Mantis 18 (Spring 2020)
Amherst College
Amir Hall
Yampee
after Natasha Tretheway
I was sleeping with Mummy when you died
My flight rose that morning. I told God
I won’t leave you begging for cold water.
What do the dead want with full mouths, so I
Keeping you bread in my belly, but God!
Tell me how you belly still leaking with laughter
So I can dream long hearing you and cry,
Steep you tea-strong like bay leaf before God
Lie and take the yampee from my eye.
*
Lie and take the yampee from my eye.
Steep you tea-strong like bay leaf before God
So I can dream long hearing you and cry,
Tell me how you belly still leaking with laughter
Keeping you bread in my belly, but God!
What do the dead want with full mouths, so I
I won’t leave you begging for cold water.
My flight rose that morning. I told God
I was sleeping with Mummy when you died
A friendly reminder to be soft, AMIR HALL’s work channels the body’s inheritances, memories and dreams into multimedia works that interrogate notions of selfhood, Godhood, relationship, home, love, and grace. His work centralizes love instead as its driving force and form, the thing pursued and pursuing him. He hopes to offer to participants, readers and audiences experiences of presence, which he defines as encounters with God.