hand to space : land / body / text

2012-01-24T13:59:00.000-08:00

we cannot take in enough of the legible air. the pilot light's exhaustion. our fourteenth read of _fragrant palm leaves_. in the scarce community garden, someone has tied wooden hands to the trellis. the boy with the round face finds some nettled tennis balls to throw beneath the briars. he notices how the earth makes its own traps. forgiven, yes, we are, eventually, cold enough to circle back. they bring assured logs, a case of matches, wool on spindles & sheet metal with lapsing stars (not a gallant material, but nonetheless).

everything the color of straw

2011-11-09T13:27:00.000-08:00

leaf-gravity

2011-10-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

just that the mist

although the flecks on her skin this was not a letter

we floated the dented mailbox down the river as if to say 'what you will'

just the wistful birds that wind easily into tunnels, fiercer /

& the concentration of years & the taste of beets, crushed

leaf-gravity

what will become of you, the pale lettering, you harbored against the wall of the train track apartment

finally, the land is given

but the part should stay

damp linen

2011-09-06T17:52:00.000-07:00

tangled holding you up or taking off the window ledge        so the window can open

fine with it never opening                    rice & maps, earlier

rise, eyes with the moth wings inside

the smell of damp linen, your residence    [yet]

2011-08-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

edge of lip diminish

2011-07-13T23:43:00.000-07:00

Without Interior: Ingress Painting

lie long grand odalisque
turban askew pillow indented
cyclop eye dead center
to face three-quarter view
edge of lip diminish
to a puncture
braided hair follows
contour of ear
circumference spine sweeps
twenty degrees southwest
in shade breast armpit stomach
fur silk flesh converge
to hollow blush
brown peacock feathers
in cave between
hand palm and leg calf
toes feel painted metal
silver cask sprouts dry yellow mist…

-John Hejduk

rain catch

2011-06-29T02:56:00.000-07:00

where did the green glass enter your ankle? how he only trembles slightly in the tent in kentucky,

over the underground system of caves. i know he measures trees. invasives are as steady as the crop rows.

we recite the english then spanish names of our few belongings. place them in sturdy but frank pine boxes. we address each other as you and you. we never cut one another.

sapping. the pages catch fire in the reverse order that they were written. he hangs up quickly when i say 'train.'

alone, you can barricade all of the doors. push your skin flesh against the burlap walls. rain, regardless. the thin body being held and led in the dance between the two men, that was mercy without commerce.

never do i drink enough. i rinse my eyes. i hang my head into the cavern of the sink. you probably have to

shine your shoes by now: tarnished shoes walking along the landscape of the train. you cough hard.

in the reverse order they were written- we suck the rain water out of the vortex of the lettuce. never said this wasn't a hard place. fireflies or not. freedom or no. forgiven or running until the bruises shine their lead.

there's no religion in the shape of an ax. complacent with the dishes. you slice onions and watch the clouds migrate east. it's someone else's wife. it's her wife. she looks like an arch angel. you spit out the eyelashes.

2011-05-24T17:45:00.000-07:00

for now, blue nights, bourbon in the tall slender bottle, the chipped sailor blue color of the dentist's steps. she walks home along the canal and watches the water duck and hollow, pitch and froth, murmur and seep. he has left the apartment to go and collect bird song. she is bitter, spiteful and her dresser spews forth a host of thermal shirts, tight enough and loose enough to hide her breasts. there are so many names she's listed. lato: summer in polish (it will be summer), onada: wave in catalan (there will be rain and a longer growing season once west and then south), selalu (always in indonesian), yarrow is yarrow in many languages, savi is sage in catalan, again, bahari is sea in swahili, zora, dawn in croation, sempre, always in catalan, galician and italian- and this she likes best. she is full with child. that does not mean that there still aren't wave like separations between her crested body and my fallen songs. why don't i make music? or ride a bicycle? why collapse in the hallway or beneath the persistent shower in the narrow cubicle? why name names? polish anything? she walks along the creek. she has only water, blue, pale orange and faint lavender pills inside of her. her heart, by now, must look somewhere between a lotus and a sea barnacle. she'll draw it, quickly, in the margin, so as not to not think of it again. ----------------------------------------------

last leaf / i've never had this kind of sleeplessness

2011-05-06T19:30:00.000-07:00

i've never had this kind of sleeplessness

when someone suggests

dividing the charcoal vines

& using them for currency

i am finally floating on

my back when you stand

behind me like a road

II.

