I am honored that poets and writers have made work inspired by my paintings and drawings.
Angelica Lebre
Tree Trunk, 2020
https://www.touchthepainting.com/post/tree-trunk
The works below came together as part of “heartbeats.exe.” curated by Elae [Lynne DeSilva-Johnson] at Peninsula Art Space in September 2019.
Violent Ode to Georgia Elrod’s Skeleton Prom Queen
shake that gauzy bag of bones
lemme see them thai ice tea thighs
crash along femur shore, that lemon rind
electric denim thick in the sponge of your gristle
you antique rose, unreachable beyond castle gates
so round and sweet and plump
I wanna slide a cold needle
between your nail and its flesh
just for the thorn of it, a sword of black
and grey to keep you still where I can see you.
ah, there you are.
now you can be full flower
you can peacock your petals
and shed them all at once
now the jellybean of you has a stalk
a spire to hold the cloud of your vertebrae
the best promise a man can make
to hold you up.
Ashna Ali
EVERYBODY’S HAVING A WEEKEND
Pain, it knows
how to network
better than you
do. It knows, too,
how to buy
an island,
its aqueducts
of pink shell flesh
buffering
every fault line.
When was
The last time
you ate from
your own apparatus?
Have you ever
seen the bone
I mean really
taken the bone
in
with the eyes?
I spoke
with a friend
about the blackest
blanket of blood
that rises up
more like a current
than like a garden snake.
She has parted
the guardrails
and she will do it
again.
She is strong
like a keyboard
and powered
by a diamond chip.
“New York
is sharp
and I am sand,”
she says,
“Particulate.”
A persistent pain
in the fingers.
*
Once
I did become
sensitive.
I did feel
the brain
send its charge
through the hands
and I did
feel the rug
send up its lightning
like some ugly
vulgar vitalism.
I had eaten those
mushrooms
and the spiders
rode the wind
as they always do.
In the park
I held my
own hand
and I died.
In the park
I held your hand
and I did not die.
*
Every few months
I dream a tsunami
on a beach
I knew by heart
in the last life.
Boardwalk high
on stilts
like a trapeze
matriarch.
The sand
cranes its thick neck
steeply up
to meet the town.
When the wave
appears
in the distance,
there is time
to scramble
up the slope,
even with the sand
turning to cement
as it always does.
The wave crests
as it always does
at the boardwalk’s
sturdy edge,
laps at our desperate
dangling legs like a dog.
We are caught
always.
We are killed
sometimes.
*
There are two kinds
of people:
those who make
burial rituals
to address the
human disgust
toward the notion
of being eaten.
And those
who think of fungus
as the one
and only funeral.
*
There are the poems
about being on drugs
and the poems
that act regular.
You might say
this poem has
no chill.
But it did
look down
and see its architecture
making room
for a fugue of worms.
It did look up
And see its own
its very own
two knees
inviting the sun
to make a burrow
where it lay.
And it did
look inside the spine
and say god damn it
child won’t you
put on something
warmer
don’t you see
the big wave
here it comes
Liz Bowen
It’s Never What You Imagine
Sometimes I want to trap
the light in
your chest, devour
my bones first and lick
them dry
before I get to you.
I want you to want
this, to study
light falling
on me, inside me
and not know if
you want to hurt
me or love me
tenderly like cars
driving down highways,
oceans from far
away—birds or wind—
could be anyone, could
be a spirit past—
could be trouble, could be
salvation—the one
you want, been waiting
for
like waiting for who
you are, where you
were always supposed to be.
*
In another version, I am brave.
I am braver
than any teacher
could tell me to be.
In another version, I never say
those things I knew
could destroy you
like unwriting
a creation story
as if it never existed
—the very feeling I strove so long
so emulate like an eternal
chorus
in a straight line, dressed
all in black
as if for a funeral
for someone who never
deserved a love
like the end of the world
in slow motion. In
another
version, I don’t buy
that pack of cigarettes
from the gas station attendant
who carded me ten years too
late.
I tell you to stay, round
and around and around
in vibrating circles
like the shape
of you sharp as a knife,
ones like the X-Acto
knife, other
found objects
I used to use; it was easy to hide
as an artist
or someone who said
they were an artist.
When I tell you
how I used to find
anything sharp so I could
cut into myself
looking for a sign
of rain like I’m not
forgetting the obvious,
as if it’s not
me who needed the saving
once, as if it’s not me
who wanted that overwhelming
feeling of something else
besides myself.
In another version, I am braver
and I tell you how it felt,
what it looked like, how I curled
up in the middle of
the carpet like a lost deer
at night like a dreamer
forgot how to breathe
and in another version,
you aren’t sitting next to
me eating ice cream,
marveling at the lack
of stars and maybe they don’t
exist anymore
because we don’t deserve them
—and in another version,
I am better.
Joanna C Valente