Michiko Dead

He manages like somebody carrying a box
that is too heavy, first with his arms
underneath. When their strength gives out,
he moves the hands forward, hooking them
on the corners, pulling the weight against
his chest. He moves his thumbs slightly
when the fingers begin to tire, and it makes
different muscles take over. Afterward,
he carries it on his shoulder, until the blood
drains out of the arm that is stretched up
to steady the box and the arm goes numb. But now
the man can hold underneath again, so that
he can go on without ever putting the box down.

- Jack Gilbert

From Kelly Reichardt's "First Cow" (2020)

"I see something in this land I haven't seen before. Pretty much everywhere else has been touched by now. But this is still new.”

”It feels old to me.”

”Everything is old if you look at it that way. History isn't here yet. It's coming, but we got here early this time."

First Cow - Cow.jpg

For N:

New York City:
Shh, I know your troubles with Bastille Day,
ten days before my birthday.
We celebrate by burnt wine, meat,
illegal fireworks, high pigment lipstick
taxied ‘round Columbus Circle,
attach artifice, paint avenue,
bludgeon, blow open.
I can’t continue, with you.
I tirelessly fill casts shaped of your promenades,
beaks of West End highway crows, drips, drip,
they dazzle cold.
Blood and steam took conversation,
chose stolen scissors to
gnaw the quick of intention from
our bewilderment. I sculpt ash from dead
lightning bugs armed with machine guns
that pump you plump with
an afterthought of smolder.
Washington Square,
mouth your afterthought.
The dedicated gestation of
going down on a graveyard
are drowned in the fountain
of Lincoln Center, and its scent
of masticated raspberries
fill the bronze tub, an ocean,
an aggregate of washed-up syringe,
the hi-def zoom on an ex-seafoam pixel
and a sun-fucked version of wood.

- Jessica Scicchitano, first published in the “Corresponding Voices” Anthology

From Psalm 39

“…I was dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from good; and my sorrow was stirred.

My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned: then spake I with my tongue,

Lord, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is: that I may know how frail I am.

Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand-breadth; and mine age is as nothing before thee: verily every man at his best state is altogether vanity…”

- Psalm 39: 2-5

From Sappho

“There are those who say
an array of horsemen,
and others of marching men,
and others of ships, is
the most beautiful thing on the dark earth.

But I say it is whatever one loves.

It is very easy
to show this to all:
for Helen,
by far the most beautiful of mortals,
left her husband
and sailed to Troy
giving no thought at all
to her child nor dear parents,
but was led…
[by her love alone.]

Now, far away, Anactoria
comes to my mind.
For I would rather watch her
moving in her lovely way,
and see her face, flashing radiant,
than all the force of Lydian chariots,
and their infantry in full display of arms.”

- Sappho

C.S. Lewis on Time

"Our life comes to us moment by moment. One moment disappears before the next comes along: and there is room for very little in each. That is what Time is like. And of course you and I tend to take it for granted that this Time series--this arrangement of past, present, and future--is not simply the way life comes to us but the way all things really exist. We tend to assume that the whole universe and God himself are always moving on from past to future just as we do. But many learned men do not agree with that. Almost certainly God is not in Time. HIs life does not consist of moments following one another...

If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all around, contains the whole line, and sees it all." 

 - C.S. Lewis, from “Mere Christianity”

Photographs (clockwise from top left) by Dana Scruggs, Brian Palmer, Erik Carter, Jessica Pettway

The Call

Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life: Such a Way, as gives us breath: Such a Truth, as ends all strife: Such a Life, as killeth death. Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength: Such a Light, as shows a feast: Such a Feast, as mends in length: Such a Strength, as makes his guest. Come, my Joy, my Love, my Heart: Such a Joy, as none can move: Such a Love, as none can part: Such a Heart, as joyes in love. - George Herbert