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Mari Esabel Valverde
Mari Esabel Valverde
Crossing
Concerns the risk of coming out of the closet and the brave act of choosing love over and over again.
TTBB chorus and piano
“Crossing” concerns the risk of coming out of the closet and the brave act of choosing love over and over again. The rickety, unsure bridge is a metaphor for the daunting process of coming out. Once this bridge is crossed, there is abounding love to be had and replicated.
Composer’s Notes
“Crossing” is a musical setting of “Risk” by the disabled, mixed race, transgender, queer poet Amir Rabiyah. Commissioned by Seattle Men’s Chorus for their concert series “Born This Way,” this work concerns the risk of coming out of the closet and the brave act of choosing love over and over again. The rickety, unsure bridge, from which some “look down” and fall to their demise, is a metaphor for the daunting process of coming out as L, G, B, T, or Q or trans-amorous; but once this bridge is crossed, there is abounding love to be had and replicated.
-Mari Esabel Valverde
Text
We bridge broken wood,
repair the rotten slats that creak.
We restore the lifeless vine,
braid vitality from decay.
The way of crossing is never easy,
someone always looks down. We tremble
knowing how far we can fall. We question
who or what will cushion us. We feel our frailty.
We love, as tremors rock earth,
bound in devastation & slow transition.
We love, the way erosion
paints complex striations.
Vulnerable, the way exposed mountains
remember being covered by the ocean.
How we love, through each disaster,
Praise us, how much we risk
with every reach.
-Amir Rabiyah
About the Poet
Amir Rabiyah is a queer, trans, mixed race, disabled poet, educator, and librarian currently living in Central Pennsylvania. They are the author of Prayers for My 17th Chromosome, published by Sibling Rivalry Press in November 2017, and co-editor of Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices, published by Trans-Genre Press in October 2015. Amir writes about living with chronic pain and illness, war, trauma, spirituality, healing, redemption—and speaks on silenced places. Their other works have been published in Mizna, 580 Split, Flicker and Spark: A Contemporary Queer Anthology of Spoken Word and Poetry, Enizagam, Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, The Asian American Literary Review, Kweli Journal, Sukoon, Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion and Spirituality and more. Amir is a three-time VONA (Voices of our Nations) fellow. They were a finalist in the 2008 Joy Harjo Poetry contest, the 2012 Enizagam poetry contest, and the Atlanta Review’s 2013 poetry contest.
Amir has travelled extensively all over the United States leading workshops and sharing their stories and poems. In 2009, Amir had the privilege of being an STP with June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley where they supported emerging poets develop their craft and deepen their voice. Amir has participated in residencies at the Kimmel Nelson Harding Center in Nebraska, the Guapamacátaro Center for Art and Ecology in Michoacán, Mexico, and more. For more information or to contact Amir, visit www.AmirRabiyah.com.
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