CUBS the poet

NEW ORLEANS, LA

New Orleans is unlike any other city in the U.S.

Every time you turn the corner you’re immediately embraced by the city and filled with an energy that almost instantly turns your world view into rose-colored glasses.

“Don’t you just love those long afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour–but a little piece of eternity dropped into your hands–and who knows what to do with it?”

— Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire)

This quote resonates with me and my time back in the city to chat with Cubs the poet. I walked up to the steps of the Columns Hotel, where Cubs is spending his residency, thinking I was only going to be there for a 30-minute chat. To actually be swept up in good conversation, laughter, and even cocktails and a round of shots. (Will get to that later 😏)

KRYSTAL: Has anything surprised you about your experience with your residency (at the Columns Hotel in New Orleans)? 

CUBS: If you give me a topic, I can type it. But the poems wouldn’t exist if I didn’t meet the people. Same thing with this collage. Earlier this lady saw a chicken in Time magazine from 1946. She said, “You know, chicken is a nature snack!” I thought, “What’s that about?” So I ended up adding layers to the cut-out and made it more personal. 

I’m learning a lot with this residency.  I'm here trying to evolve my art with the studio and sell paintings with the pieces. But at the same time, the people who work here, I get to write poems for them or they help me with the collage. So when they're having a rough day at work, they can kind of lean on me with my art and use that to let out that frustration instead  of taking

KRYSTAL: How do you find the balance of working in the community and working by yourself? Do you feel more safe spaces in that community or in that alone time? 

CUBS: I'm learning that now with this studio space. The first series of pieces that I'm doing all fall under escaping or evolving. Like, is this an escape for me or is this an evolving that I'm feeling? 

My friend just opened a restaurant and he has a space that he's cultivated for his food, but also his Haitian community. He used to do these talks at his restaurant where a whole bunch of people would come together to talk about topics. So it’s interesting. I think what I'm doing in this space is creating that space for people to open up to and be vulnerable. I have a lot of people collaborating with these pieces. People want to collaborate, but initiating it can be hard. This lady just asked me, “what are you doing with this collaborative collage?” and I was like, “do you want to help?” So she sat down. I wanted to do that, but I didn't know that was possible. And that’s the whole thing. We’re innovators and initiators.

KRYSTAL: How do you communicate with people who don’t necessarily understand your process or what you do?

 This lady came up to me the other day and was like, “what's your process?” So I asked her a question and said, “ If your heart was a fruit, what would it be?” And she started thinking, and I was like, “this is the process.”…. {break in conversation}

KRYSTAL: When I read your book, I started thinking a lot about intentional relationships and how a lot of the energy I have been giving into them was not always given back. Did that idea inspire any of your writing?

CUBS: Looking back, I used to shoot pool all the time. After I write poetry, I’d hang out and shoot pool. Then I’d build friendships and it became like a community. When the pandemic happened, I was stuck inside. To deal with my mind, I decided I’m going to put my book together. So the book came together during the pandemic just so I could see it and all the columns. 

There is no narration or thread other than the style of poetry and art. But like the title of it, “What I do with my free time?” is about when you do something that you love, do you think you have free time? And then, what is it? For me, it was making that book. 

But also with my style of poetry, I'm always writing for the people. Like you give me a topic, you tell me what you want to call them about. I'll type it up. This book and these poems were poems that I wrote in my free time as well. Like when no one was around to get a poem, I would still write something. Moving forward, the next book is kind of going to be the same thing, but now with a little more awareness or a little more mindfulness to the fact that that's what I'm doing, like writing poems for myself. It’s giving something that I give to myself.

KRYSTAL: How do you draw the line between the energy you’re given and your own thoughts and feelings?

CUBS: I don't think you can train that out, but I do often think, why is it like this? And I don't ask why in the sense of being upset or frustrated, but more as in why did I choose or was given this path of poetry even though I love psychology so much. When I write these poems, people always say it feels therapeutic or like therapy. Sometimes I go back and forth about it.  A lot of the art I sell ends up mainly being too white people. I have to say if I was doing it for somebody. It wouldn't be white people. Even though I'm in this white space, I came to this space because nobody bothers me. No one thinks about it. And if they do, they're like, “Oh, are you the artist?” And I'm like, “Cool.” I don't even want to read into that. I don't want it. But how do I direct what I'm doing to black people too? Who is out there talking to black men about it? There's so much going on right now that talking is how we get through it. There’s much going on in both good and bad, but just talking it out helps make it more real or helps you process it or reveal it.

I think being a poet, there's so much room in there to hear people for what they're saying and not trying to subscribe or heal. There's not that initial thought about, “Oh, you couldn't do this better?”  I'm actually just listening to them.

