This is your receipt and is not a ticket for travel by danilo machado
Publication date: 2023
danilo machado's poetry collection, "This is your receipt and is not a ticket for travel," navigates a compelling journey through the intricate fabric of urban life. As we delve into machado's verses, the mundane becomes extraordinary, and the ordinary transforms into a canvas of vivid imagery and introspective musings.
In 3:02, machado skillfully captures the rhythm of the city's heartbeat. The train station becomes a stage, and the arrival of the local train paints a scene of patience, contrasting the hurried express. A young boy, with a white shirt reminiscent of innocence, waits to board, his earphones echoing a private world amidst the public hustle. The verses dance between the cables, creating a poetic symphony of daily life.
Voice Note / Walking Home ventures into Brooklyn Avenue, where the mundane act of crossing streets transforms into a profound exploration of one's surroundings. Green-painted barriers and plexi square windows mark ongoing construction, turning the streets into a dynamic tableau of change.
Another new year’s day taking the train to the church for poetry, a transient symphony, the subway car becomes a microcosm of diverse narratives. The unabashed display of affection among queers contributes to the rhythm of mass travel. Boys on platforms and in moving cars become inadvertent muses, inspiring half-poems that find their beginnings in black notebooks. The poetic prose paints a vivid picture of a shared journey where the mundane becomes a canvas for profound human connections and fleeting artistic expressions.
another new year’s day taking the train to the church for poetry
on the 2, two dykes rest their heads on one another, talking with a friend about
new years past / the three of them just miss the d at barclays, where i wait for the
n / i sit next to the boy i was staring at at sterling / corded black headphones on,
blue beanie eventually taken off // all’s continuation / queers mass travel, show
affection / boys gazed on platforms and moving cars, half-poems started in black
notebooks / on the other side of me, someone sketches a bust in 2b / big eyes,
shadows / it doesn’t look like anyone on the train
In danilo machado's collective body of work, an evocative pattern emerges, threading through the fabric of urban existence. His poems serve as snapshots, capturing the nuanced beauty of everyday moments. Give it a read!
- Rochak Agarwal ( Author of Beneath The Words, Cyberwit.net )
Author Bio
Born in Medellín, Colombia, danilo machado is a poet, curator, and critic living on occupied land interested in language’s potential for revealing tenderness, erasure, and relationships to power. A 2020-2021 Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow, their writing has been featured in Hyperallergic, Art in America, Poem-A-Day, Art Papers, ArtCritical, The Recluse, GenderFail, No, Dear, Long River Review, TAYO Literary Magazine, among others. They are the author of the chaplet wavy in its heat (Ghost City Press Summer Series, 2022). An honors graduate of the University of Connecticut, danilo is Producer of Public Programs at the Brooklyn Museum and curator of the exhibitions Otherwise Obscured: Erasure in Body and Text (Franklin Street Works, 2019), support structures (Virtual/8th Floor Gallery, 2020), We turn (EFA Project Space, 2021), and Eligible/Illegible (with Franscisco Donoso, PS122 Gallery, 2023). danilo is the co-founder/co-curator of the reading series Maracuyá Peach and the chapbook/ broadside fundraiser Already Felt: poems in revolt & bounty, as well as co-host of the monthly reading series exquisites. danilo is also the author of The Post Post Post newsletter and has contributed writing to exhibitions including at CUE Art Foundation, Henei Onstad Kunstsenter, Miriam Gallery, Abrons Art Center/ Boston Center for the Arts, Second Street Gallery, and Real Art Ways. They are working to show up with care for their communities.