This project began the collaboration. We were sitting next to each other in a meeting and talked about our work. Jim was writing poems shaped like brick walls on the page, and it turned out Charlee had done a whole series of wall photographs. She shared these with Jim, and he was so inspired, he abandoned his brick poems and began writing new ones in response to these photos. They were both inspired by the collaboration and began moving into other more representational photos that began the series that resulted in Street.
Hinges on the Gate to the Garden of Eden
Two pairs. Four screws.
Where you stopped twisting.
Each board: Three nails.
Where you stopped pounding.
Where the heads seemed flat enough.
Three nails=one bird.
Vee of migration.
Redwood stained.
Blood from the nails.
Here’s where Christ enters
or not. Splinters removed
or not. How gently does the gate
swing open? Shut?
The extended squeak of hinges
make all things possible. What’s truth
but belief with some wind behind it?
Adam and Eve. Hammer and screwdriver.
GEOLOGICAL
Each layer picks its poison.
It’s the same poison.
*
The bruised ideals of the naive.
The smooth hands of the insincere.
*
The snowstorms and mirages.
Wheat waving in the wind.
*
The world’s largest dancefloor.
Or simply internal bleeding.
*
Dig far enough to find the ragged
tears and mottled skin.
*
Cave paintings of the 20th century.
One channel and one channel only.
*
God bless static and the mindless stare.
Fuck the muse and the mindless prayer.
*
How deep was your hole to China
before you gave up?
*
Perhaps you will find a coin buried there.
Someone’s lost good luck.
*
Dig until you find at least one bone
of something that once moved.
Luck enough for any of us.
torn screen
wood smack and creak
dog-paw dents and scratches
a broom to the gut
the fleeting triumph
of killing a wasp
mottled silver mesh
brittle as moth wing
bristles of the morning after
mornings after
the evolution of a personal flag
repaired poorly
a porch’s angular shadowed z
afternoon’s dark scar
if you look closely, the face
of someone you recognize
too closely
and you’re snagged
on the thin wire of artifice.
inside the screen, barely visible,
the tarnished handle
of the storm.
STILL LIFE WITH HANGOVER
the impossible maze
the mad bricklayer
the lost memory
the dust and the coughing
the imagined footsteps
the sleepless and the bitter
the chalk dust of every erased message
shifting back into words permanently placed
a duel of hurts. vile slam and shattering
a wrinkled dollar bill clutched too long
the name of a song wedged next to a stolen kiss
no climbing, no peeking over the other side
a torn napkin, scribbled equations in a forgotten geometry
thin black tar of regret. flesh trembling against rough brick.
an ear dreaming whispered forgiveness.
oh if only: one foothold.
CUT
thin seam of vinyl siding
sexual entry
hair pulled tight
the cruel nose
of a misguided judge
or bored monkey
rivers of white
imbedded on the gray
flood plain
an old woman’s wavering
over her last check
an unseen hand on her shoulder
the cracked soil
of drought
and what we should have once said.
