Litro Experimental Issue: Pushing Boundaries in Art and Storytelling

ISSUE 182 ISSUE 182

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THE BOOK FIGHT M I L E N A’ S W E D D I N G PA R E N T H E T I C A L EMERGING ARTISTS

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CONTENTS

L E A R N TO D R AW, PA I N T & S C U L P T 4

ISSUE 182

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EDITOR’S LETTER

CONTRIBUTORS THE BOOK FIGHT Chihoi

• Drawing Year 10 STORYTELLING: THE • Four Year Core Program GLOBAL RABBITHOLE • Online Studies Alison Norrington • Summer Workshops

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THE UNEXPECTED PAYOFF OF POETRY LA Marks

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THREE PROSE POEMS Jose Hernandez Diaz

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MILENA’S WEDDING Adrienne Kennedy

Dale Zinkowski

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The Grand Central Atelier is dedicated to the rigorous study of the arts of drawing, painting and sculpture in the classical tradition. Founded

by Jacob Collins, the GCA is built upon the pillars of working from life, intense observation and analysis, and dedication to craft.

AN IMBALANCE OF PINEAPPLE, IN ONE ACT Kim Brockett Stammen

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CHAVISA WOODS Interviewed by Regie Cabico

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Lucas Bononi

WHERE ART THOU HEART: VISUAL LANGUAGE LOST ON DEAF EYES

Excerpt from The Book Fight by Chihoi, continued on page 8

Jeremy Caniglia

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ARTIST SPOTLIGHT Erika Keck

42 Lourdes Maria Ong

Fianait Maye

LITRO’S INAUGURAL EMERGING ART SECTION

Noelle Gunsay

ARG GRANDCENTRALATELIER.ORG

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@GRANDCENTRALATELIER

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PARENTHETICAL Charlie Kite

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EDITOR'S LETTER

A ROGUE CURE Rae Diamond

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POETRY TRYPTIC Urayoán Noel

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Q+A Cathy Linh Che

ON THE COVER

Jeremy Caniglia is an American figurative painter and illustrator, primarily in fantasy and horror genres. His work is in several important public collections including the Joslyn Art Museum and Iowa State University.

Editor-in-Chief & Art Director Eric Akoto eric.akoto@litrousa.com Managing Editor Annikka Olsen annikka.olsen@litrousa.com Assistant Editor Drew Pisarra drew.pisarra@litrousa.com Online Editor online@litrousa.com Advertising sales@litrousa.com Cover Image Jeremy Caniglia General Inquiries info@litrousa.com Subscription Inquiries subscriptions@litrousa.com All other inquiries info@litrousa.com Address 33 Irving Place, New York, NY 10003 USA © Litro Media 2022 ISSN 2687-735x Newsstand distribution www.magazineheavendirect.com

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was 14 when I first laid my hands on a chemistry set. It wasn’t mine entirely, mind you. I shared the kit with my lab partner, a London transplant recently from India with whom I’d been paired, simply because my last name began with “A” and his with “B.” Instant mates thanks to the alphabet, we bonded in our compulsory science class via experiments inspired by this newfound kit. The chemistry set, a smart-looking wooden box, came with a test tube rack and niches to store vials of powerful powders as well as a little packet of litmus paper, a knobbed glass rod, and a thick textbook intended to serve as our manual and guide. I don’t recall that book’s title or whether I ever cracked open its spine, frankly. What I do remember are a metal looped device for suspending the test tube over an open flame, a conversion table (translating ounces into spoons) and

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my favorite component: the poison labels. We were living life on the edge!

Kid “B” was studious, attentive at lectures, and measured ingredients exactingly while Kid “A” dreamt about the potential outcomes of that Pandora’s box of stink bombs, toxins, and disappearing inks. For the next four years, each class was a true “experiment” for the two of us. For while I slopped about, blending sundry tinctures, grounding up crystals, and concocting smells that distressed most of our class, he never undermined the fun even as he ensured we met the demands of that week’s lesson. To me, that’s always been what experimentation should be about: a rebellious mix of pleasure and persnicketiness in search of something new, unexpected, unknown.

Which isn’t to say that experimentation doesn’t have a serious side to it, too: An article published at the

beginning of 2022 in the New York Times cites the remarkably roundabout discovery of one mRNA vaccine. That all-too-true tale was set in a lab in Bethesda, Md., where scientists were combatting a deadly coronavirus which “had jumped from camels to humans in the Middle East – killing 1 out of every 3 people infected.”

World-renowned virologist Dr. Barney Graham’s quest for a vaccine had proven largely unsuccessful, when suddenly, the stakes went up dramatically as one of his cohorts appeared to have come down with the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome under study. An initial nose swab’s tentative verification was followed by a second test that revealed Graham’s ailing colleague was suffering, not from MERS, but from a related yet milder if still serious variation more akin to a flu bug on steroids.

For reasons not so easily classified (gut instinct? a feeling? intuition?), Graham chose to focus on this other virus. And that decision unexpectedly resulted in an mRNA vaccine that’s saved countless lives from being Covid-19 fatalities worldwide.

It’s a strange reminder how default hierarchies often limit the potential of any given piece of work… be it in the arts or in the sciences. Stepping outside what’s expected is exactly what leads us to unexpected rewards. Not to sound grand, but that’s exactly what we’ve aimed to do in the current issue. Herein you’ll find example after example of writers, artists, essayists who have disregarded standardized marching orders in search of a truth outside the boundary of convention. And they’ve done so without ever feeling academic.

How many times have you read that pop culture is making us dumber, crasser, more immature. At Slate, Ruth Graham skewered YA fiction as “escapism, instant gratification and nostalgia,” while scolding the non-children who read it: “Fellow grown-ups, at the risk of sounding snobbish and joyless and old, we are better than this.” New York Times critic A.O. Scott, for his part, proclaimed the rise of YA lit was symptomatic of the impending “death of adulthood.” Meanwhile, over at the New Republic, William Giraldi declared the very adult 50 Shades of Grey as a sign that “We’re an infirm, ineffectual tribe still stuck in some sort of larval stage.” Sounds a bit like a tantrum to us. Because what if that sense of play – so organic to childhood and youth and sex – is exactly what’s needed for us to evolve? What if that spirit of irreverence for “grown-up” things isn’t a shortcoming but an advantage?

What if the rule-breaking associated with adolescence is something worth a revisit post haste? And so…

We’re opening the pages of our experimental issue with a cartoony battle between Highbrow and Lowbrow as depicted in the delightful graphic novelette The Book Fight which presents an imaginary literary battle between genres – a tongue in cheek take on the history of the avant garde lit if there ever were one. As to the form’s future, Alison Norrington looks at cross-platform explorations in her essay “Storytelling: The Global Rabbithole” while Ars Poetica founder LA Marks reimagines versifying as a lucrative business in “The Unexpected Pay off of Poetry.”

