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“My name is Marcelo Jerome Brociner. I’m currently the media teacher at Somerville High School, my alma mater. I am also a rapper, having written and released dozens of songs, and an event producer (see the annual ONE show or my 2017 exhibition in Hanoi, Vietnam). Attached are two poems that I have written in the time since the COVID-19 pandemic led to the closing of all Somerville school campuses back in mid-March.”

Dance

Marcelo Jerome Brociner

As the heart circulates woe
Through and out of the system,

We can do nothing but
Move to our internal rhythm

So the anxiety paralyzing you
Is telling you to dance

Water the Soil

How unsettling this stillness is, waking gears that housed dust
For longer than we can recall in the pursuit of productivity

This incubation, relieved by brief masked ventures,
Asks us to recalibrate in the face of relative safety

For how quickly the shunned are deemed essential
When incompetence at the top is a pandemic of its own

Dependent on those once dehumanized for their supposed dependency,
It becomes broad as day, the unabashed disregard for humanity

As we wait for life to thaw out, the connectivity dug up by this despair
Gifts us a rare moment in which we are living in a shared reality

The solidarity buried within the soil of these momentous times
Is bound to fuel growth so as long as the skies have tears

— Marcelo Jerome Brociner

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To have your work considered for the Lyrical send it to:
Doug Holder, 25 School St.; Somerville, MA 02143
dougholder@post.harvard.edu