“Daylight // Nightlight” started out as an exphrasis of Aesop Rock’s tandem songs, “Daylight” and “Nightlight”, written deep in pandemic isolation, but working, schooling and writing online. The comfort I felt when beamed into each others’ homes via the magical zoom tube contrasted heavily with the realization that I would most likely never actually physically share space with the people I was meeting in pixel land. So, I set out to capture the dissonance of these remote sensory experiences, attempting to capture binary experiences of a single reality that Aesop Rock’s songs captured. In process, I played with the light and dark of intimate screen time, the dream-like qualities of moving up-close, and the weird paranoia that can come with reaching across distance.
This poem, me, and us did get to be among bodies in a room. I read this poem at our first in-person Open Mic at the Daniel J. Evan’s Library, making a room full of people laugh affectionately at our zoom quirks, saying the word dildo in person, and sharing in a room of masked poetry friends. Then I went to go staff the real, live merch table.
A year later, “Daylight // Nightlight” got picked up by New Words Press, who are doing THE BEST WORK getting trans poetry out at a time where trans lives are actively under attack (more so than usual!). What’s more, they recently took the dive and got off of meta products, writing a sweet but unapologetic goodbye letter to meta. Poetry is a space where we can exist and be when everything is trying to un-make us, and New Words is as bold and genuine as it gets.
Circling back to my under-slept, online life of remote contact that birthed the poem, I read Daylight // Nightlight for the release reading while I was living on literal other side of the world from occupied Lenape Territory: the Republic of Georgia. Staying up until the wee hours of the night so I could read synchronously, chosen family logging on from the Midwest of Turtle Island, and my partner listening from bed. Some strangers, some so close. I was asking myself where everyone was, at the same time everyone felt right there. Then I closed my laptop lid, and crawled back into the darkness of sleep.
MoonLit Fern 