A discussion between Chavisa Woods,

Executive Director of A Gathering of the Tribes, and spoken word legend Regie Cabico, adds a very of-the-moment perspective from two authors whose commitment to “what’s next” has found them both participating in this year’s Whitney Biennial. Other storytellers in the issue are pulling out their own literary chemistry kits via mind-bending pieces that employ everything from adventurous punctuation to interwoven languages to scriptwriting as a newly imagined form of fiction. We also have the distinct privilege of reprinting an experimental piece from renowned, award-winning playwright Adrienne Kennedy.

Furthermore, this issue presents Litro’s inaugural visual art section.

We see that as our own way of trying something new! Here, visual artists – from diverse backgrounds and working in a multitude of mediums – grapple with what it means to push the envelope through their choice of media and/or imagery as they explore content directly engaging with the social/cultural issues of our day.

It is our modest hope that these experiments, be they literary or visual, will offer our readers, old and new, the opportunity to reevaluate and question what is possible. What is showcased here in Litro’s Experimental Issue is a starting point, a call to action to think and to create beyond tradition and the status quo—within the scope of the arts yes, but dare we add, well beyond that, too.

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CONTRIBUTORS Rock, Le Maison Baldwin, and A Gathering of the Tribes.

Mr. Cabico is the producer and curator for Capturing Fire Press and Slam.

ADRIENNE KENNEDY is an award-winning playwright, lecturer, and author born in Pittsburgh in 1931. Her plays include Funnyhouse of a Negro and June and Jean in Concert.

She is the recipient of an Obie Award for Sleep Deprivation Chamber, co-authored with her son Adam Kennedy. In 2018, Ms. Kennedy was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame for “Lifetime Achievement in the American Theater.”

REGIE CABICO is a poet, theater artist, and spoken word pioneer having won The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam. He is the founding Board Chair for Split This 6 | LITRO

CHIHOI is based between Hong Kong and Taiwan, and draws comics and paints. His major comic books include The Library & I’m with my Saint, Hijacking: Comic Hong Kong Literature, and The Train.

JEREMY CANIGLIA is an American figurative painter and illustrator, primarily in fantasy and horror genres.

Caniglia’s art has been featured in the Washington Post and on CNN. He has created book covers for wellknown mainstream authors.

The American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Georgia Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Nation, Poetry, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

Currently, he is an Editor for Frontier and Palette Poetry.

CATHAY LINH CHE is the author of Split (Alice James Books), winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is also the co-author of the children’s book A Is for Asian American (Haymarket Books), to be published in May 2023.

JOSE HERNANDEZ DIAZ is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of a collection of prose poems: The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). He holds degrees in English and Creative Writing from UC Berkeley and Antioch University Los Angeles. His work appears in

RAE DIAMOND is an artist, educator, and nature advocate, who weaves language, breath, sound, movement, and things found outside into intricate doorways that lead to vast worlds. Their poems and hybrids appear or are forthcoming in Dovecoat, The Arsonist, Sinister Wisdom, and various anthologies, and her book, Cantigee, will be published by North Atlantic Books in 2022.

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over ten books, most recently Transversal, a New York Public Library Book of the Year.

ERIKA KECK does away with a traditionally integral element of the painted medium—the canvas. Using paint as both medium and subject, the artist creates abstract works in which swathes and strips of acrylic paint are directly suspended from wooden stretchers.

CHARLIE KITE is a crossgenre, off-centre writer focusing on nature, mythologies and communities in change. His plays have been performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and VAULT Festival, and his poems and prose have been published by the Oxford Review of Books, 3 of Cups Press, and Forget Me Knot Press.

LISA ANN (LAMARKS) MARKUSON is the Founder of Ars Poetica, Global Creative Director for noumena, and cohost of the podcast For the Love of Freelance with Freelancing Females. Lisa Ann has worked with The Smithsonian, Google, Facebook, Bowery Poetry Club, The New School, USC’s Pacific-Asia Museum, and countless more. She wrote custom poems for Hilary Clinton and Meryl Streep at Planned Parenthood’s 50 year anniversary and is a dauntless reproductive justice advocate.

URAYOAN NOEL teaches at New York University and is the author or translator of

ALISON NORRINGTON is a best-selling author, screenwriter and producer.

She is CEO, Founder & Chief Creative Officer of storycentral, a London-based entertainment studio. She is also podcast host of The Story Hour, a two-time TEDx Speaker, and creator of the Supersize Your Story program.

KIMM BROCKETT STAMMEN has appeared or are forthcoming in december Magazine, CARVE, The Greens-

boro Review, Pembroke, Prime Number, and many others, and her work has been nominated for Pushcart and Best Short Fiction anthologies. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University.

CHAVISA WOODS is a MacDowell Fellow and the author of four books including 100 Times (A Memoir of Sexism), and Things To Do When You’re Goth in the Country, both from Seven Stories Press. Woods was the recipient of the Shirley Jackson Award, the Kathy Acker Award in Writing, and Cobalt ‘s Zora Neale Hurston Prize for Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, LitHub, Electric Lit, Full Stop, The Brooklyn Rail, The Evergreen Review, and New York Quarterly, among others. She currently serves as the Executive Director of A Gathering of the Tribes, a nonprofit art and literary organization and small press.

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THE BOOK FIGHT CHIHOI

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ART

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STORYTELLING: THE GLOBAL RABBIT HOLE ALISON NORRINGTON

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s a storyteller and story consultant, working with networks and studios from Singapore to Sweden, New York to Nigeria, I’m constantly thrilled at how storytellers continue to take narratives to different platforms, expanding their stories to audiences in authentic ways.

A few years ago, I met three storytellers from Voice of Nigeria, a public-service radio station that broadcasts global and local news and stories. I was hosting a three-day, cross-platform masterclass and they rocked the room with their project: A Celebration of Ignorance—a Romeo and Juliet story designed to bring together a young couple from Ibo (the East) and Yoruba

Nyadhour, Elevated, Death Valley, California, 2019 © Dana Scruggs

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(the West), fragmented by the civil war that drove primordial sentiments crazily high. Telling the story of Thomas and Agnes, the story was delivered authentically, with a keen sense of audience behavior and told across SMS messages, newspaper columns, and a theatre truck driven into each location every Sunday.

No highfalutin technology, no big-budget rollout, these storytellers knew who they were telling the story to, and how they wanted them to feel at the end.

