You don’t know

me from Adam. Never
did. This
is the end of the line—that last postcard, the one
you’ll want to keep, want
to remember why you don’t
trust me as far as you can throw
me. Forget
what I said on that scratchy, cat-hair covered army blanket
spread in darkness. Forget what I said folded
naked behind you in your damp bed. Forget I was afraid
you wouldn’t love me once you knew me, once
you knew about her. What
did I say that night? Forget
I forgot Mexico. The gurgling fountain, glistening Hallmark roses—
I’m standing there
now. This
is not another photograph.
They’re so ripe they’re rotting. The reds almost
black. Perfume
so thick you don’t need to bend
toward it. It’s everywhere, sweetness,
you can’t escape. And she and I amaze
ourselves in the wide mirrors everywhere. Mute, Melody smiles
painfully, hands me a note with curling letters
while the candy red, green and yellow velvet parrots won’t shut up.
“You-don’t-know-me,” they screech. Or,
“I-want-a-life-with-you.” Sometimes,
“Next-time-I-see-you-I-want-that-ring-off-your-finger.”
It’s always something, something
you wish you’d never said. Bored,
one day we tattooed Bosch’s Garden of Earthly
Delights in full color down the length of Melody’s longest arm.
Her knuckles almost scrape the ground
and when she walks, the garden sways back and forth, bodies
blurring into each other, fucking as fast
or slow as she makes them.

 

(thank you to Kate Fetherston for the crit)

Project Intersect (update)

(from my recent cameo in Project Intersect on a crisp, cold April night)

When: Saturday May 10, 2008; 8:30-10:00 pm with performances at 8:45, 9:15 & 9:45
Where: Old Town Hall, 43 Main St., Easthampton, MA
Artists: Maggie Nowinski & JC Gray
Performers: Chivas Sandage & Lani Nahele

For those who can make it on May 10th, I am constructing a live performance that will interact with Maggie Nowinski & JC Gray’s collaborative, site-specific multimedia installation “Project Intersect.” I see the video itself as being one “work,” the video projected onto Town Hall’s stairs as a second work & the performance as a third. This duet structure for two women will weave improvisation with choreography, creating a third work that acts as punctuation, stories within a story, anti-theater & a still life that breathes. The performance will integrate strategies & concepts including: the body as monitor, games & game playing, & vignettes about found objects, accidents, weddings, losses, chance encounters & symbiotic strangers. 

This is pure experiment–a first sketch! I’m thrilled that Lani Nahele (formerly Lisa Schmidt) is up for the venture. She danced professionally in NYC, was a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company from 1984-1992, and then spent several years in Brazil, Argentina, France, and Germany where she was commissioned to make work, perform and teach.    

Artist Statement from Gray’s website: “Easthampton’s Old Town Hall has served as an epicenter supporting the convergence of venues, personalities, politics and business. Folks from all aspects of the community have sought out its offices and audience. In our minds it functions as a meeting place: a hub where diverging interests touch, intersect and simply pass. All walks of life moved up and down it’s stairs… a portal to community, acceptance, possibilities and processes that affect identity. Stairs provide a transitional space that marks time before and after an event occurs or a purpose is realized.” For more information visit: http://www.jcgraymedia.com/current-works/project-intersect.html

 

Ars Poetica

You will not remember
the moment your mouth first
touches mine, nor leaving
my bed. You won’t remember
the words you’ll say or why.
All you’ll know
is the moon’s drunken pull. Lay
me down on the white
sheet. The poem becomes
magnetic. Not an echo
but a force—bitter ink
pungent as blood. The pulse
of each letter quickens
as it presses against page.
When our names live only
as memories, the poem will long
to enter, seducing
too far from shore.
This land’s no home. 
You will forget who you loved
yet the poem arrives
imploring: Open
my body. Love
your life. Or change it. 

 

(Special thanks to Kate Fetherston for today’s extensive critique & sharing your amazing work. Let me know what you think.)

How the Body Remembers

Notice how you push that bit of hair
behind your ear again, bite
your lower lip then release it. How longing
tightens the breath, contracts threads
of muscle, webs
between each rib in that cathedral
of bone. Your next
exhale lowers the ribs in cupping
your heart. Notice
how the body remembers
what we’ve forgotten
in our haste, desperate
as if this is all there is.
How breath presses the pen
and your hand trails
a fine line of thought—
the blue ink of desire.

Three Gifts

It all began with a spiral notebook, a photo album and a small, portable record player—three gifts from my mother that would change my life forever. Or perhaps it began with her inscription in the empty album: “I give you this book and your first roll of film—may your photos show the spontaneous joy of childhood, the wonder of God and awe of growing up—a smile, glimpse, wish or promise…” In this way, she got me thinking and handed me the tools to begin asking questions in three new languages I’d strive to speak the rest of my life. While our contrasting understandings of God would change and change again, perhaps the greatest magic her gifts offered was in their blankness— all that open-ended possibly fascinated: unwritten pages with faint blue lines that held no words, the coarse, thick paper of the photo albums that held no photos and the record player’s white plastic turntable without a single on it, the needle with nothing to play!