KRYSTAL: So much of your work is taking in someone’s energy and their feeling and feeling it as well. How does that impact you outside of using the typewriter? 

CUBS: When I started feeling the energy outside of the typewriter, I realized I really need to develop or nurture what it is that I’m feeling.  One thing with my poetry is that there is no writer's block because I'm accessing somebody else's vocabulary. But when I started feeling this energy and thinking without the typewriter, that's when I was like, what is this I’m doing? Because this piece right here [photo above] is saying “I love black people.” It made me realize I never told my dad I love him. And so I dedicated the show to my dad and he showed up with my mom and I had to say it to him and he said it right back. This piece started as a response to George Floyd's murder, but I painted it and it affected my life so closely. It healed me after watching it and not responding or reacting, but painting it out, it was so powerful and effective.

It showed me what was wrong in my life.

KRYSTAL: Do you think that’s specific for the African-American community? There are so many conversations to unpack about assimilation and community and what that means in this world. So many of these conversations started to domino after George Floyd and everything that happened then. 

KRYSTAL: With being biracial, we are often so passionate about all the parts of us. So it gets frustrating when people assume one or the other. Do you find that feeds into your art and how people perceive it?

CUBS: That's so interesting because what if I'm taking things that people are taught or conditioned to believe as real, like race and gender and roles. To me, that’s abstract. I’ve never gotten to be one race, but then in my art, I’m trying to make sense of those things that I've never fully gotten to be. So when it doesn’t make sense and it’s called abstract, I do get defensive because it's like, “No, why don't you see me trying to piece together my world?”

I just wrote this piece. It says, “I didn't come in peace. I came in pieces.”  This originated because I studied psychology and I wanted to think for myself because I realized that we were being taught how to think like other people or think like a group. I definitely think my art is deconstructing these things. The beauty of it is how do we piece it back together?

Credits: Photograph and interview by: Krystal Frame // Copy by: Jessica Joseph

KRYSTAL: How has COVID impacted how you experience and create your work?

CUBS: I think the masks with COVID made the way we communicate a little more physical in the sense of how our words and our minds’ perspectives can put each other in harm’s way. Like, if we had COVID and were around people in an unsafe way, we could jeopardize their health. This is the same thing with the way we speak to each other and the way we open up with each other. I felt as though I was hearing people's voices for the first time because I couldn't read their lips. I wasn't trying to process the way they looked or critique what I was hearing. My ears were like trying to hear these words that were covered. That's how I took it and it was interesting. Now that the masks are off, my nose is starting to smell people’s breath. It’s just interesting how everything is being recalibrated. Like handshakes. Although I haven’t had a social handshake or hug in a long time. I recently had this lady crying after a poem I created for her. It felt like a real hug.

KRYSTAL: You of course have your own opinions and your ways. How do you work with people that aren’t ?

CUBS: If you're in love with what you do when you're around people who aren’t, how do you exist? Or like when you think outside the idea of this box, how do you still exist around people who are in the box? When I was thinking of dropping out of school, my parents told me to go to school because everybody else has gone to school. Earlier this year I was talking to someone else and it clicked. I saw why it was true. Everybody else goes to school and thinks this way, so when I’m talking to them I can see where they’re coming from. Which makes it interesting to do this, there is no reason. People say my heart is like a pomegranate because you cut it and there are certain pieces you get. But like the overall thing is what makes it a pomegranate, even though it’s little pieces. And I feel like that's what I'm trying to understand. The pieces of me that make me. Your energy is bringing out things that I don't say out loud, and I realize that with everybody. With the poems, they don't exist unless I meet people.

KRYSTAL: There’s so much awareness that comes with thinking about each step and emotion, even with something like eating [In reference to Sustain Frame Dinner Series]. Does mindfulness inform your work? 

KRYSTAL: What does relaxation look like for you? Do you give yourself space for mediation or certain routines for relaxation?

CUBS: There is no separation as of yet. When I wake up in the morning and my partner asks if I want coffee, there are some days I say no, and some days I say yeah. I'm aware of those choices, but there is no separation.

Meditation to me is just giving thanks to whatever comes to mind. I have this thing where I say, I love you a lot. I say, “I love you. Thank you. And keep me in this light.”

I'm trying not to think about everything else out there. Like, the choice is not binary. Just like when people ask me how I'm doing. I'm not even thinking about this sometimes because I don't even want to think of how to put it into words. Maybe that'll come out when it's time to write poetry whenever that time is because I don't even have this routine.

Maybe the closest thing to a routine that I have is putting myself in spaces, but I don't have a set time like one o'clock to write a poem from one to three. I just find myself doing it.