In Singapore, Course Chair of the Diploma in Creative Writing for Television and New Media at Singapore Polytechnic Mary Chin co-produced the original web series “The Leon Theory,” encouraging her students to utilize transmedia story extensions over several media platforms. A playful look at what happens when a young boy ends up on an all-girl e-mag, this collaborative project ran for twelve episodes and was a wonderful example of what happens when content for young adults is actually made by young adults instead of their elders who only think they know better.

In Norway, public service broadcaster NRK had been prototyping and testing ideas to reach their ever-decreasing teen audience in a bid to bring them back from their devices and onto the NRK platform. SKAM, which translates to “shame” in English, took the internet by storm despite there being no legal English language subtitled streams and no official marketing push. Told in real-time across social media, the series aimed to reach the 30,000 sixteen-yearold girls in Norway. With a population at around 5.2 million, it is claimed that more people in Norway watched SKAM than Game of Thrones, and globally, multi-lingual viewers translated the show themselves, making episodes available via sharing platforms such as Google Drive.

Undertakings like these remind me how much I love working closely with story because, although we live our lives through stories, the ones that give meaning . . .

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incite emotion and make us feel. have a strong beating heart, a captivating pacing, a rhythmic beat, a percussion. (I make many references to musical terminology when I talk about story, pacing and strategy—from harmony to symphony, from rhythm to percussion, from tone to volume).

A great story can live across multiple platforms, multiple timelines, and can reach audiences far and wide, taking us on a journey, and leaving us with a strong memory, a feeling, an emotion.

That’s what great stories do. Across all cultures, stories remind us of what it is to be human; they give us connection and context and put us into scenarios, fantasy worlds, thrilling and harrowing story worlds that we would never have time to experience in our short time on earth. Stories enrich, empower, educate, advocate, activate, and inspire, but without a strong beating heart, without a universally resonant and humane central theme, they can rapidly dissolve to weak and dissatisfying.

As consumption habits have changed for a “new breed” of digitally-savvy, binge-consuming, always-on audience, so have some storytelling pillars. The fundamentals remain, but audience-centered storytelling has become a partnership, a collaboration, an act of co-creation, not a matter of the author leading the audience by the nose. After 150 years of mass media, it’s way too easy to assume that by not being passive, the audience is going to turn it all over to the

author: it’s choose-your-own-adventure or nothing. But that’s not actually what most audiences want. If you look at the stories people respond to—popular TV shows with a strong social media following, they have a strong author, with something to say and a compelling way of saying it. People want a story they can immerse themselves in—an emotionally gripping narrative they can in some way inhabit with a strong central theme, a strong heartbeat that makes them feel and learn something about themselves.

In short: they want to be a passenger, not an onlooker.

So as a storyteller, how do you make room for them without giving them the wheel entirely? How do you switch control back and forth like in those cars they teach Driver’s Ed in? I’ve found that some storytellers are paralyzed by the paradox of choice—where do you get started, how many platforms, which ones do I need? In fact, a blind rush to “platform” and transmedia was one of the most deafening stampedes from 2007 to 2012. The simple solution is rooted in basic human behaviors and desires. Experiential entertainment built from the seed of a strong core theme is what anchors great storytelling and designs a path to invite an audience from being passive to active as you reach out, grab them by the hand, and pull them into the rabbit-hole of immersion.

Which reminds me . . . .

I was six years old when I first remember falling down a rabbit hole.

As a little girl, clutching my Mum’s hand as she led me into a gloriously musty, red velveted cinema, I was transported, through a gold proscenium arch that had seen better days, and fell deep into a story world full of magic, fantasy, a Cheshire cat, a Mad Hatter, and an indulgent over-abundance of hearts. I had stumbled into a “brave new world.”

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Atelier 1, Yumi Yamazaki

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The trouble was, 101 minutes later, things were never “normal” again. The flamboyant Queen of Hearts, a hapless King, and the henpecked Knave of Alice in Wonderland were imprinted in my brain along with Alice’s quandaries of whether to “drink me” or “eat me”—I’d fallen in love with story. I had also been introduced to the circular structure of the Hero’s Journey that once you see, you can rarely “unsee.” Through my childhood I began to find parallels of patterns from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with Gulliver’s Travels to The Wizard of Oz and Rebecca as I binged on films, soaked up plays, and devoured books. Alice (and Alison) falling down that rabbit hole set the stage for things to come, as we both learned something new about ourselves back in that red-velveted cinema.

A hungry fascination for story led me to write three best-selling novels, two theater plays, and a handful of movie scripts as well as penning scenarios for Fortune 100 companies to be translated to television, games, theme park experiences, and brand explorations. The common thread? Understanding story from an experiential perspective, and over the last 20 years I’ve worked with wide-eyed students, super-smart storytellers, professors that I’ve met through academia, producers, directors, and writers’ rooms across Hollywood Studios and passionate activist documentary filmmakers— all on story from the point of view of narrative design, experience design, and emotional design. From traditional pento-paper to deeply immersive, interactive, and experimental works.

Over the last fifteen years, I’ve had the amazing good fortune to be at the coalface of innovation and risk-taking in storytelling. So, in that crazy rush to platform, somewhere along the line story both began to dilute whilst also becoming more important than ever before. It’s

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AND FOR ME, STORY IS AN EXPERIENCE THAT TAKES US TO A PLACE WHERE WE ACHE TO GO AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN, TO TELL OUR FRIENDS true that technology facilitates storytelling, but themed, experiential story listening makes people feel. I started my online writers’ program, Supersize Your Story, to teach storytellers and writers to learn to tell stories that “give people a twinge in their heart,” but not to be afraid of technology or experience design.

Boundary-pushing projects have existed in storytelling for decades. L’Arrivee d’un Train A la Ciotat, directed by August and Louis Lumiere in 1895, was the first public exhibition of motion pictures.

The Lumiere Brothers exhibited a selection of ten of their single-reel films to a paying audience at a Parisian café. Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat is considered to be the first motion picture in modern history as an experiment. Popular legend says that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the “approaching” train and has been used numerous times in VR storytelling classes. It was only 100 years ago that Harold Lloyd was the king of the silent movie. Believe it or not, film too was once an entirely experimental medium.

Scoot on to the present day and you’ll find story experiences such as Awaken the Giants by Juliana Loh and Nicholas Liang—a personal story of self-actualization and the role humans play as an expression and extensions of well thought experience design within a metaverse setting.

Blockchain Fairy Tales by Columbia DSL, where participants explore a playful world, contend with magical threats and face the question “What if Happily Ever After is Not Guaranteed?” What if, indeed.

