Hi. I'm NEVE. Welcome to NEVELand.

 

Here's a poem for your trouble:

 

Sometimes, in dreams, my lover is Timothée Chalamet

 

A dance performance will bring the people together,

a man in pink sequins tells the crowd.

The crowd is only me.

And I am late, to the show that was not, yet.

In a tunnel not within earshot of the stage

nor within eyeshot of our age,

we attempted to dig and plant and grow.

I don't recall the dance I taught my people,

but I do remember how they moved through it.

A collapse in the tunnel took out one of our performers,

one of our beloveds, and the blood fountained up without falling down.

We took our time to grieve and mourn,

but the show went on, and the horns played.

 

When Maddox drummed we danced.

When Maddox drummed we shook loose.

When Maddox drummed we slipped off our

nooses and warned the trees that any white men

seeking to consort with them were fungus

that wished them ill. So they felled themselves to alert

the forest, and the trolls who weren't already contracted

stoned those rogues to death.

In exchange for how our bloated bodies

swayed in the breeze, they were collapsed and flattened,

ground into the earth and deeper into the hell from whence they came.

When Maddox drummed we asked to learn,

and he taught us, and soon our kit and crew

were thundering the rafters true. We all fared the storm

we made so well, we were invited to every church

and hall the greats gloried in their days and evenings.

Amira Baraka lost his suitcase the afternoon

I hit the ceiling with my note. Stevie Wonder listened

to me sing once too. And every time, Maddox was there

to hold my heartbeat, to keep my blood inside the room.

I don't know how he died, but when he did I wasn't dancing.

And when I learned of his passing, all I could do was start again.

 

Underwater and underground,

he told me to call him Timmy.

That name reminds me of my uncle,

reminds me of a blue book a white boy,

and a red balloon. A duck a field of tulips,

and a puppy in the window.

All the fantasies of childhood

European American 1950s literature

had to offer. Timmy, here, is the one

from Hollywood. Capricorn. The gem.

Everyone wants him to be queer,

As if we could love him that much.

Don’t dream it. Be it.

 

My cute mama, a bit like a long-eared doe; we all are.

The fems in my family, both sides now,

are velveteen women. Eyes violet or verts, brown

with a foxglove crown. The fairy who saved our lagomorphic patriarch

emerged from a poppy they think. Golden orange

and fresh to death. Dragon maker to my chaser.

Timmy in the sky with diamonds,

Cecco in the ground with china, ruby, wood, and everything good. My mama said,

I think I've seen you. On a stage. On a screen.

In the pages of this magazine!

And Timmy laughed. Shook my mama's hand

and took the stage to shape the moves I had made.

It all became real just then.

 

 

NEVE (they/(s)he) is a multidimensional, multidisciplinary terpsichorean artist of the stage, street, field, stream, and screen. They are a mixed Mahas Nubian who grew up in Lenni Lenape country and is now living and traveling wherever they have access and an invitation. (S)He is a 2020 Pina Bausch Fellow (Pina Bausch Foundation), a 2022 Arc Artist Fellow (4Culture), a 2022 Disability Futures Fellow (USArtists, Ford, and Mellon Foundations), and a 2023 Artist2Artist Fellow (Art Matters Foundation).

 

NEVE loves life, the delights and pains of embodiment and love, the sparkle-ache and promise of growth, the higher power inside all of us, the earth's lullabies and war cries, drinking color, and kissing/thinking/dreaming/learning/winning with their local and international queer family (especially their cat child Caravaggio).

 

NEVE believes in the Goddess, Collective Access and Liberation, Transformative Justice, Land Back, Right of Return, Reparations, Anarchism and Communism (in relationships and governance), collectivity and connectivity, the Loch Ness Monster, the Multiverse, the concept that all living beings are people, and You.

 

Visit them online at nevebebad.com, and on IG at @nevethoh.