Snippet 2

This box is not ordinary. It is small, metal–perhaps steel–and cool to the touch. But it is not ordinary. There are those who dismiss it as a piece to some larger machine or a hard drive enclosure. It is, after all, gray and nondescript. But its importance cannot be overstated.

Upon further inspection, its sides are marked with the faintest striation. The ridges would not be perceptible if one were to run a finger along the surface. It is as smooth as burnished wood with sharp corners. It has considerable heft given its size and would sink in water if the circumstance arose, which it would not.

To speak–or, more accurately, to speculate–about its origins would serve little purpose. It was; it is. For those with vulgar curiosity, it offers one clue: a slight hum. It begins at a frequency below the hearing threshold; if it is detected at all, it is only by means of a slight vibration in the inner ear, a sixth sense that something has changed. The sound scarcely moves beyond that point–at its height it could be dismissed as a fancy of the imagination, a defect of the eardrum. And after a short while, it recedes to silence.

Should we be surprised that some hear the humming and others do not? There is a spiritual quality to it that is undone by its utilitarian form.

To memorialize it seems obtuse. One can imagine squeezing paint from tubes–titanium white, cadmium yellow–only to realize that the subject is a non-subject. Lines connect predictably and shadows fall where they should. The only observation that can be made is ontological. It was; it is.

Seasons

I. Akhet
the tendency toward hyperbole,
the love of language
taken to its ends;
the missing of that which is before
one’s eyes:
overwhelmed by abundance.

II. Peret
promises being greater than expectation;
the sense that fecundity belies
disease—
shells of seeds that rot
at the bottoms of bellies.

III. Shemu
remorse bundled with doubt—
a smug package
sealed in gossamer,
reeking of oversalted soil.

1.

1.
The room smelled of dust and dried blood. The cats had gotten to her shortly after the stroke; they had used her face as a kind of scratching post. Her cheeks, then, became tattered strips of flesh. They fluttered slightly in the afternoon breeze that crept through the opened window the cats had used to make their way in. The first thing I noticed, though, was that her shoelaces were untied.

some new words

wind stealing words away from teeth
and exposing the slick, silvery undersides of leaves
like a stolen glance of something forbidden

words whining with the wind
reduced to howls and coos
letters left ticking from tongues
like silence

the wind reminded me how to feel alive
how to breathe
how to choke on too much breath

I want to go here someday.

Untitled

Hands that ghost across the planes
of a handcrafted dress—
something borrowed and blue—
wend their way into my hands:
hands crinoline from too much work,
hands with clotted joints and ragged fingernails,
hands becoming kilns when wedded
with yours.

This must be documented

Recently, I overheard this conversation at Kopi in downtown Champaign:

“What did you write?”

“‘A dog wears a bowtie; white clouds, blue sky.’”

“That sounds like poetry.”

“IT IS!…That’s enlightened poetry.”

as if possessed by the divine

I recently saw an episode of This American Life on Catholic people who go to the Mojave desert in CA to take pictures of the sun hoping to capture an image of the Virgin Mary. In the episode, Ira Glass asks, “Of course, if god is everywhere and you already believe in god–no question about that–why do you need a picture?”

The whole situation perplexed me, so I tried shooting the sun in Champaign.

When I took pictures of the sun, though, I found that it hurt my eyes to look at them. It is as if each image stole a piece of the sun.

Virgin Mary Sightings in the Mojave Desert

I gave this to myself as a gift.

Here are the photos of my book.

The full set of photos are here.

I gave this to myself as a gift.

[this is the text from my book, I gave this to myself as a gift. I will upload pics of the book soon.]

do you see the way these pages curl when written upon or touched?

like a lilting body

a ringlet

confronting (withstanding) gravity

do you see the way my flesh curls when looked upon or touched?

it’s a craving of body for stillness

for quiet

for repletion