It’s impossible to talk about experimental and boundary-pushing projects without mentioning the newest category of The Peabody Awards as they announced winners for Digital and Interactive Storytelling last month. Their newest category honored sixteen Legacy class winners as the Peabody Awards Interactive Board of Jurors unveiled twelve winning digital and interactive projects alongside four Special Awardees that have achieved outstanding feats in storytelling across interactive, immersive, and new media categories.

The distinguished Legacy Class of winners have created projects that span Gaming, Interactive Journalism and Documentary, Transmedia Storytelling and Virtual & Augmented Reality. Jeffrey Jones, executive director of Peabody, stated, “to recognize the present and future of storytelling in digital spaces, Peabody has taken the unusual step of looking backwards, recognizing landmark pioneering projects that have shaped and defined powerful stories in interactive and immersive media forms. We are honored to highlight these legacy projects and their creators, all of which signal the type of meaningful stories we will be recognizing each year going forward.”

Among The Peabody Award Legacy Winners for Digital & Interactive are two projects that I was especially thrilled to see take home awards as these were part of my introduction to experimental, experiential, and immersive storytelling.

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he Beast, A.I. Transmedia Experience (2001), was awarded a Transmedia Storytelling award, with primary credits going to Jordan Weisman, Sean Stewart, Pete Fenlon, and Elan Lee. The Beast remains a story/experiential case study of mine and was originally developed as a marketing campaign to support the 2001 film A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. The Beast played out over a massive network of fictional websites and other forms of media that combined to tell a sprawling tale set in the world of A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. This mass-distributed form of storytelling, later dubbed an “alternate reality game,” provided a template for a new way to tell stories over the internet and connected media.

The 2007 game, World Without Oil, created by the brilliant Ken Eklund took an award in the Co-Creation and Transmedia Storytelling fields. Once again, unfolding online, this experience simulated a global oil shortage and over the thirty-two days the game ran. Each day played out one week of events, charting worldwide ramifications of a global oil shock. The game invited players from around the world to tell their own stories LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 13

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and overcoming the monster—but instead lie in the content, the execution, and the experiential and emotional considerations. And for me, story is an experience that takes us to a place where we ache to go again, and again, and again, to tell our friends. The convergence and experimentation of story and technology was summed up perfectly by Don Draper in Episode 13, Season 1 of Mad Men as Girl with no face, Arles, France 2021 © Eric Kwaku Akoto he chokes up with emotion, watching footage of his family on a carousel during a pitch to Kodak: “Technology is a glitof how the oil shortage was affecting tering lure. But there is the rare occasion their lives—through blog posts, voice when the public can be engaged on a level recordings, pictures, video, and other user-generated content.

For the record, I’ve worked on my own experimental projects, too; one of my favorites, Dark Detour, is a Halloween horror ACROSS ALL anthology series told in real-time through CULTURES, social media and more. Happening in the days leading up to Halloween night, you’re STORIES REMIND invited to virtually travel in real-time with a series of hapless victims as they descend US OF WHAT IT IS deeper into a place from where there seems to be no escape. It’s a horror story for the TO BE HUMAN. digital age; part of the fun is that this story was delivered through our characters phone to yours in various ways.

My belief is that innovations in stobeyond flash, if they have a sentimental rytelling lie not so much in the structure bond with the product”. or shape of stories, as our brains are hardOf course, cross-platform storytelling wired to recognize these patterns of quest, isn’t simply about nostalgia. It’s more advoyage-and-return, rise of the underdog, 14 | LITRO

venturous than that. But where it’s going is the great unknown, which is exactly what makes it so exciting and enticing.

One of my first questions to storytellers, filmmakers and clients is “how do you want your audience to feel when they close down the laptop, switch off the television, shut the book or leave the theatre?” And the language around that reply needs to be more deeply considered than a simple, “great,” “happy,” or “that they loved it!”

UK filmmaker and storyteller Martin Percy understands this on a level that really triggers active considerations of behavior change with his work Climate Emergency Interactive—a virtual watch party that aims to turn viewers into doers.

This is an opportunity for people from around the world gather online to experience a film together. It’s about the climate and ecological emergency. And how it relates to social justice, colonialism, sexism, intersectionality, politics, and creativity.

It’s a collaboration between UNIT9 and the University of the Arts London (UAL) and was written by UAL students and staff, aiming to help students at UAL and people around the world find ways to build a more sustainable future. It turns viewers into doers. Real Talk About Suicide is his interactive film with a mission. In the UK, suicide is the leading cause of death for men and women under the age of 35. But, remarkably, most of us have very little idea about how to actually help a suicidal person.

Fundamentally, as humans, we have an intrinsic core desire for story; to give context and meaning. Great stories make us feel, but also present us with scenarios to consider how we might react, what we might do in the event of, or force us to form an opinion, and to look at an international roster of fabulous stories and storytellers underpins that we, as storytellers, have a great responsibility to continue to build bridges and never walls. ●

THE UNEXPECTED PAYOFF OF POETRY LA MARKS

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o pay an artist Is to invest in new seeds To plant deep within

I’m not precious about the way I try to reach out and change the world. Poetry for me is a means, not an end. Poetry is the canoe to cross the river, not the burden to carry up the mountain a la Fitzcarraldo. Ask me why I have written impromptu typewriter poems on demand for the past ten years, and I’ll tell you it is because it became apparent that it was simply the most sustainable way to practice the literary artform. It was the one way that I could get paid to write and perform, as well as a way for me to create a positive impact through one-on-one

interactions with strangers, and create a ripple effect of opportunity through employment opportunities for fellow writers.

I’m good at it, the world needs it, I like doing it, and I can make a living from it: The “why” for me was as easy for me as ikigai.

IKIGAI: the Japanese concept of discovering your life’s purpose through four measurements • that which you love • that through which you can earn a living • that which you are good at • that which the world needs

It was the “how” that wasn’t always easy though—it rarely is for writers of any genre, but especially for poets. Broadway and the movie biz have done an incredible job of commercializing and cementing their role in our economy and culture.

Visual artists have blue chip galleries and a glitzy world of international art fairs to lure the moneyed classes into their orbit.

Chefs and fashion designers are high profile, highly paid, and show up on magazine covers and morning talk shows. The literary arts has the publishing industry, sure, but it is insular, exclusive, hierarchical and hypocritical (sorry but where is the lie) and not exactly a tourism draw or a hub of “exciting” (read: expensive) cultural activity. Even though our words are LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 15

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THREE PROSE POEMS JOSE HERNANDEZ DIAZ The Human Tree I started growing tree branches out of my head and hair after my girlfriend broke up with me. She said I was a lost soul and a bad seed.

