You've got to dig to dig it, you dig?
Mz N and her siblings
had a dog for some time.
They went on vacation &
when they came back
no dog.
They asked the parents:
the dog?
who replied:
what dog?
And some people wonder
why others distrust the obvious.
[…]
the blackest black
is not so black
it cannot take
a blacker black
so Mz N thinks
…
From Mz N: the serial, Maureen McLane
What I’m looking for
is an unmarked door
we’ll walk through
and there: whatever
we’d wished for
beyond the door.
What I’m looking for
is a golden bowl
carefully repaired
a complete world sealed
along cracked lines.
What I’m looking for
may not be there.
What you’re looking for
may or may not
be me. I’m listening for
the return of that sound
I heard in the woods
just now, that silvery sound
that seemed to call
not only to me.
What I’m Looking For, Maureen N. McLane
They were not kidding
when they said they were blinded
by a vision of love.
It was not just a manner
of speaking or feeling
though it’s hard to say
how the dead
really felt harder
even than knowing the living.
You are so opaque
to me your brief moments
of apparent transparency
seem fraudulent windows
in a Brutalist structure
everyone admires.
The effort your life
requires exhausts me.
I am not kidding.
They Were Not Kidding in the Fourteenth Century, Maureen N. McLane
What aren’t you willing to believe. A heart
graffitied fuchsia on the street, a missive from another life.
Remember the stem of lavender you found
in a used copy of Bishop’s poems, a verse underlined:
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. Suddenly, across the aisle
a woman with your mother’s bracelets, her left wrist
all shimmer and gold, you almost winced.
Coincidence is the great mystery of the human mind
but so is the trans-oceanic reach of Shah Rukh Khan’s
slow blink. Each of us wants a hint, a song
that dares us to look inside. True, it takes whimsy
and ego to believe the universe will tap your shoulder
in the middle of a random afternoon. That t-shirt
on a stranger’s chest, a bumper sticker on the highway upstate.
Truth isn’t going anywhere. It’s your eyes passing by.
Sign, Sahar Romani
Text. Physiologie du flâneur / par M. Louis Huart; vignettes de MM. Alophe, Daumier et Maurisset, 1841. internetactu.blog.lemonde.fr, 2012.
Aria Dean argues the difficulty of black flânerie. But wandering may be utopian at levels beyond the utility. Its privilege may be, as des “gestes” artistiques, in the sphere of thought, language, and geography. A privilege that leans on a poetic, une poétique de la Relation : “l’imaginaire de mon lieu est relié à la réalité imaginaire des lieux du monde, et tout inversement.” (Édouard Glissant, Discours Antillais au Tout Monde)
Black Doves, 2024. Netflix.
Raye, Bang Bang. Not release yet. A snippet is below.
Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down), 1966.
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.
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
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