit of my skirt

here to become the glyph

slip into the wormhole of my hip my neck my back

(i give in to the rhythm of my feet ooh ooh)

scratch the slur beat the word 

string talking to wind 

syllables notes spirits as they are uttered

i insisted on the dark city

now persist in the dark city

where am i did I live have i lived

i’m ok to go

into a dimension 

of vast idiocy

don’t care if the neighbors see a rush of

skin from their window, my body taking off

Note: The text for the video poem "copy rong" is made of several other poems of mine as well as lyrics of songs by other artists. It includes lines from my poem "up town down town crown" made of facebook statuses that I posted during April, poetry month and the worse month of the pandemic in New York City. It is also made of lines from many dance-related poems in my two poetry collections, one-bedroom solo and that's what you get. 

It's called "copy rong" because I was unsure about the copyright issues of the songs when I was including them in the video. I was also mashing up my poems and the lyrics so I made a mess of copying myself and others because I really couldn't write during the terror of these first few Rona months in New York. All I could do was mix and remix lines.

 "Copy rong" was part of a group project for The Poetry Project's House Party, an online publication that came about during the pandemic. Poet Lydia Cortés asked Alba Hernández, Christina Olivares and myself to work with her on video poems for the publication. We made a group video of our zoom meetings as well as individual video poems.—Sheila Maldonado