Pandemic Poetry
There have been so many amazing creative collaborations happening. I partnered with the 4 originators of ‘Pandemic Poetry’ a way for people to work on poems together while social distancing. We came up with lists of things that bring us comfort or joy at this time and I did color swatches to be used for 4 separate (4’x4’) paintings. I paint each of these during a zoom meeting with the poets while they work on a poem that, in the end, will be linked to the painting from that moment on. We attempt to feed and inspire each others process and stay connected while also making art that is very much in this moment.
Poetry by Stephanie Berger, Kate Belew, Jackie Braje & Emi Bergquist
Science of Goodbye
June 16, 2020
A summer that tastes like raspberry sorbet which is both thorned and not. A color like a bad rock song, so sweet in your garage or in the bar where we first met. I can’t tell if I am waiting for someone or if I am studying some science of good-bye, arriving to leave again, my hand out the car window like someone in a parade or something. Next time I’ll wake in a cradle in a forest of Yes and know I’m home by the way moss grows that particular shade of green. And mugwort under the pillow for dreams, for resistance when the days lack texture and I forget what laughter feels like in the hands and mouth and mouth and hands and feel without feeling. This pigment is as dark as it is bright, depending on the way I tilt my head, or whatever window and whatever sill welcomes a more tasteless green.
Difficult Lavender
May 27, 2020
That difficult lavender morning. Waiting for the sun to brew and the coffee to rise, or is it the coffee to brew and the sun to swallow? Yes, I have been wrong before. But not about the hours of sleep required to keep the day obscure, wrapped in curtains. So what spills forth when drawn back behind the light of that swallowed sky the certain sadness of happiness— plant the seeds in the horizon like that time I could only say I’m sorry with no plan, when I said poems are so true they are born rhyming.
The Blues
June 10, 2020
We decided to go with blues which is probably a smart choice unlike getting stoned before therapy and agreeing to write a letter to my past self. I mean to say this is who I love: an empty park, an open road, and a heart like a fist— opening and running towards the water. Where do we grow this hunger for change if not at the happy end, all welcome. I can promise this, love, I love you so freely, following the wind wherever that may lead, reaching your limbs away from your ribcage, the mouth, it smiles, pink, yellow, shattered.
Twilight Blue
May 12, 2020
The brief shade of twilight blue following the setting sun-- fleeting as a sandcastle the wave takes and just as cobalt crashing. What waits in amber, or, walks through cities at night on off-grid streets, or, which will last forever, longer? I have dented the pots and the pans, equally. But I am playing this song for no one but my dog who barks at moving water, unaware it’s going where it will, deep where it’s not wide. But still, to hold that breaking in his mouth, carefully, as if to say what cannot be erased can be covered new with wet, tooth, and grip. Interlochen, MI is a very different wind. These currents, my hand splits into everyday routines: coffee grounds, fresh pears, Diana Ross, anything to imitate a heartbeat. Sometimes birds listen at this window. And this is all to say, it’s okay to draw in the margins, to mix flavors and colors until you’ve forgotten the shape of your own tongue.
Coffee All The Time
2020
I think about coffee all the time
what a difference a little splash makes
a circular stain into the oval office
I must retract my previous statement
the cameras are on. I am smiling
wide with a golden gleaming
tooth in the back left-hand side
on a bus. I have those anxiety dreams
my makeup is wrong or gone
I have missed the stop between I was then
& where we are headed. the name
you were given at birth & your chosen moniker
worn like a pin on the lapel but more
coral. please more water. that undersea
sludge is what I’m after. highs & lows
placed before us like a cup
It’s where we are & it must be
acknowledged, at least, for its temporal
placement because narrative, or its
geography because setting
& reason & mindfulness & dreams &
the other who visits me when I am not awake
if we are going to make it. at least
sometimes we’ll need to be awake.
