in the eclipse, it is fine for now. just beyond thebridge, but still at a center. snowshelf beforeavalanche, electric cloud from above on &off again, cruising potent quiet. spacious, yetcollective, cirrocumulus. andante, vaporundoes its conceal, condensing over eyelashes,emboss surface everwet. how we learned to liveunder frigid conditions. Fog who consumesthe mouth of the Sun w/ the patience of a ballad—bounding over this new morning, long beforemorning & at day s end yet to burn off,folding itself into night chrysalis. what made it bearable—lovely, even—was how efforted, one step solidin any direction, elbows akinder. feet on ground,longstanding ceremony, acutely aware in ourperfect flailing space. call me up out slumber—transition, too,is a state. you by my side of your own volition.humbling to me, humming to me. leads mesweetly to lakesedge, her dipping braid in hand,exhibiting other densities. at its end, ascertainwe exit new, committed to fragrant possibility:at an arm s length,across an ocean, should it be that way for a while.
remedies III & IV (corpse pose)
Feature Date
Series
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
“remedies III & IV (corpse pose)” from PACES THE CAGE: by S*an D. Henry-Smith.
Published by The Song Cave on March 10, 2026.
Copyright © 2026 by S*an D. Henry-Smith.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Ian Lewandowski
S*an D. Henry-Smith is a poet and photographer exploring Black/queer diasporic collaborative practices rooted in experimentalism, improvisation, and transdisciplinarity, working by extension in sound, performance, and publishing. They have received awards and fellowships from the Rijksacademie, Center for Photography at Woodstock, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst, the Fulbright Program, The Poetry Project, and Poets House. Recent solo exhibitions include “rea(l)m” at Metro54 (2025), “tremor low” at ROZENSTRAAT (2023) and “in awe of geometry & mornings” at White Columns (2021). Henry-Smith has read, performed, and exhibited previously at Artists Space, Stedelijk Museum, Konrad Fischer Galerie, Perdu, MoMA PS1, 47 Canal, SAVVY Contemporary, Cubitt Artists, Juf, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Issue Project Room, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Basilica Soundscape, and elsewhere. They perform musical compositions as sunchoke; as a bandmate, they are half of twill (whose twill split was released summer 2024), half of PhantomSun, half of Depth Address, and a fifth of Black Boots.Their book Wild Peach (2020), was published by Futurepoem, and shortlisted for the PEN Open Book Award, and they are the author of two chapbooks: Body Text (2016) and Flotsam Suite: A Strange & Precarious Life, or How We Chronicled the Little Disasters & I Won’t Leave the Dance Floor Til It’s Out of My System (2019), the co-author (alongside Imani Elizabeth Jackson) of Consider the Tongue (2019), and the director of Lunar New Year (2021). PACES THE CAGE (2025), their second full-length collection of poems, published by The Song Cave, is out now.
S*an D. Henry-Smith’s second full-length book of poems, PACES THE CAGE, lifts off from their previous book, Wild Peach (2020), by expanding an already-queered language to near breaking point. Through the complexities of Henry-Smith’s personal experiences and the use of a poetically fragmented voice, the literal and metaphorical are here remixed in real time.
"PACES THE CAGE extends S*an D. Henry-Smith’s interdisciplinary, improvisational listening into a poetics of 'fissure and measure,' where silence and the sonic converge in boundless motion. Tuning language toward the frequencies of breath, pulse, and sociality, Henry-Smith's poems transport us from natural worlds to communal forms to Bill Gunn’s STOP, recovering wayward images and utterances to compose a surround sound of loss and renewal. What emerges is both reckoning and remedy—a lush sensitivity to the ways language becomes live, as in now, as in 'eyes open, full of rage.'"
—Maxe Crandall
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
