...




"There is something in the air,
something prevent me to see you.
I feel you are distant
even if just few centimeters far from me...
I hold out my hand.
No, there is nothing in the air...just tears in my eyes..."

Written for this photo by,
Rosa Nastro

Summer Solstice

"I wanted to see where beauty comes from
without you in the world, hauling my heart
across sixty acres of northeast meadow,
my pockets filling with flowers.



Then I remembered,
it’s you I miss in the brightness
and body of every living name:
rattlebox, yarrow, wild vetch.
You are the green wonder of June,
root and quasar, the thirst for salt.
When I finally understand that people fail
at love, what is left but cinquefoil, thistle,
the paper wings of the dragonfly
aeroplaning the soul with a sudden blue hilarity?
If I get the story right, desire is continuous,
equatorial. There is still so much
I want to know: what you believe
can never be removed from us,
what you dreamed on Walnut Street
in the unanswerable dark of your childhood,
learning pleasure on your own.





Tell me our story: are we impetuous,
are we kind to each other, do we surrender
to what the mind cannot think past?
Where is the evidence I will learn
to be good at loving?
The black dog orbits the horseshoe pond
for treefrogs in their plangent emergencies.
There are violet hills,
there is the covenant of duskbirds.
The moon comes over the mountain
like a big peach, and I want to tell you
what I couldn’t say the night we rushed
North, how I love the seriousness of your fingers
and the way you go into yourself,
calling my half-name like a secret.
I stand between taproot and treespire.
Here is the compass rose
to help me live through this.
Here are twelve ways of knowing
what blooms even in the blindness
of such longing. Yellow oxeye,
viper’s bugloss with its set of pink arms
pleading do not forget me.
We hunger for eloquence.
We measure the isopleths.
I am visiting my life with reckless plenitude.
The air is fragrant with tiny strawberries.
Fireflies turn on their electric wills:
an effulgence. Let me come back
whole, let me remember how to touch you
before it is too late."





All photography by Laurie Coppedge


Fuck Pretty



+++ FUCK PRETTY Opening Reception +++
Actress Angela Featherstoneʼs first curated show, Fuck Pretty, is a collection of photographs by world-renowned and unknown women artists, whose work moves and inspires her. There are images from contemporary photographers Catherine Opie, Susan Meiselas, Tierney Gearon and equally important to the curator, an array of emerging artists, some of whose work the curator is proud to be showing for the very first time. The exhibit is accompanied by a musical score created by film composer Claudia Sarne (Book of Eli). The opening reception will be sponsored by Solomon Tournour, Co- producers of Rene Hand Crafted Alambic Rum and Svedka Vodka.
Artists: Anonymous, Sarah Baley, Sally Davies, Tierney Gearon, Sandy Gray, Naomi HarrisHana, JakrlovaSharon, Johnson-TennantSiri KaurGillian, LaubKristina, LoggiaLauren, Marsolier, Mary McCartney, Susan Meiselas, Catherine Opie, Alison Van Pelt, Cydney Puro, Marjorie Salvaterra, Jessica Shokria, Deanna Templeton
Exhibition: July 21, 2011 – August 20, 2011 Gallery Hours: 11-6, Tuesday – Saturday   RSVP: 310-315-9506

teenage phantasies


THE DAISY FOLLOWS SOFT THE SUN
by: Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
      HE daisy follows soft the sun,
      And when his golden walk is done,
      Sits shyly at his feet.
      He, waking, finds the flower near.
      "Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"
      "Because, sir, love is sweet!"
       
      We are the flower, Thou the sun!
      Forgive us, if as days decline,
      We nearer steal to Thee,--
      Enamoured of the parting west,
      The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
      Night's possibility!

                 ****************

      This is no daisy, I know but neither am I.
      Her bloom is velvet and her limbs made of artificial plastic.
      Seemed she still reached for the light regardless.


under the stars and power lines




Self Help
BY BRUCE COVEY
A chicken soup for the rainbow lover’s soul.
A chicken soup for the lover of chicken soup.
A carnage of birds, a devastation.
Chicken soup for the dried-up garden—
It’s been a lousy summer sucking us dry.
Chicken soup for the grocery list.
Chicken soup for unwanted potatoes.
Chicken soup for extinct animals.

