Phillips, Xan 2019
Six Points Reading Series with Jan-Henry Gray, Xan Phillips, and mai c. doan
Women & Children First Bookstore
The places where Edmonia’s bones were fractured still hold violent reverberations. When it rains I massage the static hum out of each point of impact. There is nothing heavier than flesh that wishes to be on another axis, except perhaps stone she shaped. Tonight she tells me, it’s impossible to bring a lover to the small death she deserves. An orgasm is excavated, never given. She takes my face in her hands without permission.
– Xan Phillips, “Edmonia Lewis and I Weather the Storm”
Watch Xan Phillips read from his poetry collection Hull:
in the dream where I run without breasts I am motivated by flight, I haven’t yet begun to unweld the framework, invent new trauma, whip the stitch arching each bosom as victuals dangled, withheld. when I hemorrhage against design it ain’t incognito. the neighbors walk their dogs past me. that’s me smoking in the alley, letting roses from my wrists. petal to puddle, a misgendering of matter. these hooves unhinge themselves as tiny meteors to cudgel dusk.
– Xan Phillips, “Nativity”
Watch Xan Phillips interview with Brown University as part of the “Art of the Matter” series:
