Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves | The Fruits of the Crown, 2020 | Epic poem. | Google Document shared in draft form with Max Pierson who declared its necessity.

the moon was nearly full the last time Beauty saw me in the mirror, after three hard nights waxing new, she surprised meat our meeting place, drew petalflash of tears // heard children asking questions I didn’t know I needed answered about what it is, how it gets in, where it came from // Ian heralds my calligraphy as FRUITS OF THE QUAR // Simon heard my silence follow louder archived grieving, sent texted tendril to inquire // an old man’s word on the radio assured me it’s good or it won’t last so we youths praised and shared his wisdom // on the phone with Daphne speaking of what is collapsing into what else, speaking of future dread hurtling closer on the sun, we commenced with laughs like tousled wind chimes at a sudden exclamation I AM JUST NOT GOING TO MAKE IT WITHOUT LOOKING GOOOOOOOOOD or some such life-preserving fiddle // Democracy Dies in Darkness posts isn’t alive. That’s why it’s so hard to kill and chilled me to the bone, made me forget heroics of soap, and then remembering I relax again — grateful as ever to live in this time and no other // no other // Max and I raise a digital eyebrow at everyday evils, and he requests A poem about this chapter on earth is very necessary! like burger rations, like mat Pilates, like other gifts whose names I have forgotten, it is easy to heed his call to shifting action, directs me into ever closer orbit with the gem-self // Sjame’s gentle modeling toward routine toward astronaut toward muscles toward stoic sparkle is with meat fruited quar with bedded rest with morning run with breaking fast with me at resolute meeting of pleaded tasks and, too, with falling off // late in the afternoon I write to my mother, thank her for bearing witness of my Tuesday’s wild despair, thank her for holding feral weight again, thank her for telesimulacrum of lap of bosom of womb // moon phase chart says New arrived same Tuesday, and I begin to power down toward rest attempting to recall if each birth tears so at the self 2020Mar28S0126 // diagramming paradox all day today in chats // yesterday’s awkward ancient helix of fruit and virus, twin winners, ex ploi ta tion i conz bay BEE, titans of opportunism, tangle emblem of this interlude that changed the path forever // Patty and I laugh about how hard it is to tell the time of days this month, more than once they remind me it’s just all been one long day, together we track the masking off of life, significance of facial disruptions, significance of blending in of avoidance of gut’s desire to follow herd, two thousand twenty years and now this newborn common era, good spirits in the living, viral husks proliferating, we all know we’ve entered books of future history and have no means of escape // by this time next moon my Inventory will have become lots of tiny piles of cash, and I will be headed to a pre-war or fresh-build up Brooklyn or down City, light and quiet fill a large room and my beloved awaits with attentive smile and fun health to play in, it is May Day 2020 and I have turned the weight surrounding me into buoyant nimble energy, and I am running through the woods of our new jungling like recess and like war 2020Mar29N1238 // now more than ever the clock ouroborosiates, each moment cannot escape its neighbor, and time feels feckless as the wind // capital for centuries, it too has been furloughed, still we try to employ it and the farcing protest makes fools of us passing hours through wormholes of phone call laundry email lunch handwashing dishwashing texting scrolling crying laughing numbing reading disinfecting and unfurling dread //the morning this goblin was elected I called a cab to Daphne’s apartment where we two frowning nibbled at breakfast treats shook our suffocated heads in resignation and simply could not find the words, the driver was a young man who humored me as we drove through a neighborhood of mansions