leaving

she shaves only half of her head

walk down, down through

the dunes & thistles of sand

if this isn't you

then who is it

someone asks

as gently

as they goddamn can

. . . or tell me how

2011-04-06T21:19:00.000-07:00

yarrow

2011-03-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

drifting snow banks, if anything, where your hand disappears for a second, the shadow reconstitutes the remaining reeds. if anything, give me this ache of dispersal. the splitting of roads. the lure shaped scar & the sizable tree, from above, now just one long root. i can't say i don't keep suggesting names. for some reason i have some stake in the middle name yarrow (achillea millefolium), though i know it's unlikely, two syllables & dropping its' expansiveness of the taste of the sound at the end, almost unexpectedly. according to legend, yarrow was named after achilles, (the greek mythical figure) who used it to stop the bleeding wounds of his soldiers. i still believe that it's a good idea to have a middle name that means wound-healing.

she suddenly stops some of the aching, as in, by the shape of her eyes & everytime she asks me to account for silence, but logistically, i don't know if we can get it together. in some dreams i am a sheep herder. in others i know the medicinal properties of herbs & make tinctures to heal a sick child who lives in a house built into the side of a hill. in dreams, rarely do i run from someone. sometimes i follow or am followed. last night, i led her through the dunes; she was humming, which i'm not sure if she does, but i imagine that she does- to pass some time by with the sound curling up the cave of her throat & hovering there, floating out to pollinate the air with some sweetness. but the time was slow. i watched her hair lift in the wind to reveal her strong back- this must have been over 500 frames. just the wind & the humming continuing. when we reached the water, there were thousands of straw flowers (helichrysum bracteatum) moving with the low tide. the greeks used straw flower mixed with honey to soothe burns.

2011-03-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

You did say, need me less and I'll want you more.

I'm still shellshocked at needing anyone,

used to being used to it on my own.

It won't be me out on the tiles till four-

thirty, while you're in bed, willing the door

open with your need. You wanted her then,

more. Because you need to, I woke alone

in what's not yet our room, strewn, though, with your

guitar, shoes, notebook, socks, trousers enjambed

with mine. Half the world was sleeping it off

in every other bed under my roof.

I wish I had a roof over my bed

to pull down on my head when I feel damned

by wanting you so much it looks like need. - Marylyn Hacker

for a lack of a better term a windswept spirit -Anne Carson, from Nox

or tell me how

in the elder stairwell, suddenly the slight redness of your skin at the collar,
below the coracle of the throat. if we were trapped here.

in the railcar office i don't take off my shirt. the envelope is the envelope, where it collapses, only to
meet again its' plane. if we were as bare.

what is rendered useless. how many words a day are capitulated if only by the air. or the sweet
grass. or the lasso bent smoke of grief.

when i first noticed, you looked up. leaned back then to draw back to the non-being
of this: of her ordinary boxes, of the vase lakes tacked to a basement wall. to will or chance.

not noticing you is as if the tree were covering the entirety of the lake-bound

island. even when you look without looking i lose a part of the way.

torn map house : installation / exchange

2011-03-04T14:03:00.000-08:00

schedule 1.0

2011-02-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

schedule version 1.0

torn map house is a temporal installation that attempts to invert the conventional relationship between audience & site. both as a fleeting shelter & a studio, the gallery space will offer opportunities for public transactions:

monday: onion drawings (11-5)

tuesday: bartering of materials / artworks / food /clothing (bring something to exchange) (11-5)

wednesday: tea ceremony (10 pm)

thursday: vessel portraits (bring your vessel) (12-3) & opening (5-7) w/ poetry reading (6)

friday: dismantling, sweeping performance, closing door (11-7)

torn map house

2011-02-03T00:50:00.000-08:00

no less an answer

2011-01-28T11:28:00.000-08:00

no less an answer

the lake has no saint

2010-11-14T16:45:00.000-08:00

the book in which my mother drives across ohio fields with her sleeping children in the back arrived today. my bound chest, a root & sulfur stain, the sloping leaves of two years winterlight, the cover i designed, in a book that weighs less than my hand, but more than the stars when they are cloistered together by the dusk. the title is _the lake has no saint_.

response: the lake's saints are woven together in the form of roots & leaves, passages of bodies that have slipped through the water as if through a tunnel of remain-in-light. the lake's saints are the worn sails & the oars made smooth by so many gestures in one direction & then the other. when i swim i am writing with my skin. my eyes are mostly closed. sometimes a small, noble fish with scales the size of my teeth may brush against me. other times, lying on my back, gazing up, floating, as we can, so thankfully, float, i see the saint of the sky. the trembling then composed streams of light, the clouds that sway as both mountains & spirits. she was wrong, the saint dives & emerges, opens her eyes underwater, draws many boats, renders her own body into the shape of a boat, lets go, lets go, lets go.

