Proof: Inaugural Poem Suite

Cornelius Eady turns the inaugural poem into an instrument of reckoning.

First delivered to mark the historic inauguration of New York City’s mayor Zohran Mamdani on January 1, 2026, the title poem is not ceremony—it is summons. “You have to imagine it,” Eady insists, and from that insistence rises a chorus: those called too dark, too queer, too poor, too loud; those renamed invisible; those told “not now.” What if joy could wear down the rock of no? What if imagination were not escape, but ...