ekphrasis at lift trucks project

Maybe it was the moon or the bitter cold or January

or the lack of sea air I don't know

but last night was amazing.

The art and the text and the typography and the words

out loud and the band and the crowd.

You can get a sense of how the ekphrastic conversation

morphed into a visual dialogue in the photo above.

Now I'm making soup.

true that

Time is matter here

By Jean Valentine

Time is matter here
The freight train
I saw in the morning
still in the evening
inching across the flatlands
word after slow word
too many to count

And you are matter—
your eyes, your long legs,
slow breath sometimes catching
in your sleep, your head
resting against the bus window,
tired horse,
tired rider

winter

Henri Michaux, Narration, 1927. automatic drawing.

My Life

after Henri Michaux

Joe Wenderoth

Somehow it got into my room.
I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.
It was nothing more than a frightened animal.
Since then I raised it up.
I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,
kept it for its own good.
I named the animal, My Life.
I found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.
I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.
And the animal, in my love, my constant care,
grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.
One day, quite recently,
I was running my hand over the animal's side
and I came to understand
that it could very easily kill me.
I realized, further, that it would kill me.
This is why it exists, why I raised it.
Since then I have not known what to do.
I stopped feeding it,
only to find that its growth
has nothing to do with food.
I stopped cleaning it
and found that it cleans itself.
I stopped singing it to sleep
and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.
I don't know what to do.
I no longer make My Life do tricks.
I leave the animal alone
and, for now, it leaves me alone, too.
I have nothing to say, nothing to do.
Between My Life and me,
a silence is coming.
Together, we will not get through this.

upcoming

I've been having a great time

curating the writing for this upcoming

exhibition, which opens at the end

of the month. There will be a reading too.

And the writings will be rendered

so they can hang next to/around

the art works. If you're in New York

check it out.

here

from The Story of My Typewriter

By Paul Auster

We have been together for more than a quarter of a century now.

Everywhere I have gone, the typewriter has gone with me. We

have lived in Manhattan, in upstate New York, and in Brooklyn.

We have traveled together to California and to Maine, to Minnesota

and to Massachusetts, to Vermont and to France. In that time, I have

written with hundreds of pencils and pens. I have owned several cars,

several refrigerators, and have occupied several apartments and houses.

I have worn out dozens of pairs of shoes, have given up on scores of

sweaters and jackets, have lost or abandoned watches, alarm clocks,

and umbrellas. Everything breaks, everything wears out, everything

loses its purpose in the end, but the typewriter is still with me.

It is the only object I own today that I owned twenty-six years ago.

In another few months, it will have been with me for exactly

half my life.