Beyond seven rivers
o what there was
in the oldest of ages
upon a time
not now.
Tell us again
of that gratuitous evil,
its stank breath.
Its obvious malignance.
Give us that clarity,
take us back.
Beg the Question
To match the story.
Blog
Calculating Risks
Proceedings, with caution.
If tortoise asks eagle for flying lessons and man for the word––and once given, wants fire. If the seed begs for better ground, let it hear the bird warning smoke. If the wolf takes the sickbed in costume to hide its want, if the girl takes the stranger for familiar. If the bull. If the labyrinth. If the thread. Run.
Trickster Rituals
Possibilities for movement.
Something that is was just here. It has significance but will not fit any storyline. There was a grotesque beauty reveling. And then, and then. Every soul has its way of coming to terms with its containment in space, contending with death. It crowds the psyche, back against a wall. It has no end, and isn’t going anyplace. It’s always going on. And then, and still. Unlike the notion of story––something that, as they say, happened. The order of movements is crucial.
The Proximity of Matter
With Cynthia Hawkins.
Changing spaces between us, we kept looking.
Form. Color. Line. Body, body, us.
We were skeptical when you confessed.
My practice is abstraction, you said.
We thought you should not say that out loud.
But you persisted. Draw a tree long enough,
you said, it will evolve. Until what you have
are lines, white space, and the pulse of intersections.
The point was not less tree, but more.
Not the sum of its parts, but something beyond.
In the beginning, you think it’s about figures.
But stay with it, and you see. What matters
is movement. What matters is direction.
What matters is space.
We wondered which space.
Between the canvas and the eye, you said,
where they float.
We wondered which they.
***
Inspired by (and using borrowed phrases from) this interview with Cynthia Hawkins. The title comes from one of Hawkins’ series.
One Hope
For what may shine.
That you may one day know a lens not terror, a posture not crouched, sounds neither siren nor drone, and weathers unrhymed with death count. Food to offer, not to reap, and time as a ladle to be passed to the tune of Here, take it. Take what you need. Did you get enough? when no host will rest until everyone is so full that they lose the count, numbers blurring back into beginning, and no one thinks to save the light for when it leaves us.
Peel
Becoming the placeholder.
Once, I misplaced the breaks in my heart. That was a day without paint.
These skins resound a rhythm just below the ear’s reach, so look.
See that ghosting flicker, call it urgency. History. The edge of before.
Call it, cipher.
What is the word for this want?
Only wrong answers can help me now.
***
Inspired by the work of Oscar yi Hou.
Marsh Ruins
Decay as creative premise.
Nested in cordgrass, a master work sinks.
The artist smiles over its cracking disappearance.
Rubble is one of my primary interests, she tells us.
She imagines its rearrangement.
I mean, she adds, what might come?
There are good reasons, after all,
––and especially here, to reject nostalgia.
***
The title of this post comes from this installation by American artist Beverly Buchanan, which a recent New York Times article by Siddhartha Mitter describes as a vanishing masterpiece.
Hallow
Oil of perception.
Before the feast, an anointing,
which is to say I see you
which is to set the table
in hope
that when bread falls
like grain of wheat to soil
we may break
and eat a chorus
of amens.
Legendary Moment
From the belly of the myth.
When we were there
between the angels
in the dragon’s gaze
the story of our lives
and our moment swelled
in the same sky as ever
except that we knew it
the flesh
of our breath.
No Earning This
Abound.
Overflow, child.
Find the long
looming brim
of this vessel
and sail beyond
now
the high river
of your full.