You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
Tamora’s baby came out Black, you say? Damn. The more
I hear of Aaron the Moor, the more I think: don’t that be jazz?
A note above ~ A note below ~ The note between ~
The tonic ~ Enclosed ~ Pivoted up ~ Octave ~ That be jazz.
Oh, if the bard could be Black! Her stride would be royal, jeweled toes?…?
your ideas must speak. Aaron and more. Till’s name still rises! That be jazz.
Such Sweet Thunder, A. Van Jordan
up into the silence the green
silence with a white earth in it
you will (kiss me) go
out into the morning the young
mourning with a young world in it
(kiss me) you will go
on into the sunlight the fine
sunlight with a firm day in it
you will go (kiss me
down into your memory and
a memory and memory
i) kiss me (will go)
[…]
But on this day
we sit in that room and play cards together
while I slip my papers in the half-moon tray
and take a number, wait for someone
behind the bulletproof glass to say
take another. And I feel only love.
I don’t remember the fear of that year,
or the fear of the years that hover
before and after. I remember
the windowless room and, outside,
Beforetimes, Margot Kahn
illusions were frail and had to be kept intact.
houses that included soil and rosebushes
the atmosphere is one of displacement, of erroneous celebration.
Good Girl, Aria Aber
Flattery, deference, smiles, ringing laughter, affectionate greetings were the order of the day.
the quality of their unjudging listening, granted tacit forgiveness,
a soldierly fixity of mind
a series of spastic clumsy gymnastic movements that were somehow accusatory,
He came out of nothingness, took form, was loved, was always bound to return to nothingness.
(GS)
Zura Lagarde, The Silent Pulse Beneath Still Stone, Artmedia Gallery, April 25 – July 30, 2025.
“I perceive the spaces where time flickers—where déjà vu hums like a distant echo, where a breath feels borrowed from another life.”
Untitled (Diurnal respite on the Matanzas; inventing forms of escape; spend the good days readying for it.) 2020. Archival pigment print, 60 x 40 inches. Shown in Wander and Errancies at CEAM, 2020.
spend the good days readying for it might need an edit. It might refer to something that I noted; I will have to check. Spent good days readying for it. Spent the goods readying for it. Spent the good part of a day. Spent the better part of a day. Spent the good part of many days readying for it. Spent days readying for it. Spend days readying for it.
Only instruction. Not a dwelling.
Or if you must dwell:
The sweet smell of weeds then.
The sweet smell of weeds now.
An endurance. A standoff. A rest.
Weeds, Diane Seuss
Richard Wright, Camden Art Center.
Charline von Heyl, Petzel, New York, 2018. Poetry Machine #1.
Ruth Asawa: Retrospective, SFMOMA, an installation view.
The 30 best nonfiction books of the last 30 years, LATimes. Fiction.
