SCRIPT:

 . . . but how do you have an intimate chat with a country on fire?

Girl, I hear you. intimacy is not my impulse with the United States either.

But then what is the United States?

Here and now, you and me, aren’t we the United States too?

  . . .you know what Langston said . . . 

“They’ll see how beautiful I am/ And be ashamed”

But the times are SHAMELESS!

Jayne Cortez said it well: “the altar will not fit another skull”

Constance says people are turning in screeds 

for these fireside chats-- and why wouldn’t they—

rants and pissed off poems and posters and songs

but I  did want to do something different:

a score, a ritual, a scavenger hunt  

something a little more magical / I was like

“Greetings from your Conjurer-in-Chief.  

Here’s a trick I learned about surviving in America.

Take hold of something in your line of vision

a rooftop, a spoon, a pebble in your shoe.

Then pour your worries into it.

Your heartache, your grief, unspeakable and unheard.

Let this worry object hold it for a while”

I know I’m so Haitian!

that’s the ticket: something vibrating, 

something connected to Blackness 

what living objects can be when you’ve been a living object

in this country// how you can turn it around

I’m talking about conjure / a conjuring vibe

and constance said I was onto something

but it lacked intimacy and connection

and miré said the same thing and i just met constance

but miré and i go way back

and so i had to believe it was true 

and that stung a little because you know 

intimacy is generally a problem for me anyway

not warmth or friendliness, but real intimacy in America

is a real problem and in this moment 

it’s a thing I’m not sure I really want to give

more like a thing I’m not sure I know how to hold

and what is intimacy in a socially distant country on fire?  

but what is conjure without vulnerability and risk?

Constance suggested speaking directly to a friend. 

For real, what if a presidential address could be just that? 

So let me try that for a minute and just give America a chance

--America—whoever that may be—the chance to overhear. . .

Hey, did I ever tell you what Amoke told me years ago

I was having a hard time / going through some things

and she said: take 3 eggs 

and put them in a brown paper bag

and put the bag  on the top of the fridge for a while

and then—well, I can’t tell you the whole magic

you’d need to talk to her yourself

 but it was a way to work things out

and the key was put those eggs in a bag

and pour your energy into them. 

I keep thinking about those eggs,

what they were, what they did,

and how everybody’s eggs would be

slightly different but what I want people to do is  

reach for something, hold it in their hands

and maybe set it aside/  gather up your right belongings,

let them take hold and turn everything into something else.

That was my idea behind the Conjurer-in-Chief.

Laura escaped from her husband and little son

and zoomed down not on a computer

but in her car in her mask with her jewelry box 

and we had so much fun doing a presidential photo shoot

in my parents’ backyard, in Detroit, glimmering with green.

Laura took tons of pictures and in my favorite one,

there are flowers and a little picture of me as a kid on the lawn

and you can see me holding one of the two Haitian commodore busts

from my parents’ house, so nuts the stuff they have, and there are

two of Laura’s $2 bills, two of my parents’ bicentennial catalogues,

and after four hundred years, maybe like Langston says: 

“They’ll see how beautiful I am”

and maybe now I too can hold these eggs close 

and now turn this into something else . . .