Category: language

  • AG2024_1133993a

    AG2024_1133993a

    Acts of Self-Erasure, Anahid Nersessian. December 13, 2024. A new exhibition of the conceptual artist Christine Kozlov shows how she worked by concealing her own tracks.

  • AG2024_1134192a and the game of finding meaning in coincidence

    AG2024_1134192a

    Hello to the era of going to the store to buy more ice
    because we are running out.
    Hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced.
    Hello to the nonfunctional sprig of parsley
    and the game of finding meaning in coincidence.

    Cassette County, David Berman

  • AG2024_1134189a or in  many a poem about green

    AG2024_1134189a

    Lawns  and  fields  and  hills  and  wide  old   velvet
    sleeves, green things.  They stretch, fold, roll away,
    unfurl  and  calm the  eye.  Look  lush  in paintings.
    Battles are fought on greens.  Or  you could spread
    a meal  and  sup.  How  secretly  they  lie,  floors  of
    distant forests.  Next  comes  the grave,  in  many a
    poem about green. But this is not a poem. This is a
    billboard for frozen green peas.  Frozen green peas
    are good for pain.

    Short Talk on Pain, Anne Carson

  • another world just waiting

    studio window

    This is my first memory:
    A big room with heavy wooden tables that sat on a creaky
           wood floor
    A line of green shades—bankers’ lights—down the center
    Heavy oak chairs that were too low or maybe I was simply
           too short
                  For me to sit in and read
    So my first book was always big
    
    In the foyer up four steps a semi-circle desk presided
    To the left side the card catalogue
    On the right newspapers draped over what looked like
           a quilt rack
    Magazines face out from the wall
    
    The welcoming smile of my librarian
    The anticipation in my heart
    All those books—another world—just waiting
    At my fingertips.

    My First Memory (of Librarians), Nikki Giovanni

  • Our hierarchies

    https://armchairarchivist.tumblr.com/post/756839370330390528/ana-mendieta-photo

    … our spatial and temporal arrangements, our hierarchies of value and distributions of wealth—our forms. (Caroline Levine)


    Venus Williams & Faith Ringgold
    Venus Williams & Faith Ringgold, PAMM, 2014.
  • AG2021_2030239aa or we take what we can

    AG2021_2030239aa

    For Cheryl Boyce-Taylor and her Malik, our Phife

    & I immediately think of Cheryl, her Malik, his beloved
    obsession with the team’s orange & blue, a sunset sky over

    this city. The ruckus of these players’ sweet grit, the desire they
    have to come in first. They rebound & strip like stickup

    kids. They pound the paint as if their feet were wrapped in
    Timbs, their lean torsos tattered & tapered in Coogi sweaters.

    This is New York. Bodega filled with the aroma of a good
    chopped cheese. Ambitions racing through our minds fast as

    the 2 train during rush hour. I watch the reverie on TV, as
    the Garden thrashes & quakes by the tectonic plate of our

    steadfast fandom. Don’t get it twisted, capitalism is dying

    & yet here I am rooting for boys bred to burn out their bodies
    to make billionaires more billions. Was this what Rome felt like

    toward the end? When the colosseums filled with gladiators
    stirred the masses into a frenzy. How the people hungered for

    food & freedom, but instead lost themselves in the carnal play
    of sacrifice—reliable warriors, safer to believe in than

    Caesar. No matter, I think Phife would’ve loved this team,
    unflappable & carefree, anti-establishment, uncompromising.

    What happens to the heart of a city when its people survive
    on air; that space between the flick of the wrist & the swish

    of a three-point buzzer beater? We fight for a win to fill
    the ache of losing: Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Ayiti. We take

    what we can, celebrate small victories until we win everything
    we thought we never could—

    As Capitalism Gasps for Breath I Watch the Knicks Game, Yesenia Montilla

  • 120624 or everything they say

    PXL_20241206_212523537

    Everything they say and write is a lie,
    about law and freedom, about equality
    and justice, in the rubble of the bombs
    we make and sell, in the silent cries
    of limbless orphans, in the night
    lit by white phosphorous and the
    relentless sound of buzzing drones.

    My Apologies, Ammiel Alcalay

  • 120424 or a splash quite unnoticed this was

    PXL_20241204_191704664~2

    unsignificantly
    off the coast
    there was

    a splash quite unnoticed
    this was

    Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, William Carlos Williams