Ekphrastic Poetry

Instructions for Remembering

After Bibiana Suarez's Memoria(Memory), 2005-2011, 108 alumalite panels

This starts on the urgent wing of an endangered bird; language isan experiment we perform on ourselves; sound this out—

            flip bone, swap            card, trace vein,            strike organ, mine            first, start again

—spear these wordswith your eyes; let us cloak ourselvesin gold; we'll recognizeour skin from the outside.

How to Teach Lack

After Candida Alvarez's Wonky, 2014, Flashe on canvas and artist tape

Candida Alvarez, Wonky, 2014. Flashe paint and tape on canvas. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Tom Van Eynde.

Leave it Open

After Edra Soto's GRAFT, 2013, Site-specific installation/wood structure

Edra Soto, GRAFT at Terrain, 2013. Architectural intervention. Courtesy of the artist.

Translation

After María Gaspar's Almost True, 2011, Plastic, thread, steel armature, fans, air

What is this roomI'm always in? This languageI'm almost translating? Where is the windowand who holds it shut? I want to see a new kind of light,where is the light in my house? What is almost trueabout this story is that someone is telling it.An ode to life, or waste, or thingswe touch. Three cyclopseswith throats for eyeballs glaringat us, filling the room with their cool sentenceIf I made a pile of everything I will throw out in my lifetimeand put it in one room, I'd be buried blind,howling for air, and not much would change.

María Gaspar, Almost True (durational sculpture inflated and deflated every two minutes), 2011. Plastic, thread, steel armature, fans, air 20 x 12 x 5 ft. Courtesy of the artist.

Revisited

After Silvia Malagrino's Burnt Oranges, 2005, Film still

Orange is the color of waiting. Cloaked street lamp, flesh-ripped pavement, boiling            breath. The stain and pucker of burning. Foot soldiers march in circles, a silent petition

to forget the color orange. Forget the dark. Left is only forensic sunlight, bodiesawakening under a blood lamp. Paint clear the faces, make impermanent the boxes,and put them in.                        Nothing could be more illuminated. Forget it. A line sets, paper dries,                                                and the ghastly instant never ends.

Silvia Malagrino, Mom with Match. Burnt Oranges film still, 2005. Courtesy of the artist.

Searchlight

After Elsa Muñoz's Drifting Sun, 2010, Oil on panel

The pink moon of a face pulses urgent as shadows wait. It's as simple as this:an ear is a pool of light that drowns out lonely meaning. Listen backfor vein or blood.

                        Tug back the hair long as a fence that grows in the light. The other side

of her waiting mind. I'd tell you, don't waitto go into the light. Remember,

this is simple. Golden the branches,            the innocent bars, the slapped wood, the heaving cheek, the not-unseeable blackness. This

shimmering pain, this circulatory growing will always find you.

Elsa Muñoz, Drifting Sun/Sol a la deriva, 2010. Oil on masonite panel 25 ⅜ x 37 ⅜ in. National Museum of Mexican Art Permanent Collection, Gift of the artist. Photo by Michael Tropea. Digital image courtesy of the National Museum of Mexican Art and the artist.