In the west, the sun sets upon chicken soup.
With or without noodles or rice or barley,
Or vegetables—canned or otherwise—
Carrots and celery or egg drop chicken soup—
Chicken eggs, of course—or the alphabet
Or chili sauce. Chicken soup for chili lovers,
For the spicy soul. Chicken butchered
& boiled specifically for your cold.
A chicken soup for the cold soul,
A chicken soup for the sole of your shoe.

A chicken soup for decision making:
Does she love me?  Or love me not?
Knots tied with chicken soup.
Chicken soup tied and sold in knots.
38 ways to tie your soup, to be tied.
Chicken soup for the protection of others.

A prayer to chicken soup, may it bring me
A winning lottery ticket. Chicken soup
For recovering alcoholics who still
Need hydration. A hydrangea’s
Chicken soup—to be loved like no other.

A chicken soup for Barry Bonds—
May he break Hank Aaron’s record.
Stick a pin in the chicken soup & bet
On its opponent. 30-Love. Match point.
A chicken soup for winners.
A chicken soup for losers.
Chicken soup for those who tie or draw.
The 60-plus occupations of soup.
Chicken for Sue, born in the year
Of the snake. The snake that ate
An alligator and died. They both died.

A chicken soup for the one who is eaten.
A chicken soup for the one who eats
Things other than chicken soup.
Transcending the bowl. A meta-bowl
Chicken soup for the transcended bowl.
Chicken soup for the transcending soup.
Chicken soup for the Marxist, steering
Away from values associated with heirarchies.
Chicken soup for the mud wrestler,
The roller derby queen. Chicken soup
For dairy queen, for the queen of hearts,

For Lady Di and the paparazzi,
For clean and dirty kings and queens.
For kiwis with wings, for the royal
Food pyramid. Chicken soup in
January, it’s so nice
To slip upon the sliding ice.

releasing to the sound of keys

"A mountain keeps an echo deep inside. That's how I hold your voice." 
— Rumi



"It is a way of saying
I want to be left without words,
to lose without comment.

How long am I going to talk
about what no longer is.

About her, who no longer is
seeing me write about her.
And with those eyes!

I too open them at night
and look at the silence
in the dark
where the portrait ends
without her getting to see it

and I think
and I think
and I think

about things like you
that appear to have
no date of expiration,

about your wanting to get home:
with the key prepared,
clinging to the taxi door,
letting yourself fall through your door
almost with the unsteady will
of an autumn leaf,

this kind of expiration,

and these eyes to golden tending
the ones you said in descriptions
were green. To look
at every occasion with kindly eyes
that no longer look at me,
though I remember them.

And now
I want to be left
without words. To know how to lose
what is being lost..." 
*
"It was perfect pain:
speaking of her,
they spoke of themselves..."


Passages from a  Portrait Ended by Mirta Rosenburg.


© 1998, Mirta Rosenberg
From: El Arte de Perder
Publisher: Bajo La Luna Nueva, Buenos Aires, 1998
© Translation: 2008, Julie Wark

Almost

by Michelle Brea


"I was sentimental about many things: a woman’s shoes under the bed; one hairpin left behind on the dresser; the way they said, “I’m going to pee..”’ hair ribbons; walking down the boulevard with them at 1:30 in the afternoon, just two people walking together; the long nights of drinking and smoking; talking; the arguments; thinking of suicide; eating together and feeling good; the jokes; the laughter out of nowhere; feeling miracles in the air; being in a parked car together; comparing past loves at 3am; being told you snore; hearing her snore; mothers, daughters, sons, cats, dogs; sometimes death and sometimes divorce; but always carring on, always seeing it through; reading a newspaper alone in a sandwich joint and feeling nausea because she’s now married to a dentist with an I.Q. of 95; racetracks, parks, park picnics; even jails; her dull friends; your dull friends; your drinking, her dancing; your flirting, her flirting; her pills, your fucking on the side and her doing the same; sleeping together"
— Charles Bukowski (Women)

via Michelle Brea on Flickr

she was only a fraud


hiding behind her many devices
and
quite witchy after all


it's an unattractive trait this self loathing
one that should not
be put on
others
this much I know