In the wake of the storm.
The world after the flood, in suspension. The weight of its waters. How to hold. How to. How. We ask until it breaks. Flutter of dove, the rush of your wings: now. Now. Now the weight of the long wait cracks against the break of this sun, light into mourning. The song of its reach a single note, like Come.
From cloth to needled hand.
Stitch me a shield
against the moment
of my erasure,
thread a horse
to carry me over
the next pass.
My legs are tired
and I have lost
the thread.
***
Inspired by the work of Zoë Buckman, whose solo exhibition, Tended, is now in New York.
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.
After the burn.
What do you call the records kept by those who escape from war with nothing but their lives and memories of the dead? Not History, but its adjacent double. The shrapnel in tissue when the bleeding learned to stop waiting for peace, to start saying this is the leg now, the cause going no further than the blast itself as if to say, here is the end of time as you knew it as if to blow into injury some reminder: this is the living now.
These fragments from the blast, this thread that bound us once so long in the weather and the sweat of my grip, past the point of being able to imagine an end or a beginning, love I only want to offer them to you, for keeping even after safe is gone.
In the pause before the next beginning.
These lonely ships over wine-dark waters carry the sons of mothers long trained to cry in secret if they cry at all. So much has been swallowed already. Mothers, when you go, too, may you sing what went before you and after, what was taken into the void you know so well and will not be recovered except by the rare fruit of your trembling womb, in the long-awaited retelling. Give us their stories again.
In the late days of long wars.
We wanted to mend, so kept company with our mothers’ ghosts. Our yesterdays were wounded and came to us until every bed was full.
O muse. Your song was bleeding out.
We brought cloths and went to you. We wrapped you tight and held against the flow. It entered then.
We are still, holding.
May she be heard.
No words today. Not mine.
Only this plea, for protection
of the heart and spirit,
will, and strength
of Grace, that her
voice be lifted as
a torch through
this long dark.
It is time.
Long view from well bottom.
Reminder: you will not be always in this gnawing gut at the center of your terror, and you will laugh again, and love someone who smiles back at you still. Even as you look away now, afraid to push your luck when it comes to what may be saved, you are raised to take less than anyone’s idea of deserving and that face tastes like the last memory you need. To hold that gaze from this deep a vantage for finding still this little light. A want to yell, Go, and keep them in it.
And resistance.
Behind the veil of official information, a justification for maiming, these blows administered at regular intervals by calculated technique for a purpose, and silence effectively shields it.
Here is a hearing aid. Take this stethoscope. Hold it to her.
Listen, wait.
Keep listening.
***
Inspired by the work of Sung Tieu.
Against exile.
Who would draw
these margins drawing
blood press words
into walls except to keep
us from these hands
this here that now whispers
take off your shoes
