tracing the aura of a continent
documentation of live performance
for Sine/Symbol New Media Arts Festival at MOCA Tucson
Tucson, Arizona
2025
*title from Claire Wahmanholm's Meltwater
--
Spring
September
With a belly like wet clay
stuck down heavy, I want to know with
my body the weight of
my offspring in pounds and
ounces and gravity and
how will it be to become centrifuge?
The little one slips in and
out of my future seeing
all the graves I’ve dug so far.
October
Raptor’s shadow cracks down over tiny
bodies all one now scattered–
thin skin and massive break, make
the same moral of each story.
The bobcat sinks their claws into my
spine hanging from my back furious,
confused.
Everything i fear will come to pass–
tomorrow
or the next day
or sometime after that.
I will listen
to what my friends sing into the air–
Herald, all at once,
O the end of every
thing
I’ve
ever
known.
Grief exalted to the highest beams,
to the star at the top of the altar,
pushing buttresses to crumble.
Turn it all over
once, twice, again–
with a shovel
or a spoon
look at each side until it is certain that you can see all, for sure, for real, there’s nothing you don’t see
'moving forward' (as they say) you won’t miss a trick.
Motor rips air–
every dog in the neighborhood knows the coyote walks,
beetle wings sound on a metal screen.
I will listen
as I lay in the empty tub shivering
with our dog
as the fireworks explode
and the guns pop off
and the fence posts are hammered
into the earth
dark moon hanging–
tell everyone.
November
Pressing the fuzzy flesh
of this little threenager - this love mouse;
the child has asked for a massage
(for he is the parrot on his mother’s aching shoulder)
knowing nothing, thank God, of bone-weariness
knowing nothing, thank God, of times so lonely
that touch arrives only upon request.
It’s true that his small muscles work hard
and that I care it’s just
that I want my own
so badly
that I’m afraid I’ll rip him apart
take a piece for myself.
As usual, my blood arrives–
reproachful clots of babylessness
chest tissue tenderizes sore and ripping
muscles twist and tear.
In every mirror I stick out my well-bloated belly pretending
it isn’t just another emptying; not-baby.
Clutching my lower back as if I were carrying the weight of life
instead of the low tide.
The paper ends of my tea twirl in the wind as I carry my biggest jar from the house to the car,
keep my aching womb warm as I live another day.
For if I’m not going to carry yet
I’m going to carry myself.
I am.
December
Swollen vessels
tiny cordyceps capped in orange;
a big year for mushrooms, it’s being said.
How impossible, every cup,
every color, shape, piece of the
way the land talks.
Be not frozen in thy
grief, gigantic doldrum
of grey and pale
splinters like hairs sticking
every which way even
when you can’t move they sting.
Crick crack out of the stillness
knees buckling, shins splinted
crusted eyes puffed like rice;
Begin, please, this way now
I can’t promise you much but I’ll
Be there too
January
Lift eyes towards heart;
future
extends in each direction, stretched
corners pushed full of
breaths taken together with
mouths full of lemon and herbs
Tell me again about how we wanted
all this
way before we asked for it;
I know,
and I still need a promise from you
to be gentle with my flesh,
flayed, and cracked skull.
Please hold my thumping cavern in
unshaking hand, please
fix my car and cabinets, please
give me more, please
Strings on both guitars slackening,
tuned to bloodstream,
here I know I might rest
soundless.
February
Two boys play together in love, our house fills with yelps and growls;
this is you, and this is me–
flames still in windless air.
In the world we know and
the one we don’t,
wet dirt, you tell me the plane
went down.
Smooth rocks carved
perfect smooth and
stacked rinds one
atop the other.
Silver dome over wheeling
cherubs, puffed light through
translucent down, nodes swollen
with water, sun breaks;
soft green below.
Families chitter on leafless branches;
yellow, the favorite color of my lover,
rare and piercing bright
furls out at the ends.
Which day do I take the trash out?
Which day do I listen for the horses?
This day, smoothed over like
all the rest.
March
It is absolutely right, that we may
scorch our voices so,
and, together, close all eyes
so that we might hear the poems better.
It, too, is absolutely right
that the tables should be laden
with flowers at every spring birthday.
April
I saw the place
in the woods
where someone caught or killed a bird,
feathers everywhere
but only everywhere in this one little spot.
Everywhere else looked like the woods always looks–
full of life, and death, but smaller and bigger than a bird.
May
It is spring again and I
am what grows inside.
Small and new, unshy,
kinetic
hair curling humidly:
only this day could bring itself forward with such lightness;
glands sore and begging,
I say thank you.