Mile High Meet Cute
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Mile High Meet Cute was written last summer during a family beach trip where I met my boyfriend Aidan's family. The first few days of the trip, whenever they asked me about myself, all I could think of were the worst parts of my life and kept trying to figure out how I've ended up spending a whole week with a loving partner and his kind, supportive family. I don't know if this poem acted as a catharsis for every worst thought during the trip or as a bittersweet, beholden love letter for the parts of my life Aidan and his family were helping me move on from, but it felt like the beginning of something significant for us both. I filmed this recitation on the same swingset in Roanoke Park, Kansas City that Aidan and I sat on when we first acknowledged what we were becoming and now when I drive past it I think of us in our tiny one-bedroom assembling our brand new window unit together. Shot by Oz Overshiner.
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Bernadette Negrete would wear cowboy boots everyday if she stopped using them for her installations and sculptural artworks. Preferring satire to sentimentality, she dismisses the idea that poetry needs to make grand statements, instead inhabiting a space between cowboy nonchalance and the tenderness of love, family, and community. She hopes to forever feel the type of unstoppable you feel after two drinks and hopes her poetry makes you feel the same.