Isadora Grevan

Isadora Grevan is an Assistant Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. She completed her PhD in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at Brown University in 2013. She has been a recipient of several grants including a Fulbright Scholar award in 2016 and a NEH summer workshop grant in 2015. She currently teaches classes on Brazilian Literature and Culture in translation, Lusophone world Studies, Brazilian Theater and Latin American Literature. Her forthcoming book manuscript focuses on Modern Brazilian literature during the dictatorship.

if death was body

and life was un-body

we would life-dream

death-dance

death-be

life-think

embody the beyond

go into the abyss in the now

ah! if death was body

and life, un-body

we could play this game forever!

our distance would be closeness

our touch, ethereal

but where would love

with thee?

if already so deathly in life

so intense in the body, in longing

ah the mathematics of

the dead poet’s soul

splashed as the hummingbird’s quench

all over our bodies

a call for nudity

stripping us to cave calculations

have you felt that

sweetness?

masked as such

for nectar laboratories?

we aimlessly played the game of

life and death

life and death

life and death

we began to become pendulums

forming a whirlpool

until one day we were called to look

at death only

stare at it

from all angles…

(in the pandemic)

we looked at it so much

that life spilled out of death

in excess of,

in amazement

the nectar dripped

into your mouth