Poetic Responses: Fay Ray's "I Am The House" @ Shulamit Nazarian In Los Angeles

May 7, 2018

text by Claressinka Anderson

Hanging a cross around my neck,
I press my naked body against the X
of a window frame, place between my legs
the harvested corn from your garden,
remember the women before me,
this kitchen, their feet
stoic on unstable ground.

Their eyes sliced open—

an eye for an eye

for an egg.

Chain and hook my body,
tether it to the walls,
to the bed where I sleep &

dream of tiny hands,
of a body that doesn’t know birth,
a mouth that eats pearls for breakfast—
tiny iridescent moons
that deliver calcium for a skeleton.

I lick the surface of a shell,
place my tongue at the edge of its
salt smooth pink

And in that shell I do not hear the sea,
but the quiet desert, full of sand and stars.

III

Tonight for dinner there is corn,
kernels of metallic memories,
they float into a wonder of sky
where light itself is a wormhole
gobbling confessions—

secrets in an attic full of mercy,
concealed by a pull down staircase.
I place my foot on its tender rungs,
scale each ligament one by one,
all the way up
to drink with the moon—

I am, I whisper,

I am

I am.

Poetic Responses: Friedrich Kunath @ Blum & Poe

October 5, 2017

text by Claressinka Anderson

You write my thoughts on the sea,
through a door filled with black rainbows—

I chase them across the waves,
grasping for their curved,
downy arms.

Arms that cup my face and
pull me down on a bed
of memories, weaving
their tales of longing with
painted fingers—

they place their hands
in melancholy pockets.

What is the smell of regret?
A little like salt and aniseed,
a little like Heathcliff sailing
on a Turner sea—

He follows regret
to the cliffs of Big Sur,
where Casper’s Wanderer waits
above the Sea of Fog,
an amethyst Buddha at his feet.

Together, they sit and cry on a shrine
of forgotten sentences—
in their tears the shape of a
country, no longer theirs.

They watch the clouds pass through time—
a white head of curls
glowing through a dazzling sky.

Somewhere, on the shores of Venice, California,
Hamlet still longs for Ophelia.

Searching for a history that doesn't exist,
I play the piano to my shadow
until we both disappear.

Slipping into sheets of paint,
I look for my past and hold it close,
entwine my legs with its awkward shape.
In a large bed, loneliness can be so seductive.

Dressed up for the masquerade,
dashing in your velvet suit,
everyone wants to dance only with you—

I give you my hand
but you are already goodbye.
There is always something to leave behind,
and tonight, you leave a sock for me.

Sunshine doesn’t belong in a jar of secrets,
in your world, everyone cries and laughs
at their own absurdity—
we are forced to love our fate,
sugar cones & sun rays, doorways & letters,
words hiding in a cloud.

When I left, you asked if you could come too.

And in that blackness there is only feeling,
in that blackness, only dust.