Month: July 2019

enquiry for a future that does not yet exist

All responsible witnessing engages a poetic experience of language. — Jacques Derrida, Sovereignties in Question

Dusting off the Male Gaze, Yuku Shimizu

It was the way you phrased the question
like scripture or that tone reserved for family
a sharpness of being open ended, interpretive.

You wanted to know about future memories
cached in bucolic 2020 time capsules.
When would we be notified of the opening ceremonies?

How would the reveal of selective imaginations cast
replicas of value and what will remain
in desire’s form? Why do we save time this way?

You wanted to know just how, exactly, would revelry
produce nostalgia. I answered in kind.
Why do men’s hands have a gravity to them?

in excelsis

“She was territory and words occupied her.” — Jeanette Winterson

photographer: Gary Ross Pastrana

Contrived as a self-portrait
& captured in landscape mode,
diamonds rest at her throat.

Lips split wide enough to connect
in rapture of majestic glare.
Caged, he filled negative space.

To steal a line:
the crowd’s a rapacious beast

Starlings sang from burnt trees —
songs misinterpreted as warnings.
Ecstasy migrates inward.

Cities bend to western light
when a sun rises full & tender.
In ascension, fireworks sound blue.

—————
line from Silkworm. “Tarnished Angel,” Firewater (1996)