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Harvesting Moonlight

Toad bones and other remedies.

Watch the stones. One bitten by a mad dog will sow discord when dropped inside a drink. If tongue of dog is set in shoe, the others will not approach. Look to the toads, too. To spit in the mouth of one and set it free will cure the sore throat and the bone of another cures cold, inspiring love. Also quarrels.

Your fate is in the stars but as fate would have it, these are beyond your reach. So, you work with what you can. Stamp the magic square on a silver plate when Jupiter rules. Let abundance follow. Some say it comes faster if you engrave coral. 

An ounce of prevention against Saturn’s unrest is worth its weight in alchemical gold. With the string of heavens stretched taut to these lowlands, the instruments among you only wait to be tuned, that they may know the note by which to offer the music of forever, and if you hear it, you will know the cure for death. Grab this heart, this bone, this stone, this leaf. Watch the stars and hold. 

***

Inspired by a recent feature in the Public Domain Review, on Agrippa’s encyclopedia of magic.

Our Drive

Notes between walls.

there you are again moving invisible
singular purpose whisper the dream
listen up record this now no map
but a chorus in flight there are some
who record the songs of birds at the brink
before they go

like that before they left they moved
away from their feet into cars over rivers
of steel then asphalt

rail spine a direct line but not quite into sky against it somehow
the pressure to bear the witness so often
asleep at the wheel all of us so far
from the valley
who becomes the river
start somewhere I meant to
listen I meant to
hear you as you left
the land I meant to record
at least your sands running out
take this we say of the body the opening
notes of each of us in turn going fast act fast
you have to give it all away
it was good sometimes
to live in a time when you
were finally removed from the pretense
that it was possible to acquire anything
the anti-aging lords of war had secured
the borders of every new frontier we
had only to be here living to learn
the ancient art of passing through walls
between times and passing each other
we would nod beneath breaths this
single phrase our code these times
we said these times as
though to remind us back to
all of them you had to feel all
of them at once or else risk forgetting
how to move
anywhere
or ever

Kitchen Math

Exercises in not counting the cost.

One was always hungry. Two offered what she had until the cabinets were empty. When One was still hungry, Two found the last can of mixed nuts in a drawer. One ate them.

Then it was silent, and the silence made One feel a certain kind of way. “Best to say something now,” One thought. Something positive!

“Hey, Two,” One said, “Remember when you used to bake cakes? Why don’t you do that anymore?”

In the silence that followed, Two took a long breath.

Before Art

Reaching.

maybe all you wanted at the start was to take
the perforated present
shot through with holes to carve it to make
the dappled light it held look like it meant all along
to be held like that maybe you only wanted
to test some strength against the coming loss not
necessarily yours maybe it was in the living fossils
among us, the beyonds they tended to point to
by being there where we were
o teeth
o sorrow
o wonder
o breath
where do you go in this now
but shh you tell me try not to look
like that meaning I think this gulping way
where you try to take it
o all of it at
once

Over Boneland

Fragments in wartime.

The bones had to set when we broke them and we set them in the earth amid the burn in the skeletons of former homes still smoking to grow new cells we needed––

hold still they told us meaning faith but without work it looked half dead in the mirrors 

we listened for wolves and saved the prints in boxes for someday when we would sort them all 

out into a proper display but what happens when the waters rise 

is that sometimes you have to jump to the next roof and hope it holds. 

Hey Siri, asked in secret, What do you know of shelter?

It was something to do when knowing you had no service did not preclude the need to speak 

we reached

ready for the next ledge she might have said you can wait until its dark 

Siri we might have answered, I believe, to heal our unbeliefs.

Impasto Portrait

Visual communion.

A shell, a glance, the hush between them. Your pyrotechnic palette, flashbang bravado only masks the stillness as we enter. Once inside, we become the bare guts of ourselves, removed of all packaging, and no one moves in the aftermath, to take up arms again.

***

Inspired by the work of Sylvia Snowden with phrases from Joe Bradley’s interview with the artist.

Company in Paradise

Interview with the artists in the aftermath of a first attempt.

How do I describe the place where we were? Birds of paradise guard the fortresses, holding still. A hushed place except for the machines. Between each fortress, you must not make a loud sound or have too much of laughter in one place if the place is below the window of a fortress because the people inside tend toward nervous conclusions, such as attack. Now we know, but we weren’t trying to scare anyone––not personally, anyway.

We were together, our company, because of the times, and the way we wanted to do something with our fear. It was going to be an opera. The working title was For the Scorched Earth. It accompanied an installation piece as well as a huge dance floor. This part was important, and nothing that any of us could fit in any place we lived, so we jumped at the chance to stage the event in a place with a large yard. Or really, any yard.

The lead character is an ancient god of the lunar eclipse who has lost his way. The idea was to dance him back home. We were going to invite the whole community! The point was also healing. But now we know that some ideas are too big for a given space. They shut us down.

But there’s no doubt we’ll try again. Reason being, we already have costumes and once people see themselves in those, no one can resist a grand entrance. We even had them for all the neighbors, too! These gorgeous birds of paradise pieces, all satin and taffeta. They were going to be stunning in the light. The mistake was not handing them out sooner.

In retrospect, that was a miscalculation. We were having fun with the element of surprise. It seemed so apropos, given our theme! But not everything translates across cultures. So now we know.  The next space will be much bigger.

Lonesome George

Sounds of a moment.

I don’t like to think about Lonesome George, the last of his species wandering his island home, about the baleful way he must have looked through those ancient eyes and whether he made a sound in the hopes that another of his kind would hear it. They took him into a center in the end and studied him until he died.

But here I am anyway, perhaps because of how often I see a certain kind of look, the way its eagerness seems haunted by a particular fear, the way so much of the moment seems to be wandering, making sounds.  

***

Before his death in 2012, Lonesome George was considered the rarest creature in the world.

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