& we are barely driving fast enough for my arm to skim the needles of the air

2010-10-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

sketches for roots & vessels: work for sale at box heart, PGH, PA

2010-09-16T17:36:00.000-07:00

2010-07-04T20:05:00.000-07:00

2010-06-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

2010-06-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

2010-05-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

haste to haste

2010-05-20T23:02:00.000-07:00

would there be a reason to rest like this against the other direction? leaning onto the back of a rough tree. never even close to a missionary. never even close to the humming your body used to make & the mutable shoulders- could have been throwing rocks all this time. haste to haste, we used to say. we used to say, this day of this month, my lover smells like a gun, after winterson. the swallow of the past, the nostalgic & her wavering. scratches on the back again in the timid shape of letters. no other accusations at this time.

some quiet advice

2010-05-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

both sets of antlers

2010-05-08T22:41:00.000-07:00

i will return both sets of antlers. i was glad you weren't alarmed that i had taken the seven bells. you weren't. i was lucky there too. this is going to get lighter, lighter. especially if trees. especially if the chair starts to float away. if i keep moving. if you disappear. if i disappear into you. if we reappear. if we cause trouble. trouble as in something good that we couldn't repress for much longer. i'll make work in the kitchen. i'll work on the kitchen floor and i'll start wearing anyone's clothes but my own.

2010-04-08T22:11:00.000-07:00

*this painting i was working on is titled erotic sleep pills

fifty four percent your

fault

& the rest is in the wrists

i'll sell the boat

we'll run

on the muted

opera of our

cells

for

kissing you

has been

salt

paths

sleep while

2010-02-28T15:24:00.000-08:00

for whatever it's worth, the rain broke the window where i had been standing for sometime. collectively, we emptied out our pockets. there are things you can do with lint that no one had the audacity to suspect. it always seems like the nicest thing when someone says simply: you can sleep while i drive.

mostly everything else is porous & unstable.

let

2010-01-05T20:30:00.000-08:00

lightning / plant matter

2009-12-14T10:40:00.000-08:00

circles

2009-12-01T11:18:00.000-08:00

what if the 16 window panels were our only view. snapped oak, snapped willow. he instructed to make only circles. bending the branches into touching arcs. only. the shelter wobbled but one person could move it easily while standing inside. and i, i just want to kiss her hands.

a possible altitude

2009-11-19T19:22:00.001-08:00

did i mention that the sound of rain becomes an altitude above all of this. a mountain. a calling. these days i pull at my hipbones: i want them to sink lower, to displace even in the event that my skin is a veil. all day i walk on the outside of greenhouses. these lines bore me the color of fog opening in my lungs. i want to meet someone who is neither here nor there who i can walk with in the apple orchards and laugh with in the bright tent of my bedroom. sometimes i think she's already passed through me. there is no more discussion tonight.

2009-09-28T17:48:00.000-07:00

each word is

2009-05-30T00:57:00.000-07:00

each word is timber. ok. collecting dues. library books with thick red lines. some canal. i have stopped most pronouncements. i have a heartbeat. whooeee.

2009-03-12T22:42:00.001-07:00

a crow here a screech owl there

2009-01-18T17:53:00.000-08:00

there are mandarin peels and feet of snow, snowbanks, the sea, taha muhammad ali's four lines "and those that remain / after my longing / and apart from my solitude- / a crow here, a screech owl there-"

i am going to work on some drawings tonight. everything is empty. no one is here. just snow shovels hitting the concrete.

orchids / tires

2009-01-16T19:10:00.000-08:00

in the film about suitcases of ash and books he drives into sacramento california in the bare
morning. she meets him at the nondescript motel room and they stand on the bed, lean against the walls. it's not that i don't believe that everything eventually runs parallel... it's just that i'm careful to make any marks. so careful as if i was making another calendar altogether
that i will eventually live by.

unanswered

2009-01-07T21:14:00.000-08:00

ohio, day eight

2008-12-29T23:57:00.000-08:00

eight days into ohio and i try to understand what my mother has collected in dust. always the glass cabinets with wings, the jars with thread or loose book bindings. i know i am separate. separate in grief. separate in love. i have to hold my body out in front of my body in order to realize this- a metaphysical act. my hair is growing out in rust. the winter has taken color from my lips and made my eyes calm like leaves. inside i am still trembling but i think i have to sew the calendar into a cloak or robe. for a while i just watch bianca's hands. she helps me to carry.

