[The Hair Image] A poem

The instinctual predator in men is the instinct we would find bond;

I do admit,

I enjoyed the way you twisted your head
over the slightest befuddled sight


Dontrell Lovet't
-from [A Model of Today]

Act I,Scene I of [Matilda Maddening] a Play on the Dissolution of Marriage

[Set opens with Husband at his desk and wife seated across from him, legs folded under. Wife is wearing a robe, as though preparing for bed and husband is fully clothed]

[There is silence between them for at least two minutes, as they both fiddle around with things around them, their hands and their movements, trying to find words to speak to one another.]

[After a long, almost seemingly endless silence, Husband sits forward as if to break the silence, then seats himself back and resigns again to perpetuate the silence already ongoing.]

[Suddenly, the wife, Matilda, breaks the silence]

Matilda: Say it.
Husband: There’s nothing to say.
Matilda: So you say nothing?
Husband: What else can I say if there is nothing to say?
Matilda: You always have something to say, saying nothing means everything.
Husband: Then let my saying nothing say what you believe I should say.
Matilda: [Lets out a sigh/laugh, brief] I knew when I married you, you were a coward. Naively I believed you’d acclimate to what a man is suppose to be.
Husband: Sure, sure, if that makes you feel better, consider me what you must and consider my silence as my words. But let’s not be so coy as to pretend you had no part in this.
Matilda: A part in what?
Husband: You know what.
Matilda: No, what exactly should I know? Say it for Christ’s sake.
Husband: The night in question, you were engaged in your own bit of deception.
Matilda: [sits forward closer to the desk] You can’t be serious.
Husband: As serious as I ever have been.
Matilda: So you use this so called deception as your blueprint to commit your unspeakable crimes?
Husband: Who said I committed any crimes?
Matilda: I say.
Husband: Of course. Not only did you name yourself my wife, but also judge and jury.
Matilda: Don’t do that.
Husband: Do what?
Matilda: Return to your pathetic position of cowardice. My mum always said, “A tyrant always finds a pretext for their tyranny.”
Husband: So now I’m a tyrant. First a speechless coward, now a tyrant. [Sits back with sarcasm] Mon cher, you’ve got to make up your mind, that is, if you can ever can.
Matilda: Even with my scatter brain, I can focus in on your non-sense, that tucked tail between your legs and that fucking yellow belly.
Husband: Does it make you feel better? To belittle? Deface? The whole world that stands and the next that will has to be in flames before you can ever begin to get to the place where you will begin to think of smiling.
Matilda: In point of fact, since you’ve mentioned it, it would make me outright blissful if everything in that world you stand for goes down into flames and something you love dearly is murdered.
Husband: I love you dearly.
Matilda. Not that night you didn’t.
Husband: [Gets fed up and jumps to his feet to walk away] I’m not going to do this with you, not again, there’s got to be some point we’ll have to end.
Matilda. [Gets upset from his attempt to walk away] A point to end, a point to end, it’ll be tonight, right now if you don’t sit you ass back in that seat and show me that fucking respect I deserve!

[Husband stops in full step, contemplating]


-from the 2018 play by Dontrell Lovet't,[Matilda Maddening]

photography by: Izabael Dajinn

[Chances] a Poem

There's nothing instrumental about being detrimental;
the way up is the same way one ends up down,
and that is, by chancing the rise


yesterday I was a man with a vision;
today, that vision is unclear through
the battering my perspective has taken

a softer world to inhabit is no longer a concern


-from [If It Be You]
by Dontrell Lovet't

Photography by

[The Lips Your Lips Have Kissed] a Poem

I knew a woman,
as no one has ever known me-
voraciously vague, a noise
in her like the proud-Mary she grew
hearing winding up the Mississippi,
not so far off from where Miles
Davis grew hearing the music,
I hear tell

Wild plum still blossoms on
my lips from yours on mine,
all the tales of St.Louis a-rest
on this tongue,
erotic scribes, falling
leaves at autumn

-from [If It Be You]
by Dontrell Lovet't

[It's All Over the News] a Poem

It's all over the news,
the wire across the town,
you've a new lover

& if that be true,
the news on the wire,
on the town,
how much love have you've
given away to this new lover?

Life from you was paid
in blood from me;
in a youth so furious,
you reputedly could fatally impale
even the immortals;

I can only imagine what
this lover you're loving loves
of the sordid love you've
price-tagged;

he has no clue, what he's paid,
what he's paid for,
does he?


-from [If It Be You] by Dontrell Lovet't
photography by Laura Barbera

[Kissing Booth] a Poem

A part-time lover

is a full-time fool

& what do you suppose

becomes of a fool’s lover?

What’s an odalisque

if not one to take on the

cadence set by a deception so

necessary for her to cope with

her imprisonment?

Dontrell Lovet't

-from "Degradation"

[The Failed Writer]

[In a Hypothetical World] a Poem

            In the hypothetical world,

everything’s possible,

even possible is this colossal

misadventure to fold back on

itself,

gift us respite,

as we’ve never should have been to

this extent-

-shower-shunned still still nights,

flourished-envy, deeply dark,

mysterious in the intense clarity

knowing we’ve had our share of love,

affairs, love affairs running course long

after receiving a poor prognosis, locomotive

till tomorrow rolls forward,

directly over our beaten path,

and questions arise between us,

as numerous as stars rearranging their

next elliptical,

then the you inside,

the you everyone supposes

acclimates to those suppositions,

planets peering from behind cloud cover,

taking on titles unsuited if only to suit a

more viable presence-

we cannot take into each other each other

when those fragments aren’t indivisible,

individuals defiant, crying in a sad life as everyone

visible sadness has contaminated everyone visible-

-so shall we become invisible?

and will we fall into terminal despondency,

make still our motion as to attract no eyes

in motion?

Always, reckonings punching themselves

out, tiresome the wait will become darling, as

a fighter’s punch is always the last to go.

-Dontrell Lovet't

from [UnderStudies]

Photography by Nicholas Percell