well that’s my heart. it’s calling out your name

Wolfgang Tillmans

Schneckenstilleben, 2004

maybe we’re just too proud to say it out loud

His case inspires interest
But little sympathy; it is smaller
Than at first appeared. Does the first nettle
Make any difference as what grows
Becomes a skit? Three sides enclosed,
The fourth open to a wash of the weather,
Exits and entrances, gestures theatrically meant
To punctuate like doubled-over weeds as
The garden fills up with snow?
Ah, but this would have been another, quite other
Entertainment, not the metallic taste
In my mouth as I look away, density black as gunpowder
In the angles where the grass writing goes on,
Rose-red in unexpected places like the pressure
Of fingers on a book suddenly snapped shut.

Those tangled versions of the truth are
Combed out, the snarls ripped out
And spread around. Behind the mask
Is still a continental appreciation
Of what is fine, rarely appears and when it does is already
Dying on the breeze that brought it to the threshold
Of speech. The story worn out from telling.
All diaries are alike, clear and cold, with
The outlook for the continued cold. They are placed
Horizontal, parallel to the earth,
Like the unencumbering dead. Just time to reread this
And the past slips through your fingers, wishing you were
there.

-A MAN OF WORDS, John Ashbery

you got your good things and you got mine

the drum also waltzes

The most beautiful Max Roach playing a drum waltz.

i only hope he’ll stay that way

i wanted you for that mouth

Dan Peterman

Excerpt from the Universal Lab (nuclides, etc.), 2002

every little thing anticipates you

january of 1988 on tinton avenue. i took these pictures of my mom and of my dad.

let your children crawl all over me

David Altmejd

Man I, 2007

i have these hands beating with love for you. and you’re not here to touch

Edvard Munch


Ashes, 1894

i could run if there wasn’t a chance

Louise Bourgeois

Glass Object, 2004