..And All That Is a Man

Text by Andre Witter

So the angel swept down from paradise and drove across state lines to see me,

He wore all white with tired brown eyes and a fractal above his brow–

he said he’d known heaven, but he’d lost it and all summers led him

To me; truth bent and glossy from his touch.

Here’s to your eyes, with all the whites and all the whiles of madness.

Seduced and overcome, my spirit dilating– I want to be the man

You count on. Erotes blind and drunken, spit as flesh and sacrament.

I want to know you as God does, heart and nectar sifting through my palms.

My heart wanders as do his hands, silent and violent and expecting.

To mold me, cradled inside me, the need to know if when the oil burns

And the flags of America dull, will mist arise and I return a vessel to his time.

To dirt, to everything immersed and preserved in the honies of you.

I beg and holler as all dogs do, as all boys do, waiting for their angel to arise

To beach them, to beat me, stained in wine and promnesia.

Pink in the night and swollen in love. How it feels like a life in the Angeles,

Like light in the forests, or the stars in your backyard in the cities of nowhere.

How you and how they, all seem to make me a vagrant to the experience.

Suckling off the salt of your lips, begging to be damned and alight in heaven.

To want you, bending round the boundaries of masculinity, wrestling in and

Out of the streets of admiration, of lark and all that you are,

and all that is a man, and all that I am not.

My name is Andre Witter. I am an aspiring writer and multidisciplinary artist based in Maryland. For as long as I can remember, I have been filled with a desire to create; I have explored pursuits in screenwriting, editing, film, integrated arts, and poetry for the past 5–10 years, in hopes of one day making creation itself my way of living. My work tends to explore themes of identity, romance, injustice, and nature through heavy purple prose inspired by Surrealist film, Dadaism, and Beat poetry. My latest piece, “...And All That Is a Man,” explores my nuanced relationship with masculinity. Growing up as a Black gay man, I have always struggled with the lifelong tug-of-war between romanticizing and de-centering the male image. For this reason, I often find myself assuming different roles and positions in order to claim a seat at a table I set myself, yet do not know if I truly wish to dine at.