debts

2008-11-30T15:45:00.000-08:00

sometimes, & then, our debts compose us

2008-11-19T19:38:00.000-08:00

dearest,

i still make charcoal rubbings of half a gravestone. star. bird. professor of metaphysics. i still draw leaves gathering in the wind. i am not and remain the woman who swam with a thousand minnows. i am not and remain the woman who kissed you on the wooden floor. the students believe, as we turn to kenyon, that happiness is brief, discursive, even unwarranted. when rain meets the sea i disappear from grief. the child ( whose mother has passed out from drink ) walks alone through the dunes. i walk our greyhound near the water: flecked with sails, distant, quiet. in fact, i feel quite alone in all of this. you made the sky closer & my wrists hum / from memory, i can still trace the scar on the back of your neck / from memory still your persistent sweeping away, washing, holding, still your kiss, as sure as a root. though—no-coming, no-going. here the room is the color of bourbon. waves arrive, become present then lost. the mattress is only a sculpture of the mattress. the birds, woven. the days leading into winter are heavy with words & jagged brush. when i say your name aloud the leaf stems quiver. here i am in the wake of losing you & my handwriting leaves cinders.

living in water

2008-11-11T23:26:00.000-08:00

orchid

2008-11-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

i wear the broken down shirt. the wine stains evaporate.
it's fair to say.

touch

2008-11-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

i don't want to be touched save by you.

our resistance

2008-10-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

expiring

2008-10-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

truism by j. holzer.

c l o t h e d / s h e l t e r e d

2008-10-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

i am clothed & sheltered but where are you
my words are dragged down by your expansive
rhetoric. because the days are empty of you i have to
draw the calendar as vessels. put clay slip on my legs so i can't walk / this
feels normal. we saw that sophie calle exhibit together with the telephone
on the bed. with the white wash basin. all those lonely photographs
& you just kissed me against the back wall / i was wearing half of a hood.

structure of home

2008-09-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

and if the story is a sail being made from the wind then i have not been breathing deeply enough. wait & wait for someone to tell me a new story. all of the streets have collected layers of torn magazines and the amputated ash from cigarettes. even the light clinging to the water has a way of clinging too hard. my mother, on the phone, suggesting for me to write out of this. write into another room. i think, burn more candles, run the perimeter of water without remembering your feet, talk to strangers, build with what remains and sooner or later the sail will open, full of a kind of peace, a structure of home, embedded with bamboo and green vines, a bed that feels like yours, a morning of water and body, an afternoon of art practice, thought, teaching and learning, an evening of fresh greens, poems and making love into the dark.

hatteras island : stilted house : group study

2008-09-03T08:17:00.001-07:00

hatteras island : stilted house : group study

we are alone despite our coming together. in these photographs, despite the suggested gesture, the body-centered presentations vary greatly. each loneliness is present in itself but touching the barriers of the other bodies, which float, hover and fall forward.

ar ka

2008-08-06T12:49:00.000-07:00

bamboo out of steel doric columns. horizontal slits filled with glass. lit from the bottom and the top. light becomes the memory of light between the two points. roots hang as ropes.

w / out beliefs

2008-08-04T14:51:00.000-07:00

these rooms have not been fire resistant. it's breaking my heart, you see. another day with light coming through the window in broken lines. another day with the smell of fish and clover. krishnamurti believes that "... real simplicity of life is to be inwardly empty, innocent, without the accumulation of knowledge, without beliefs, dogmas, without the fear of authority..." everyday i look around me. i gather the feathers, the limbs of trees, the road-stained cloth and inscriptions on doors. if i do look back i know that this languor, this odd deconstruction, is a kind of work. but i fear that i am not empty of having loved. not empty of having re-birthed a robe into a room where one can meditate. if they can. even for a second.

renting meadows

2008-08-03T19:26:00.000-07:00

i don't know how much to pay for seven waves or a field cross-stitched with woodland flowers. i am already in debt to strangers. how much to pay for a plain of concrete. a cement guard rail quietly unfurling onto a highway.

performance art drawings

2008-08-02T21:06:00.000-07:00

for days she had red hands

2008-08-02T16:34:00.001-07:00

from touching the rusted buildings that grow around her in formations that threatened any solitude. still she tries to find the buildings with the most vines. the birds show little expression. one wing is lead. birds can write with their bodies--- did you know that?

with-out-couch

2008-07-30T17:34:00.000-07:00

we dragged the olive couch to the street. i am satisfied with losing track of objects. it is enough to replace the couch with a small continental piece of green sea glass that you hold in your hand for seven blocks. we prefer to sit on the floor anyways. you can form any position you like with your body: arc, wings, tomb.