#alexa patrick

but these voids are no incident, I’ve learned as I’ve attempted to name the acute hurt: the desire for contact without flinch, the mere warmth missing from every greeting. Can’t remember a time when I was not chosen last.

I scour for myself in final scenes, every happy ending incident to my silent work, yet so many times I disappear, unnamed in the credits. If I take my missing into my own hands, have no contact

with the world that abuses contact, perhaps, I will have a self that lasts. Seen so many girls with my face go missing as if we aren’t the beauty incident on the world’s dull surface, their names phantom amethysts embellishing time.

So I run so fast that even time strains in its reach, struggling to contact who it once held by the neck, by the name. I breathe easier now. I was last seen drawing wings on my chalk outline. Incidentally, what tried to kill me missed.

A sad truth: sometimes we go missing just because we’ve witnessed over time how no one looks for us no one inciting riots on our behalf. We: our only emergency contact This country: our emergency. We see it smile as it buries our names.

Call it an incident when we go missing, But remember our names. For we will return, like time to make contact with this dirt, before washing our feet in the sea

Artist Spotlight: Alexa Patrick

NMWA Assistant Editor Alicia Gregory spoke with poet Alexa Patrick, who wrote and performed a new work, “Possibility,” for the museum’s grand reopening in October 2023. Read the poem in its entirety on NMWA’s website, and buy your copy of Patrick’s debut poetry collection, Remedies for Disappearing (2023).

Bless us girls, apostrophes in our name; hung drawbridges for the missing continent in our chests, last seen bowing behind the Atlantic. Since, time has continued to chasm our contact, dressing clear intention as American incident,

but these voids are no incident, I’ve learned as I’ve attempted to name the acute hurt: the desire for contact without flinch, the mere warmth missing from every greeting. Can’t remember a time when I was not chosen last.

I scour for myself in final scenes, every happy ending incident to my silent work, yet so many times I disappear, unnamed in the credits. If I take my missing into my own hands, have no contact

with the world that abuses contact, perhaps, I will have a self that lasts. Seen so many girls with my face go missing as if we aren’t the beauty incident on the world’s dull surface, their names phantom amethysts embellishing time.

So I run so fast that even time strains in its reach, struggling to contact who it once held by the neck, by the name. I breathe easier now. I was last seen drawing wings on my chalk outline. Incidentally, what tried to kill me missed.

A sad truth: sometimes we go missing just because we’ve witnessed over time how no one looks for us no one inciting riots on our behalf. We: our only emergency contact This country: our emergency. We see it smile as it buries our names.