2011
It’s fascinating to read this eye-opening poem about personal power using 2018 eyes, to see Mingus writing about finding freedom while also recognizing freedom, for many women, is housed within confined secret spaces rife with restrictions. Yet that doesn’t make the freedom any less real. It is, in fact, her truest self, an existence of choice, a reality running counter to her day-to-day life. Now, with #metoo breaking down walls and “white box” confines, I hope this poem, if written today, would end with an exclamation of this existence sustained, of a dream ended and a reality found with power and freedom fully intact, never again kept in a box. - James Duncan.
waking//daydream//or I MAY JUST CEASE TO EXIST:
i am in a white box, a white box, spic and span, nothing, no one, no things, no ones, no windows, no doors, no sounds, no sights, emptied, bare, emptied, pristine as the sun itself, i am holding in my mind this: that i can be, do, make, create, become any thing or any one, when i am in this room. as original as i wish, as dreamlike as i can, as beyond truthful as there ever was a truth. i am not scared. my mind is calm, still, quiet, resolved, unhindered by wailing of my soul, my soul itself is still and gentle. i decide to dance. i decide to dance naked like david since i'm in an empty white box with no windows and no doors and no destinations or goals. when i tire of that, i conjure up a dress, a magic dress that i put on. i spin and as i spin, it lifts me up in the air of the white box, like a top dropped from the sky from small child fingers, only i am a top hewn out, thrown out from the floor so as to touch the sky. i keep spinning, i keep spinning, i am going so much faster than i've ever been, not in ?anyone's car, not on my bicycle, not in a pair of rollerblades, running shoes, or ?rabbit feet... i cease to exist. i cease to exist. I CEASE TO EXIST
James H Duncan's "The best way to catch a dagger in your back is to sleep on your side" in Issue #15
James H Duncan is the editor of Hobo Camp Review and author of We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine, a new poetry collection from Unknown Press, which was called the "Best Book of 2017" by the staff at Drunk Monkeys. His work has appeared in Writer's Digest, Full of Crow, Pulp Modern, American Artist, Boned, Trailer Park Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg Review, and other publications. For more, visit www.jameshduncan.com.
James H Duncan is the editor of Hobo Camp Review and author of We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine, a new poetry collection from Unknown Press, which was called the "Best Book of 2017" by the staff at Drunk Monkeys. His work has appeared in Writer's Digest, Full of Crow, Pulp Modern, American Artist, Boned, Trailer Park Quarterly, Poetry Salzburg Review, and other publications. For more, visit www.jameshduncan.com.