I told her I’m talented just a bit disorganized. That’s when branches began to dangle from my forehead. Eventually, lush leaves bloomed from the brown branches. I was turning into a tree all right. I accepted it. After all, I was indifferent. A lost soul one could say. What did it matter if I had crossed over to plant life? I was alone. Perhaps a blue bird could live among my branches. So long as a woodpecker doesn’t destroy my bark, I’ll be fine. I’ll survive. I always have.

New Kid in Town I was on the subway when I saw a clown, a pirate, and a mermaid. Since I was new to the city, I tried to act casual. The clown was dressed like a bright rainbow; the pirate had his trusty parrot side kick, per usual; and the mermaid was majestic like the ocean. The funny thing is nothing happened. The clown got off Downtown in a hurry. Next, the pirate exited on Main St. and the mermaid must have gotten off after me. I tipped my Dodgers’ hat to her as I exited at the circus. I enjoyed my visit at the circus. I saw a man on a tricycle juggling a samurai sword.

I saw a lion mimicking ballet. The move to the city was just what I needed.

Trapped I’m trapped inside of this prose poem. I can’t get out. The lack of line breaks is too liberating, it’s anarchy in here. Everyone is doing as they wish, feet up on the coffee table. I saw a man writing graffiti on the Governor’s mansion, the bravado. The wind is pleasant here. Pleasant like the ocean. I wanted to be a short story writer growing up; I settled for a puppeteer. I like the music in here, jazz and Spanish guitar. If you ask me, I don’t think prose poems should last too long. Eventually, you run out of gas, naturally, like a tattooed biker on the interstate. I’m trapped inside of this prose poem, but I don’t want to get out. It's nice and cozy in here. I’m invincible.

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the building block of all communication and culture, from the page, to the stage, to the screen. I am constantly trying to envision the literary arts community doing better at being seen, valued, respected, and supported by everyone in our society.

I’m a founding member of PEN America’s Literary Action Coalition, and we’re working to earn that recognition from the government, investors, culture makers, consumers, and the population at large.

Like I said, it’s not easy.

You might agree with what I’m saying, that there is a need here, an obvious niche to fill and bridge to build. But why me?

Why me specifically? Am I really qualified for the job, never having taken a poetry course in my life, no framed BFA or MFA diplomas on my wall, no relative who just happens to be Marina Abromovic’s accountant? Well, listen to this: in public elementary school in Sacramento, CA, my fourth-grade teacher wrote “such a creative and smart girl, but she talks way too much and distracts the other students with her stories” while I wrote not one, not two, but three “Young Authors” books to submit to a district-wide writing competition.

Whether I won the competition is a story for me to tell my therapist another day. If that childhood anecdote doesn’t strengthen my application for this peculiar role, maybe I don’t even want the job.

See, I’ve always known what my mission in life is, even as a little kid. My mission, my calling, is to help people connect in creative ways to build a better structure for society. Not just for connection’s sake: again, it is the means not the end. We need to connect more deeply and must actively reject the alienation and isolation that our society sells us, so we can reweave the fabric of our communities and patch together a more resilient, equitable and empathetic society, cutting out the ripped and rotten bits to heal and grow stronger.

I have known my goal since my memory

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of conscious thought. The problem was I didn’t know how to go about achieving it.

First I tried architecture, designing villages that would encourage human interactivity. Then I realized architects need to love math. Next I tried diplomacy, imagining that governments could speak to each other and somehow improve the day to day lives of their citizens. Then I moved to Washington, DC, and realized that only the wealthy and aristocratically connected can shape the policies that rule the world. Next I tried tourism, sure that individuals crossing national borders would share experiences that could bridge the gaps between them. Then I saw that only elites can afford to leave their countries. A brief stint as an executive at a social media start up helped me discover my love of The Deal, but the megalomania of homogenous tech founders was more than I could stand.

Then and only then, did I discover poetry. Not writing poetry for myself to get the rabid animals of my feelings out and capture them static on a page. Not writing poetry in hopes of being heard by thousands of adoring readers and fans. Writing “poetry as entrepreneurship,” as an antidote to alienation, isolation, fear, apathy, self-hatred, and the crushing weight of our banal, basic, and cruel existence. Poetry to pay my bills in a way that didn’t make me feel like I was lying to myself or others.

I’m doing it all Doing it all for the love And for the money So now that you get the “why”—buckle up and let’s talk about “how.”

In November 2012, already disillusioned with grad school, I brought a typewriter and some performance artists to the opening of a Japanese restaurant on K Street in Washington, DC. Random, gray-suited people walked by and paused,

intrigued, as we whipped up fresh poems like omelets, surrounded by mixed media art we’d hung on the walls to turn the place into a fully immersive art experience.

It was totally unexpected, rich, and nourishing, and of course we focused especially on haiku. And I was blown away by how fun and easy it was for me to spin these tiny poems and hand them off to their recipients with no hesitation, doubt, or even editing. Yes, the typos abounded.

But as I passed each tiny literary gift to the strangers before me, and their eyes lit up with surprise and delight, I was moved myself, and the customers flowed into the shop. It was like I’d opened a portal into a slightly different reality.

I knew there was something there.

What I didn’t plan was a decade of entrepreneurship built around it. In July 2013, I moved to New York City to work for a now defunct bike tour company, immediately meeting two other typewriter haiku writers. (I decided the proper English term for this is haikuist by the way—I don’t own the name but I’m sure I coined it.)

We started writing haiku on typewriters on the streets of Williamsburg, and in no time for Manhattan corporate clients as well. big city - big goals bright lights shine and spotlights blind money flowed like wine After three years of growing interest and profit margins at the game, in June 2016 I knew that it was time for me to quit my day job and become (the world’s first?) full-time, professional typewriter haikuist, and grow our group from three hipsters in New York to a network of twenty five poets coast to coast performing at events for all the top tech companies, artsy orgs, and funky philanthropists. It was a heady time: We were in a political crisis, but the

economy was booming. I was managing all day-to-day operations of the growing company, but I also felt unheard by my business partners and started to realize that while our work was fulfilling my mission in some ways, we didn’t share the same values or goals. we’re living the dream but something isn’t quite right i’m losing my voice By the end of 2018 I hit an impasse with my two erstwhile collaborators, and knew I had to change something to get back on track with my mission. I didn’t set out to become a narcissistic rock and roll typewriter monkey, and I needed my work to directly correlate with my joy and an elevation of human consciousness.

