Cantrip and Loveletter

I’ve started putting together images for the new body of work, Cantrips and Loveletter, trying to mix raw images into something meaningful. At the moment it does feel a bit like hitting one’s head against the wall until something good or lovely or right bleeds out.

And like that, thoughts of creating a more lighthearted body of work than the last have gone by the wayside. So much so that I am happy to be heading to northern Washington later in the month for some fresh air, a campfire, quality time with meter and verse, and some night sky photography. And a better mood.

But it’s a beginning…

Begin

Nos conocimos ayer, nos besamos hoy, y nos casamos manana.
-unknown schizophenia patient

i.

a smooth hand to
smooth skin
spine, jaw, ribcage, navel
and so am I to you,
blind fingerprints hunting
undiscovered territory
in a black atmosphere,
a hollowness hallowed
by the room, full of breath
filled by the unseen;
something like God
and heavily palpable,
like an orange in the hand,
a flinching kiss, an ache.

ii.

snakes of hands
I will live in these textures
for a terminal always
for possession is as possession finds
and we are all conquered territory;
hands as snakes
my justice and mercy,
mine
but it is you crept beneath my skin
yours, made of parasite promise
levering dominance, submission,
justice and mercy with no calling
there is no you, I, or end-
only a monologue for the sleeping.

iii.

are you dead yet, or gone?
the door has become important,
opening in my imagination,
closing
for a future too soft,
too shifting
I do not know the bonds
and limits
of trust-
no scripture of safety
and surely
this is the nature of faith
a variable, a farce, a heart
crumpled and rolled in your direction.