I spent quality time after her memorial
reinventing banalities.The absoluteness of her being
here, then ™Photoshopped out.What is it that anyone
remembers? Most of the speakerswere not and could not be
eloquent. Everyone nibbledat the borders of her life
and of the unspoken.Nothing scandalous–just
you can’t articulate it, anyof it, either in part
or as a whole.Of course, memory itself
is one culprit: iterations,inventions, re-castings, thoughts
escaped, home movies, rifts,pretensions, chains, scraps of fabric
and frozen evanescence.Did you so believe in soul?
I didn’t know! I thought the word was odd—.Someone stripped away the black
of the beleaguered words,to reveal the shadows
beneath their nakedness.The heavy doors of travel
pivoted on hinges and turning points.Sometimes hinges make a sound
like vermin. The mistbetween landmarks encouraged earworms.
A Chopin étude, caught in a loopand never resolved.
Or the “Chiquita banana” ditty,pert, didactic, unforgettable,
a Potemkin village of kitchen pleasantries,stereotypes and housewife-ry
under which tentaclesof collusion, massacre, preferential
access, policed economies,and paramilitary activities
far away from home.You can see right away there are
two stories—the palpable, but insignificant
and the hidden, real enough but all obscured.
What? That number is patently
ridiculous. Two says nothing. It’s wrong already.
It’s certainly simultaneous conflicting,
overloaded presences of “story,” crossroads, the honey of personal life,
one tiny part of a well-built honeycomb,
done beautifully, with compassion,
sweetness, and the rocks onto which
some jump or fall–all that
narrates nothing, all that loses everything,
though a number like two or three might do to symbolize this
so long as one doesn’t forget intricacy and the networks
of collusion, themselves limiting us to the
binary, the trifecta, the 4 cardinal points of mists
neatening or sweetening all of it, the lot.Time’s pale light upon the trees blinded the viewer
as the rushing stream rushed on.Of course we spoke
awkwardly, a translationwithout an original.
How could we have not?2.
The poem, unwritten, is concealed by the poem, written.
It’s kind of a disgrace.
There is a lot of blank paper in this notebook.
Perhaps it should be left there, empty.
Time is gone, emphatically lost.
Its feeling tone
persists.That’s what you say
because you want to say it–but
does it really?Perhaps there is no choice.
This unwritten–reliably as
a force that unwrites itself–
creates spray and backwash,
recriminations in the holes and crevices
that fill, some seasons,
with the powerfully dangerous tide
of what some person meant to do
and did
not.Especially sediments of unfinished
stories, eroded stories–Any solid page of print
is a bluff–or I guess, that
is art.It should truly be full of
ripped paper, holes,
elisions, burns
white spaces
and actuallyemptiness.
- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones