Meditations in an Emergency by Cameron Awkward-Rich
Meditations in an Emergency
Cameron Awkward-RichI wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.
MARGINALIA
1.
What I know about a heart breaking I learned from everything I cannot control. For example: a grasshopper on my knee poised to move towards my outstretched finger, having been beckoned to, and, having jumped, was suddenly blown away by a gust of wind, never to return. For example: putting socks on alone at night before bed, remembering my grandfather out of the blue, reading the newspaper one Sunday afternoon, the sun almost too orange to be real. For example: hearing my name tumble down someone’s mouth. Or perhaps not hearing it at all.
2.
In a world that is so determined to kill us, how do we stay alive. In a world where I am asked to justify my body, how do I dream.
3.
Here is how I hurt: body bent forward, fist against my chest as if I have taken out my heart. Here is how I am foolish: the more I am hurt the deeper I love.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Dispatch by Cameron Awkward-Rich, published by Persea, 2016. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“Set against the media environment that saturates even our most intimate spaces, Dispatch attends to, revises, and thinks adjacent to the news of racial/gendered violence in the US, from the nineteenth century to the present day. These poems ask: What kind of revisions will make this a world/a story that is concerned with my people’s flourishing? How ought I pay attention, how to register perpetual bad news without letting it fatally intrude? Cameron Awkward-Rich is among the most bracing voices to emerge in recent years, a dazzling exemplar of poetry’s (and humanity’s) possibilities.” (Source)
ABOUT CAMERON AWKWARD-RICH
Poet and writer Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of the full-length poetry collections An Optimism (Persea Books, 2025), Dispatch (Persea Books, 2019), and Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016), as well as the chapbook Transit (Button Poetry, 2015). Awkward-Rich is also the author of The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment (Duke University Press, 2022). A Cave Canem fellow, he earned a PhD from Stanford University. He teaches women, gender, and sexuality studies… (more)
Read more poems by Cameron Awkward-Rich • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Follow on Instagram • Website • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- Explore other works in pursuit of: wounds • loss • identity • Or browse the index
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Briana
This is exactly – yes. Like my heart was shaken by a blinding light and what came out feels like this.
T.
Sending you love.
T.
Adriana
<3
T.
“Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.”
T.