Constellations: A multimedia Poem
This multimedia piece arose out of my time in HZ9201 Creative Writing: Poetry with Professor Divya Victor. During the semester, I had become afflicted with a form of skin cancer. The whole process made me question the amount of agency and control we have as humans. In forming Constellations, all text and audio was composed after the video was taken using the raw footage as my cue. What was done in the video was completely by my participant’s own volition, my only instruction being to draw on the afflicted thigh and film the process.
Constellations by Reginald James Kent
Along the way, you started to believe in other people.
You gazed at them gazing at the stars
Believing in zodiacs
You wondered how the signs pointed to them
To you
You forgot that people within themselves
Held infinites
The Constellations were never used to guide seafarers home
Astrology was confused with astronomy
With a telescope you found cancer in the night sky
With a microscope they found cancer in you
Two expanses seem so small
When sprawled across infinities that span a universe
So you threw away the telescope
And looked at your skin
Believing its pores could contain
All the complexities of divination
Clutching it as it held you together
Even as you descended into the darkness of
The space that surrounded you