“rung upon rung laddering
across the unspeakable world
[…]
while in the midst of horror
we fed on beauty—and that,
my love, is what sustained us.”
-Rita Dove, Transit.
AG2023_1140967a or rung upon rung laddering across
Category: landscape
AG2023_1056070a or whispered intelligence lurking in the leaves
A reworked element from the installation, Untitled (Sistrunk–in medias res. Unfurling the presence of Black life), 2020, shown in African-American Research Library and Cultural Center, 2650 Sistrunk Boulevard, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
And there was no voice in her head,
no whispered intelligence lurking
in the leaves—just an ache that grew
until she knew she’d already lost everything
except desire, the red heft of it
warming her outstretched palm.
Rita Dove, I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land
This is the place
AG2023_1130646a or we thought we will always be
A Bird came down the Walk—
He did not know I saw—
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw
-Emily Dickinson
we were sometimes troubled & tired,
sad for no reason,
& so pretended we were not birds
& fell like stones—
[…]
we told ourselves that this falling—
we would remember. We thought
we would always
be birds. We didn’t know.
-Joe Wilkins
AG2023_1130651a or follow them where they lead
“Above All things, we want freedom. Freedom to know Our own desires. We want to follow them where they lead.
[…]
Ebry day fishing day, but ebry day no fe catch fish. (Reward does not always follow labour.)
[…]
None but ourselves can free our minds. (Garvey via Marley)”
-Zadie Smith, Wife of Willesden
AG2023_1130665c or never fixed
rather a landscape shaped by or fixed about mutable objects, expansive and pliable conditions…
AG2023_1140394a or precise and rectilinear
“On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard
[…]
though here and there a weathered post asserts a former claim
[…]
What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected”
AG2023_1130603a or unkept by the present tense
“… Unkept
By the present tense, I was distant
In my watching,
An existence I too tendered stagily
As free.
[…]
the flowing virtue
Of verdant surfaces”