VOICEOVER—ERATO

What do you mean what have I done.
You’ve had the same sad songs
on repeat for weeks & that one my friend
‘s on you. Believe me had I known
what the vibrations could do
I’d of smashed this cithara in an age.
Oh & I try not to take it personal
but when Lucinda asked Maria
are the songs we sing worth the broken
heart I reached for the needle
just to quiet these lips of mine these
hearthurt melodies. At my feet I gather
every load expelled in frustration
I stir the fluids with my toes while my sisters
dancing by say so this is what you been
up to is it & before I can even decide
not to answer them some new record is spun
another ache archived another mis-
communication catalogued & the worst of it all
is how soft the hard songs feel in my throat.
I could sop up this mess I suppose
with my ragged denim my brightest dresses
I could wrap these ruptured strings
around my throat & ankles but what
sorrow could that possibly reverse
or forestall or prevent. No
so long as there are even two of you
treading these scorched grasses my work will
never be finished. We will hum our hurts Fiona
from the calm under the waves
in the blue of new oblivion.

---

Cea (Constantine Jones) is a Greek-American thingmaker raised in Tennessee & housed in Brooklyn. Their visual work is housed in the Artist Registry at Visual AIDS, where they also work as the Oral History Project Liaison. They are the author of IN STILL ROOMS (The Operating System 2020) & a collaborative chapbook with Portuguese visual artist Vicente Sampaio, BALEEN: A POEM IN TWELVE DAYS (Ursus Americanus 2022). Their work has been exhibited or performed across NYC & Tennessee. They live at the corner of stories & noise.