September 13, 2021

An individual records the sound of tectonic plates scrambling eastward at 0.6 miles. That individual then pulls out the horizontal threads on the scarf worn by a horse that won a quarter mile race and places it upon a tape player buried beneath a pile of salt.

Untitled (Speaking of Win)

2021

Tape Player, Tape, Magnets, Salt evaporated from the Florida coastline, scarf, 5 watt light

PRE EXPOSURE MM3FLOURENCE

Last month I stayed with Targa,

Florence,

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 80 year old crow who knows the

exact sound of footsteps walking up the marble hallway.

He was born here and will die here too.

Some places will remain like that.

I reach the last step and I am gulping

From the other room his voice

Sharp as ever, 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.

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 moving in and out of focus

like rushing water,.

Everything rushing to form the next.

Toothpaste commercials spill into viagra into car insurance,

The size of the pixel rarely matters when aligned to from the next.

Commercial flipping into the news.

Now its all images of red blocks, all waxed

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

The sound of war nearby. Shells breaking homes.

How could we let this existence get so far away from us.

You are too young to be out of breath, his voice cutting in through the infomercials.

Still gulping I am trying to say back a young heart wants it all,

But fail to translate young from present.

He answers, a young heart will never get it.

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

Night after night, not even whispering, talking about his day.

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

One goose does not change a flock, he’d say about me being an American.

and I wondered if he ever gets a response.

On my last night there I stumbled through an introduction.

In the dark telling her my name and being met with silence.

I am mostly curious on the placement of loneliness.

How do birds shake the trees that weeps for barring centuries of witness?

BUILD AN ENTIRE CITY IN RIDER TO MAKE LOVE THERE WITH ONLY ONE GIRL FOR A NIGHT

Targa’s kitchen is neatly laid out,

Five different kinds of salt, a wash basin to prevent running water,

The proper way to do it all.

My American life back home is the complete opposite.

When I am feeling at my most incompetent

as I do in my apartment

many a dark morning

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.

This country is best measured on Excitement.

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.

LIGHT LIKE A DITCH LET ME FALLINTO

Ive known the American south the most.

Living there you’d discover 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.

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

Heartbreak, this American life.

If I couldn’t find it I would create the brightness around me.

From all the light 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

As 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.

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 PROBLEM OF ARCHITECTURE IS NOT THAT OF BEING SEEN FROM WITHOUT OR THAT OF LIVING WITHIN

The first person who brought me here

was Nancy. Before they banned greyhound racing

she would mostly bet on dogs.

Now she says horses give the same feeling.

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 Capture

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

around her reins. Feeling loneliness second

her chair sized heart first.

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.

Hope is this place,

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

where such necessity grinds itself out.

Last time I went to bet on Famous 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 belly.

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.

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’d 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

Eroding out and out.

But at its edge, there is this light,

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 guns and what we hang on the trigger guard

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.

That it will go out and you will light it again.