鈥淭he End of the World was a nightclub, Drag queens with machetes and rhinestoned machine guns guarded the red and impassable door on Friday nights.
Just a look at the crowd, all dressed up and swaying outside, made people want to yell the truth about themselves to anyone who鈥檇 listen, but no one heard.鈥�
That鈥檚 the beginning of Saeed Jones鈥檚 poem, It鈥檚 one of four by that name dedicated to the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, in 2016.
In these poems, Jones wrestles with the
He turns to artists like Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin, Luther Vandross, and Little Richard for a complicated comfort.
And he peels back his personal grief to make sense of a collective one.We speak to him about what being on the cusk of calamity can teach us about grace, humanity, and ourselves.
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