spectacle

yielding

| ginger k. hintz
Barbara Kruger “Don’t Make Me Angry”, 1999

volume won the day

what was said
had to be abandoned

because more was coming

this universe was not built
to accommodate more than one sun

Betty Danon, I am, 1978

call me when
the Afghanistan war
is over

Black Lines 1, 1916, Georgia O’Keeffe

 

fog obscures the depth behind it

 

Richard Barnes, Murmur, 23 December 2006

from my side of this wall
I am only a body
& the sky is a milky blue

I quietly compose performative debts
unchecked — they form treacherous habits
when written they  s t r  e t c h  smooth

I’ve ritualized these (now) ceremonial feelings
& marinated in their bone-heavy broth
as panicked days continue to pace themselves

seven years and a day

| ginger k. hintz
artist: Yuko Shimizu

Police found nothing but pairs of empty shoes inside abandoned cars stopped on the freeway that carved edge lines between city and suburb. Stereos were still playing upbeat songs or blaring ads for insurance, spicy chicken sandwiches, eradicating skin rashes, and a cloud that promised to secure memories. Coffee left warm in secure cup holders.

I have my own, obvious, working hypothesis for the dispossessed.

I can feel you wanting more. More analysis, more details, more quantifiable truth. I recognize that desire. If left unchecked, it is a serial and extractive response.

Instead of getting stuck in that kind of particular production, what spiritual inclinations were you born with? Will your future prove the past?

The ending is coming. How wild is your hope?

________

title is reference to seven years and a day is often the period of trial in fairy tales (Denise Levertov, The Poet in the World, page 13)

danger & excitement can feel the same

| ginger k. hintz
Richard Moult – In the Heart of the Wood and What I Found There

“What is it that keeps up from drowning in moments that rise and cover the heart?”
Anne Carson, Plainwater

under the current circumstances
you must understand

in my dreams
you robbed me

the plot was a repeat
a rerun

did you see that emergency flare?
it was bright
red

inevitable

our skies hold light
white
then expand
into blues

debate shatters into silence

we meant to say ineffable

details spread diluted
revenge collects into thriving tragedy

what hope hunts has no reflection
survival now the most obvious commodity

danger and excitement can feel the same
our bodies keep trying to tell us this news

live as in
right
now —

we grope backwards

in excelsis

| ginger k. hintz

“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)

forbidden feelings

| ginger k. hintz

tell me that you’re famous for me – Bull in the Heather by Sonic Youth

WE’RE THIS / AND WE’RE THAT. / AREN’T WE? – Ed Ruscha

here   they wash sidewalks
while old women with no teeth
sleep on concrete mouths open
as buses curl around blocks
like snakes seeking refuge

on warm screen display
all this proximity
generates raw tension
& opportunities to be dangerous
exhale embargoed

here   preachers still preach
drag & drop promises
with conviction-driven voices
she is distracted with salvation
in witness & in abandon

she holds a burning cigarette
between her shaking fingers
& places a call to god
there is no answer
    the voicemail full

under center

| ginger k. hintz
Loie Hollowell (American, b. 1983), Incoming Tide, 2016. oil, acrylic, sawdust, and high-density foam on linen on panel

the lecture ended at cooperation
endless constellations looping
associations and reified traces

he said it was better
before
nostalgia produces
utopia

all this mutual (re)production
that feel of shared experience
remorse, traffic jams, expectations

reckless as rhetoric
faith (as in not control)
pull and then release

weak futures / sell high

| ginger k. hintz

“A horror so deep only ritual can contain it.” — Sarah Kane, “Crave”

All that exuberant, collective hope of a new year dissipated
into silhouettes whose interiors frame a groomed rage.
Such glamour is visceral in the light of a knowledge apocalypse.

Our inherited rage learned.
Daily lessons worn so deep to appear smooth,
ordinary. Even today, algorithms reveal their shadows.

Yes, it really has always been like this:
raw, broken, cruel, and transferred.
How we participate is birthright.

Such process generates the futures we believe we can change.
In all this fractured isolation, soft bodies spread sparse.

(en)titled

| ginger k. hintz

“To pursue beauty to its lair.” — Arundhati Roy

5 June 2018, Pacific Grove, CA

She folds her hands together
as if in prayer
onlookers believe
the end of the world is near

Sour west coast coffee
dreamed memories decay
into sensitive masculinities
you may think: her POV lacks pleasure

Or maybe this cumulative longing
binds her sense of class to an economics
that has made her an experienced voyeur
an orgy of grace

Disciplined dangerous
her body expresses need
she commits to infinite integration
in entry & in sanctuary

fractals

| ginger k. hintz

I. Writing; an act of stroking paper.

4 October 2018, Oakland, CA

II. The aggressiveness of buying and selling resistance, as seen on TV, makes me wanna disassociate.

self-portrait in Wave by Pirkle Jones, 1952, gelatin silver print [Oakland Museum of California]

III. Competitions of sadness are trauma tiers.

PUBLIC NOTICE, 14 September 2018, Oakland, CA

IV. It’s ok that I don’t fit in she says.

27 April 2018, San Francisco, CA

V. If I write a word today, just one, that must be enough.