I launched my own company on my birthday, January 6, 2019, unleashing a year of retaliatory action and trauma that you’ll have to read my memoir to even begin to understand. (For now, let’s just say it involves a night in a Kings County Jail and learning a lot about something called “malicious prosecution.”) But against all odds, my new company thrived, and our capabilities and roster of talent grew and diversified. I put forth a clear new vision and stopped feeling ashamed of myself for taking credit for my hard work. I survived the most trying year of my life, and made a profit (and some enemies, duh) while doing so. And we weren’t just doing typewriter haiku at corporate events anymore (though we still love doing that and it still amazes people). We started working with ongoing clients making original content, creating campaigns, copywriting, teaching, curating spoken word performances and competitions, and I consulted on freelance biz dev and media projects using the skills I learned growing my own business.

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THE LITERARY ARTS HAS THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY, SURE, BUT IT IS INSULAR, EXCLUSIVE, HIERARCHICAL AND HYPOCRITICAL (SORRY BUT WHERE IS THE LIE) It’s easy, I think: Success is enlightenment Words = Money = Power By early 2020, I was racking up frequent flyer miles and collecting business cards and Instagram followers, growing our team, our income, and our recognition but low on sleep and starting to feel a little out of control. I was so desperate to prove that I could do it on my own, and surpass anything I’d ever done before, that I was obsessing over arbitrary success metrics yet again.

Never satisfied doing the same thing, I conjured up a new poetic entertainment experience: “Tell Your Secrets to the Moon.” I wanted to really dig into the intimate confessional element that is often felt when we write poems for strangers.

They can divulge their darkest secrets, their wildest dreams, tell us about crushes . . . I have had people tell me things they have never uttered to another soul. We spent three days building a set piece in the shape of a Moon tarot card, cutting a tiny whole through which a silver gloved anonymous poet could pass poems. The poems, of course, were written inspired by each event attendee, and my team debuted the experience at the New York Public Library with Tinsel Design on February 20th with an audience of 1,000 friends and collaborators. To celebrate the positive response to the moon, we got ourselves toasted at the open bar, eventually stumbling jubilantly 18 | LITRO

out of the marble monument way past midnight.

I spent February 25th to 27th in Amsterdam penning poems on demand at a European marketing analytics conference alongside a beloved Dutch calligraphy artist. That’s where I first heard of the strange flu that had prevented an Italian delegation from coming to the Amsterdam event. A knot of well-suited European men came over to get their poems, mostly dedications to their wives or passionate explanations about the power of their company’s varying software and told me the news about their missed Milanese colleagues—known to be the life of the party. I remember noting the information, but not sensing anything dire. There had been so many obscure virus flukes in recent years; they flared up, grabbed a news headline, then melted back into the primordial soup. It’s a flicker of a memory that now stands out as the match that would eventually light the forest fire of covid-consciousness in my tiny world. I had dinner that night as the guest of an award-winning, Korean-Dutch spoken word artist and DEI consultant at Ciel Bleu: a three Michelin star restaurant where a five course meal costs you about 5 hours and as many hundred euro notes.

It was a pretty epic last meal, if I care to reflect dramatically on the moment.

After the conference, I flew back to sleep with my fiancé, The Wizard in our 450 sq ft apartment in Greenpoint, Brook-

lyn before hopping another flight to Houston to train a newly recruited poet and immediately bring her to write poems for a group of lawyers in a high rise downtown.

I brought my favorite portable typewriter and an extra vintage writing machine for my new poet and invited her to meet me about three hours before our booked gig at a hotel bar around the corner from our client’s office. We had appetizers and cocktails in an enormous leather booth while I taught her how to use the typewriter and gave her sample prompts that she’d be likely to receive from recent law school graduates recently recruited to the firm: Topic: summer vacation before I start my first real job as a lawyer walking down the strand i stop to count grains of sand order, on the shore We spent three hours side by side at a crisp white tableclothed station surrounded by young attorneys brimming with optimism, and the seasoned partners who would be mentoring them. I had been doing gigs like this since the end of 2012, but I never got tired of seeing the reactions of people realizing that I, the charming girl in the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel costume, was about to listen to them with rapt attention and create a one-of-a-kind verse for them on my antique typewriter. In the airy, glass-walled penthouse reception

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area, thoughtful waiters diligently refilling our Texas whiskeys, a brand-new Ars Poetica poet by my side discovering the joy of writing poems for strangers with me, I felt like I was in heaven. We stayed late that night to write poems for every single waiter and staff person, some in English, some in Spanish. I know it’s not much, but I always try to make time to offer gig workers poems too – it takes me 90 seconds and can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for someone who just spent 10 hours feeling invisible.

One red eye later, the next morning I was in Washington, DC, for a live podcast, before flinging myself onto the Amtrak back to Manhattan. I had a very stylish wedding, so I had to be show-ready within 90 minutes of arriving at Penn Station. On the train I called a random salon near the station and told them the situation and they said they could help me out. On my arrival they went straight to work, not only brushing and blowing me out, but offering a bang trim and makeup tips too. When I tried to pay, they refused.

I was having a very lucky couple of days.

I took a cab to arrive in perfect albeit breathless timing, changing into my beaded lime chiffon gown (no one notices a frayed hem when the bodice is glittery) while The Wizard was decked out in his tailored tuxedo and ready to work the room at Flora Bar, MoMA’s ultra-chic restaurant.

Between toasts and hors d’oeuvres and medieval stringed instruments and portraiture and poems, whispers wafted through the room about the sickness tingeing the periphery of our awareness like calligraphy ink. I dampened my ears, and kept typing, champagne refilling itself at my side while senators and stockbrokers smiled at their quirky little poems and asked me if I was secretly psychic. (I am, in some ways.)

After yet another wedding (this time for a more hipster set at Williamsburg’s Wythe Hotel) on Sunday, and

Carla Rozman, Man in the Road, paint on vintage magazine, 2016.

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Rin Lee

a much-needed day of relative rest on Monday, I flew back to Texas yet again (I wish I was exaggerating) this time to San Antonio, where the decidedly un-hipster Marriott had invited me to stay to write poems for fellow conference goers at my first-ever AWP conference. As a bit of background: For years I had heard of this prestigious annual gathering of professors, famous writers, and various academics and smarter-than-thous, but I was a typewriter performance poet, a literary mercenary if you will. It was while I was blissfully, masklessly breathing recycled air somewhere over Appalachia that the covid tornado really started to spiral in this country, ironically enough a breakout having been discovered right at my destination.

When I took my phone off of airplane mode to see the pre-conference chatter on Twitter, there was a flood of mass calls for the conference to shut down and pack up shop, to avoid becoming what we’d soon refer to as a “super spreader event.”

