I am a rabid fan of “rotters,” or as more politely called on the BBC show In the Flesh, those with “Partially Deceased Syndrome.” In the Flesh is a show you must see, streaming everywhere—a deeply profound, witty, and ultimately deadly serious work of literary art and performance that takes on what life itself is […]
Metropolis: Scraps from Accra, Ghana
In Ghana, the air is thick with equatorial heat. Two seasons dominate the year: rainy and dry. I think of them as Wet Hot and Dust Hot. In Wet Hot, raindrops puncture the air so persistently that the holes they make in the grey sky seem permanent. Umbrellas are geometrically impractical, as the rain draws […]
from THE BETWEENS
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ In the early 90’s, at a massive flea market at the edge of Louisville, Kentucky, a woman from Jamaica looks over the wares. Someone says, Where are you from? She says, Dixie Highway and nothing else, doesn’t look up, just keeps checking out the antiques. She slides into that next […]
FOUR PAINTINGS BY AGNES MARTIN
EIGHT FISH UNDER WATER A very tricky enemy. Pride is a foreground-background illusion. We swim in it, but its waves flatten perspective. To make the shape of fish I must know fish. To know water as home, I make that shape as well. Hint of wave, imagined against a line, fin, a bell, […]
A Last Day in Oakland
Achtung called it and that would be the last word referring to algae in Albany Bulb inclementing, exponential tenaments — also clams, barnacles, soft bodies that dents soma response to soma. Miles away a man known as my boss eats Louisiana Clams. Pounds of clams scattering light. Magnet filings, roving static, infinitesimal masses on a […]
THE BARGE
I am living in a hotel because I argued with my husband. The argument started after a commercial for a robot that cares for the elderly. The ad tried to make it seem like the elderly couldn’t tell the difference, but these machines looked noth- ing like people. I turned to my husband and said, […]