My name is Cameron-Awkward Rich.

I'm a  poet and a professor of gender studies. Today I'm going to be reading my poem  "Cento Between the Ending and the End." And a cento as you might know is a form   that is composed entirely of language  that poets sort of steal from other poets.

Um, and in this case it's a poem  composed entirely of language   from poets who are either my friends or  Lucille Clifton, who is a friend of my mind. Sometimes you don’t die when you’re supposed to & now I have a choice repair a world or build a new one inside my body a white door opens into a place queerly brimming gold light so velvet-gold it is like the world hasn’t happened when I call out all my friends are there everyone we love is still alive gathered at the lakeside like constellations my honeyed kin honeyed light beneath the sky a garden blue stalks white buds the moon’s marble glow the fire distant & flickering the body whole bright- winged brimming with the hours of the day beautiful nameless planet. Oh friends, my friends— bloom how you must, wild until we are free.