Swell Henry
“I hear the wind. Not swiftly. Not in gusts. Continuously. It does not let up. The wind tosses airplanes and boats. It tosses bits of paper and sea-froth. It crosses vast distances. I hear it because I am born-in-air. I am born-in-air and I hear the wind blowing, not just around this building, through these streets, but high in the statosphere. Because I am born-in-air my heart is an aircraft with a small, straight beacon light, navigating up there. In the winds. I am that insignificant. That insignificant and that free.”
“Swell Henry” is a monologue/soliloquy about standing on top of the Empire State Building and hearing, instead of God, the wind. It was performed in New York at Little Theater at Tonic, at DNA and the Apollo Theater as part of LMCC’s Uptown/Downtown festival. The soliloquy was integrated into the theatrical, poetic, genre-bending “Intimate Things” published by Lazuli Press in 2023.