‘creatio ex nihilo’
Photographer Henry Vinicio Valerio Madriz
creatio ex nihilo
history is a mahogany cabinet in a grand , marbled room
filled with mirrors and relics . some made of carved ivory
. exhumed indigenous bones . mahjong tiles . a slave’s teeth
. there , the vise/grip of a fist . a hammering gavel
in the wrong hands . the corrupted morality of control
shrouded in crow-dark robes (the costumes of justice)
widening the chasm between blind justice
and just[us] who they legalese to caste-/igate
is distilled into sinister dioramas of [w]reckoning
. a thought . an action . a wildness bigger than me , both
dangerous and imbedded , calculating consequences
that threaten +’justment
. the lies and corruption and hate stacked precariously
on every surface of post-racial . the moments , months
, and centuries like waste water through a sieve
, shows us a train carrying migrants fleeing hunger and
violence , shows us the history of aggression been erased
, the lynched humans documented on postcards
. when we looked in amerikkka’s mirror
we didn’t know our own faces , a reflection so like us
that we could not deny our not seeing (the space/
between the spaces) that created more than blindness
, allowed the lie we restless moaned in sleep . the stolen
indigenous lands paved over with boulevards and the
artificial gardens of single family tract homes . the truth
is whatever cannot be mentioned . the speechless gawp
of muted dissent like a bolt of lightning from the sky
with no tree to burn , and the future , out of kilter
in reams of industrial yellow smoke . the a/massed
production of toxic obsolescence (a venomous snake
winding through the brush) towards the Fall . a reciprocity
of fleeting encounters . the many persons blended with
the crowd . and the human/ness of it all . maybe gathered
for a lynching , to savor the shame like sugar , every trace
of venom . our choices with their alchemical logic , scrapes
flint into fire . are part song for the end-times , are part song
of hope , like God exhaled a shower of molten steel , and
we inhaled our final death-rattle of breath . the gravity of
heavy metal seeping into mud . can you see it as from above
? only as sick as the secret within , an abyss compounded
from a single cry , all that sadness in one place , as we wrote
the endings of our own life stories . creatio ex nihilo . like
talking to the ocean through a thousand years of silence .
Note : creatio ex nihilo , like something out of nothing .
henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience and a barbwired conviction that prequels the spontaneous combustion that blazes from his heart, phoenix-flared red and gold, like a discharged bullet that commits a felony every day, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press.) His poetics are situated at the intersection of experimental modernist and +’justment-[w]reckoning free verse poetry. His work is published in Superstition Review; TriQuarterly; Prairie Schooner, Notre Dame Review; Punt Volat; The Ana; and Oyster River Pages. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Born in Atenas, Costa Rica, 1969, Henry Vinicio Valerio Madriz is a teacher -English Teaching and Linguistics and Literature. Photography lover. He has published poems, short stories, and photographs, both online and print (in the USA, Canada, UK, India, Philippines, Pakistan, Germany, Palestine, Israel, and Nigeria). Shortlisted in Voice of Peace: 1st Intercontinental Poetry And Short Story Anthology 2021, The League of Poets. He got an ‘Honourable Mention’ in Dark Poets Prize II, 2024. He is the Winner of the Literary Cocktail Magazine Enticing Shutterbug Award 2024 for photography. He is also the Winner of The LoveQuest: A Celebration of Love 2025 poetry competition, under The Wordsmith Magazine, Pakistan. https://www.facebook.com/henry.valerio.58/
