EXPOSURE

Last month I stayed with Targa,

he lived up steep hill with 3 flights of stairs

Nights there I would be all engine

Steam pushing up a hill

2am I would open the door,

pulling on hair so quiet but Targa

is an 86 year old crow who knows

exact sound of footsteps walking up the marble hallway.

He was born here and will die here too.

I reach the last step and at this point I'm gulping.

From the other room his voice

why are you so out of breath.

I try and tell him I run up the hill

run as fast as I can home dancing

but he's already not listening

so I pear the corner to see him

watching a tennis game ball chasing the court, not the other way around.

It's an important tournament he says, first Italian he says.

But the game goes on commercial so he starts flipping through channels.

Thumb firm on the button the pixels move in and out of focus

like rushing water,

all rushing to form the next.

It's images of red blocks, all waxed

neatly laid out to rest with gulping short bursts of cries,

The sound of nearby shells breaking homes.

I’m thinking how could we let this existence get

so far away from us.

He tells me I’m too young to be out of breath

I tell him a young heart wants it all,

but he tells me a young heart will never get it.

The question I am left with is the question of loneliness.

But I prefer to put it off at least till morning.

Till my head is clear enough to walk

straight into the wind.

But I know one way to put off loneliness is to interpose God.

Targa had a relationship on this level with someone he called [Allegra ].

When I settled into bed through the door I could hear him,

not even whispering, talking about his day.

This call-out conversation consisted mostly of talking about my loneliness.

He would say one goose does not change a flock,

and I wondered if [Allegra] ever responded.

On my last night there I stumbled through an introduction

to ask her,

how to shake the trees out and I was met with silence.

KITCHEN

When I am feeling

at my most incompetent

as I do in my apartment

many a dark morning

walking into the wind

I try to conjure in my mind

something that is the opposite of

incompetence.

For example an egg.

This perfect form

Perfect content.

Perfect food.

When I came home after Targa

I would buy a dozen of eggs

but not for digestion.

I'd pick out the eggs and lay them on my kitchen floor

then blindfold myself

and take 3 steps towards the scattering.

Excitement forms best when movements are

dropped down to zero.

So my feet walk like this, tracing the floor

feeling the faults of tile to tile,

brushing up the compression which makes an egg.

I am hoping for everything but the sound of it cracking

or more maybe I'm hoping to catch the exact moment before it does

decisive moments are a long stroll like that.

before the water drops

before the cloud absorbs it all

before the light turns on

Targa would have never approved of this exercise

for him, everything needed to be rationed,

by 10 day increments.

His food in the fridge by

3 course meals, all planned in changing order.

The cycle would begin with the first meal he cooked for lunch.

Save leftovers then he would cook dinner.

The following morning he would take a portion of lunch and

incorporate with eggs. Take a portion of dinner and

incorporate with lunch and so on.

[He didn’t believe in eating the same food twice]

[= LIGHT?]

Before moving here I was living down south.

Down there there is a shedding amount of light,

On most days the sun would rise and not set until 8.

Then the streetlights would come on

parking lights

porch light

flood light

all pooling

Light knows want like a ditch knows water.

Mornings I would wake the sun already fast into the sky,

and I would be meticulously hitting every light switch.

Turning all the black knobs.

If there’s a dim corner I would buy a new lamp

I wanted to be seen from every angle.

My attempt to shoulder [off] the feeling of

a dimly lit life.

[Or heartbreak]

From brightness patches of me

would get exposed onto the wall.

I came to understand these as exposures of soul

I called them reclining nudes.

In expose #1. Woman posed by the rock.

She stands into the wind.

It’s a hard wind and slanting from the north.

She is surrounded by other women

They are trying to untie her arms

but her skin is glowing so brightly

they can’t see in front of them.

Long flaps of hair rip off the woman’s body

and blow away in the wind, leaving

and exposed white column.

Im not a melodramatic person,

so instead of recording them,

I let the exposure wash away into the wall

and focus my attention on horses running up a track.

Why do we feel the constant need to record this

slippery activity?

The soul wants what the soul wants.

Everyday I am just trying to feel alive. So I leave

the lights on,

all day.

As the light meter counts up and up

I get in the car and drive down to watch the horse races.

The first person who brought me here

was Nancy. Before they banned greyhound racing

she would mostly bet on dogs,

but now says horses give the same feeling.

Somethings you can do alone.

Down on the track are the perfect contained

pockets of storm,

hoofs pressing down the earth.

They would race alone, and win alone.

I placed most bets on [Famous Thunder.]

Walked down to the pit before every start and tie a scarf

around her reins. Feeling loneliness second

her chair sized heart.

Pumping gallons of blood for chasing after the storm

for being alive, and told to run around this track

and don’t let loneliness settle.

She wouldn’t win most times,

and I would lose 20$ but it became

a necessary exercise in hope

Soul is this place.

stretched like a surface of millstone grit between body and mind,

where such necessity grinds itself out.

Soul as the apartment.

Down south, where light gets in and stays.

CLINNING

Last time I went to bet on Capture

she was pregnant.

Before the race, they took her on the track,

A good walking out.

she is slow this time,

and completely alone.

I can see loneliness shrouding her like light.

She would pump 64 gallons of blood

as she closed the distance between hoof and dirt,

that was before the upside-down inside her stomach

I am so stunned so sad to think how could they have let it happen.

There was no area of my mind

not appalled by this action, but no part of my body

that could have done it otherwise.

but to talk of mind and body begs the question.

Soul is this place,

stretched like a surface of millstone grit between body and mind,

where such necessity grinds itself out.

Soul as this chair,

where I can sit and grind down

[ ]

Tears running down my eyes.

Nancy must have noticed,

because she turned to me,

and in a motherly voice

one hand blocking the sun

said, you know sometime ago 

they would bury the fallen racehorse right on the track,

if it tripped from exhaustion let's say.

then some time later it would just be the heart.

too much earth to move they say.

I am angry at the thought of her not able to race again and the sun shines even brighter.

Another piece of me gets exposed right onto the track.

Exposure #2. Transparent ditch. 

A woman has dug out a long deep trench.

Into the trench she is placing small white forms, I don’t know what they are.

To think of all we do under this here light.

Feel loneliness in presence of a fat heart

even after it pumps just enough,

Enough for us to feel good and right about our existence.

Chipping away at the synchronicities

that come crashing on our stupid heads when we least need it

or expect it too.

Like all the flashing street lights, sounding off their own rhythm,

saying yes the world is cruel, yes our wounds are faults

stretching up and up.

but at its edge, there is this light.

You just have to

you just have to

you just have to

And I am scared of holding on to what the next day might unfold.

Because somedays we live out to wake near lovers,

drink the southern light. Bet on horses.

Praise thee red light

praise dirt roads,

praise driving down south

praise open pasture

praise change

praise by trying

praise by trying to make it better here if not for us than us

We pray to our own god, mine is running the track

heavy girl heart,

horse’s luck.

But inside, especially a dark morning when the world steadies enough to hear the cries

Exposure #3. arrives when I least expect it.

Just like the first, there is a bend of wind.

On a hillside a mass of red wax is pushing its way through a doorway,

but as I came closer

I see it as a human body

trying to squeeze itself through.

And the wax is peeling off buckets full flopping over past the doorway

Not a body of myself, or a woman, but the body of us all.

Here for however long we hold onto the light

we bear witness to it all,

we capture light

to prove that she still exists

that he still exists that we still exist that they

still exists that I still exist that the day still

exists that the night will end that the fire

[will go out and you’ll light it again]

goes out and you light it again