and we in the middle of it gathers 52 poems written from 2020 through 2025. I’ve arranged them chronologically and divided them into six sections with titles that become the lines of a palindrome that bookends the collection:
going slowly critical
like a song
the body counts
a rhythm of absences
in the moment of falling
this is the city
The collection is an extended walking meditation that takes place mostly in Chicago. But it is also a call and response between the poems and the pen and ink drawings Sou Vai Keng created in response to them (eleven of which are included in the book and one on the cover). It is in the betwixt and between of the call and response, the six years of walking meditation, sister moon, and the circle of readers I hope will join them that the poems live.