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I took a Lyft to the hotel dumbfounded, my carryon bag jostling along the riverside cobblestones, and walked through the eerily empty hotel lobby, hand sanitizing stations planted at fifty-foot intervals in all directions. I kept scrolling, weighing the costs and benefits of leaving right away, pulled myself some tarot cards (including Death and The Tower) and decided to stay. I’d come this far, after finally shedding my imposter syndrome, I figured I may as well try my best to get what I could out of it, even if a number of prominent names had canceled.

When I got back to New York on the 9th, people were starting to fall apart a bit.

Rumors were circulating that the governor’s daughter was warning Manhattan elites to evacuate the city. But on Tuesday night, March 10th, I had a booking for an event at the Whitney Museum, and the organizers decided not to cancel, so we showed up. Devin and Tania and I figured it like this: free booze, free art, and a chance to continue to grow the recognition for our new “Tell Your Secrets to the Moon” piece? We couldn’t resist. With about half the guests in attendance, and the waiters wearing sterile gloves, we heavily indulged in the open bar, wondering what the next day would look like.

On March 11th, New York City went into its first near-complete lockdown.

During those first weeks of March, as the COVID-19 pandemic really started to take over our global consciousness, all of our bookings for the next 6 weeks were canceled instantly, with good reason of course.

With a lot of time on my hands and a huge community of working artists, event producers, small businesses and more out of work, I searched for some small thing I could do to keep connections strong, surpass xenophobic and fearful responses, and also respect the science around staying physically distant to reduce the spread of the virus.

I started sending photos of poems to

struggling colleagues, then thought that sick and quarantined people could really use poems too. I set up a webpage to take requests for those overwhelmed by fear, disquiet, panic, ennui. Volunteer poets (almost 50 of us!) then saw those requests and penned poems to address these individual concerns. One-on-one connection was back. My deepest hope was that by receiving a poem from one of our volunteer writers, we would create a web of compassion to soften the blow and make recovery in some way easier and quicker; maybe we would re-emerge into a more beautiful and empathetic world.

So we kept writing Poems for a world on pause Prayers typed in the dark Did that happen? I’m not sure. But dozens of poets wrote almost 1000 poems that spring and summer. I’ve worked hard to invest my work in poetry with layers of meaning. Ars Poetica, the poetry organization I founded, has distinguished itself from a pack of live typewriter poetry events groups by being queer-woman owned with a truly diverse roster of writers extending across six countries, and planting a tree for every gigged client via our partner Arbor Day. Which brings me back to what I knew when I wrote my first haiku at age seven.

Poetry has value. And yet . . . . Typically, poets are assigned very little value, even those who emerge on the international stage. Why is this? Why is the work of a poet cheapened, haggled, stolen, puréed, and served back to us with a straw? I believe we need a new way of measuring worth and output, including detracting from your estimated worth if the majority of your activities are in fact harmful to the collective. Poetry as a rule harms no one.

No thing. Poetry only helps, in its purest form, it intends to heal.

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There is an intangible heritage of humanity, according to UNESCO, and it includes poetry. There is a universal component, and a personal one as well.

My personal heritage is that of wit, creative problem solving, an obsessive desire to serve, enhanced by a ridiculous and clownlike personal demeanor that I have decided to celebrate as opposed to attempting to sterilize.

We are not living in the “great resignation” as the substack hoards would like to call it. It is not the end of good society, as lawmakers in Texas, Tennessee, and my adopted home of Kentucky would prefer to declare in their stinky sweaty legislatures. Though, the biblical definition of apocalypse actually means “to reveal”—so they may actually have a point there—I’m not afraid to admit it. It’s not a panini or panorama or even a civil war. We are living in a portal.

This portal was long dormant, perhaps the last time it cracked open was between (or during) the world wars. Well, it has been activated again. Do you feel it? It is a shimmering hole in what we thought we knew, and we can ignore it, or stuff it up with glue and trash like a cracked windowpane in a sinking ship, or we can acknowledge it and leap on through.

Break on through to the other side.

It’s not the matrix But you can still be Neo And it’s beautiful There is just one issue we must address together: there are multiple groups vying for control of this portal, this transportive thesis. There is a small (exceedingly small, they cast shadow puppets of themselves on the white walls of our minds through gerrymandering and insipid media sycophants) contingent who represent ancient and putrescent power who cling to an outsize share of our attention, who con-

tinue to clumsily grapple at the quivering, innocent, nonpartisan portal, foaming at the mouth at the idea of catapulting us all through, bombs strapped to our heads like helmets. But they are only one group!

There are many others, vying, each of them bad in their own ways, but at least different from the old way of being bad. I would be interested in seeing a new way of being, with its own original problems, not the ones that killed our grandparents and make our parents wonder if it would be better to kill themselves.

We keep paying our attention like we’re trained to pay our banking fees.

POETRY AS A RULE HARMS NO ONE. NO THING. POETRY ONLY HELPS, IN ITS PUREST FORM, IT INTENDS TO HEAL. The banks should pay us for holding our lifeblood and getting to play with it and dirty it with their hands! We pay our attention and accept that our data is the price we pay for getting to watch ads for yoga pants on facebook.com. What?

We give them everything we have ever thought or done in exchange for getting to tag ourselves in a drunk person’s photo. We let them track our every move so we can spend hours making videos of our deepest fears for them??? Why? We could pay attention to something else—our own new path to entry in the jellyfish pathway that tore open sometime in late 2019 (be honest) This portal could make Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic look like a trip to the grocery store in

comparison. Why not try a new route this time around—there is no ice left anyway, we could sail north to south. Certainly, if we sat down with Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Mackenzie Bezos, Bernie Sanders, and Greta Thunberg they would all agree that this world system is just . . . not it.

So, what is a simple building block with which we could start to rebuild?

What comes next, comrades?

Words are deeds so why not start writing poetry I’m finishing the last few lines of this piece waiting for the Q70 select bus to pick me up from LaGuardia. Tomorrow is my first day at my new job, where I’ll be Global Creative Director at Noumena Partners, a radical new finance technology and social banking platform that, if all goes according to plan, could take back power from predatory lenders and data scrapers and put it into the hands of freelancers, artists, creators and solopreneurs like us. Poets and writers, able to pay their bills, buy homes, build new societies. If I do my job well, the systems that disempowered and exploited me might not be able to harm future generations. They deserve to find their own new problems to solve. And if I do a really good job, Ars Poetica will continue to be vital and profitable without my dayto-day management. Yes, you read that right: I’ve passed leadership and control of this dream to the poets that helped me build it: McPherson, Tallie, and Zoe. They’re already improving things I never could have done myself. I trust the poets to speak for themselves and keep writing toward a freedom far surpassing what I even originally dreamed.

