Philip Hughes-Luing

Northern MN youth. B.A., Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, IA, 1979. Theater & Philosophy double major. First art class, junior, Thesis Art Show senior year. News editor, then editor, student newspaper. M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies, Columbia College of Chicago, 2000.

Recollections

Cannot report, cannot recall

dares not measure the size of holes

suggesting what might be gone

Ben in ’74, seventeenth birthday

Pallbearer, tears shamed, buried

Dennis in ’90, caregiver, executor, gave the eulogy

Jeff in ’94, twelve years coupled, encephalopathy

Stephen in 2013, the one too many

Died one day after their fifteenth anniversary

2015: inflammation

2017: strokes

2018: forty years collected

art and memorabilia, gone. Unhoused

April Fool's Day, also Easter Sunday that year.

Fled to the Oregon coast

Plan was to wade west toward China.

Instead, a homeless shelter

over a year, composing poetry.

Too much to tell. had not expected

ever to see anyone again.

Currently Treasurer, OffCenter Community Art, Albuquerque, NM, facilitates weekly writing group, also a weekly “Tell Your Story Group” at ArtStreet, community studio in the Albuquerque HealthCare for the Homeless complex.