Wonder is my work Revelry’s my KPI I invoice for joy ● LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 21

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MILENA'S WEDDING ADRIENNE KENNEDY

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he first time Milena spoke of Crawford had been at the affair at the University, a tea welcoming the new English professor, Professor Grossman, myself.

Over the clatter of tea things she pursued me humming Wagner and speaking of Crawford.

I had come to Ghana for peace.

Yet there Milena was after me speaking of loving and wanting to marry March Crawford; Crawford the brilliant swaggering Negro sociologist from Chicago, one

of those highly extroverted men who is always followed about by ranks of students, a brutal dynamic captain, obsessed with his work. I admired him. And I noticed that he stared at me a great deal . . . . . . He stared at me the way Blake Hall had stared at me a year ago. Yes, the class had been reading Kafka. Blake had sat in the last row. He had looked younger than his eighteen years, all paleness, his body slender and of medium height.

He was fair-skinned, even whitish, that whiteness that is peculiar to Negroes that

are light skinned. To add to his paleness he had golden hair, straight hair, that he wore short and cropped close to his head.

His most endearing feature was his blue eyes. He had not spoken in class unless the Professor forced him to speak. His voice was soft. Most of the time he sat quite

Bodomase, Ghana 2022 © Eric Akoto

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erect, his shadowy blue eyes fixed on me, Aaron Grossman. Several times I followed him out of Butler Library, then down the long walk but always at the cross-section I hesitated and watched him vanish. I began to consider it a miracle that I had taken that course in General Studies. Then one morning between classes I had seen him in the drug store on 116th and Broadway.

I was sitting alone at a table in my dark suit drinking coffee wearing my usual dark glasses and smoking a cigarette in my usual short quick puffs. I couldn’t imagine how such a lucky thing could happen as to find him alone in the drug store.

He had come right over to my table and burst out, “I think you have the most brilliant mind.” I acted as if I didn’t hear him. Then with my left hand I very slowly removed my dark glasses, took in Blake appraisingly and then as if something caught in my memory I lay down the glasses and let a slight smile come to my thin lips.

“I’m in your English class,” Blake said.

“Oh yes, yes,” I drawled out the words. “Yes.” I sprang up, very quickly, pulling out a chair for him, immediately calling the waitress, ordering coffee for the two of us and immediately launching into a discussion about the class.

“Yes,” I said, “I don’t really need that class because I’ve studied the violin since I was a child but the curriculum at Julliard insists that everyone have that disgusting theory.” Blake only stared at me.

“Is this your first year at Julliard?” I asked, pushing his coffee to him. Blake explained in a quiet voice that we were in the same English class, that he did not go to Julliard but was in pre-medicine at Columbia. I allowed my face to turn red and laughed slightly.

“Oh,” I said, “Jesus am I sorry.” Then I explained to Blake that I was a violinist, that I got so mixed up, that I was terribly sorry and I could have sworn he was in my theory class. I told him it turned out that I 24 | LITRO

only took one class at Columbia, that I had grown up in New York and my mother and uncle were violinists, and my uncle was at one time rather well known.

I played in the Julliard orchestra (and did he know a Negro played the drums), I had given recitals yes sometimes it was exciting, but actually I was getting a little bored.

We became friends, sitting in the drugstore at 116th street or in the Lion’s Den at Columbia, drinking cup after cup of coffee we discussed our favorite subjects.

NEVER HAD WE EVER MET ANYONE WHO SAW US AS WE WERE. I did most of the talking while Blake sat abjectly. We talked about music, literature, Roman life, which was one of my greatest subjects, and African art. And everything we discussed in the end turned back to our preoccupation and discovery with each other. Never had either felt they had so perfectly expressed themselves. Never had either felt that they had communicated with anyone. Never had we ever met anyone who saw us as we were. How happy we were! . . . . . . Milena pursues me humming Wagner and speaking of Crawford. The University walks are covered with dead moths. . . .

I was older than I looked. In fact I was seven years older than Blake, twenty-five and coming up close to me one could discern lines around my eyes. I grew up in Brooklyn and I had gone to Julliard at eighteen. Everyone had expected me to be

a brilliant violinist. My mother and uncle’s life was centered on my becoming a famous virtuoso. But after a while at Julliard I didn’t do well and soon found myself missing more and more classes. It seemed to me the teachers were inadequate. Quite mediocre people really. It thwarted me.

Then quite unexpectedly I was drafted.

The day before I went to the examination I drank a bottle of pure alcohol. I wanted to die. Then I was sent to basic training. I threatened to commit suicide and had to be imprisoned at Governors Island because I refused to go into the Korean War. My very good reason for not going was that I was a genius and my great sensitivity could not withstand the mechanics that governed the military world. I wrote a letter to the President explaining my feelings. They had me analyzed. I finally ended up wasting my entire time at Governors Island. That had been almost two years ago. When I met Blake I lived on 103rd Street and worked part time in a market research agency. I did not intend to take up the violin again for I realized I could quite possibly become a great writer. I wrote a great deal at night and worked at the Agency alternate mornings and afternoons, took the course at Columbia and also a writing course at the New School. I had a thing about Harlem and times I would put on my dark glasses and walk about 125th Street and think at last I had been recognized for the genius I was by Blake Hall. I was happy. Spring came. There was naturally a lot of deception involved, a lot of excuses invented, for Blake thought I went to Julliard. . . . . . . Although I hadn’t told anyone in New York I didn’t actually have a [post] at the university, but I had been hired to teach English to the boys in the upper grades at Achimota College. It was no more than a high school. I had really expected to be more singular in the job but when I arrived in Accra I found there were many Americans. Being very lonely I

SHORT STORY

walked alone in the sun. Milena and Crawford walked the same road. I watched for them. How terribly in love they were. I had begun to notice that the strength of nature in Africa added to my tormenting solitude so I watched for them often on the road going to the ocean. For they often walked that road. “Hello Aaron,” they say …

She tells me that Crawford is on a great trek in the northern country of Salaga. He has been gone for weeks but soon he will return. I go back to my room and lie under the mosquito nets. Harmattan moths fill the room. I arise and close the shutters; below the walks are covered with more dead moths.

I go down to the Common Room and ask the barkeep to bring me a vodka; more dead moths lie on the bar. Nights before I go to sleep I think of Milena. I think of Milena and Crawford. . . . . . . One day I heard that Crawford had accepted a permanent job with the University of Legon. I went to the celebration.

Crawford was not there telling his great stories of treks. He was away. I was lonely. Thank God Milena was there speaking of the wedding. And humming Wagner. Milena is loved by Crawford. And for Milena, Crawford understands all the beauty of the universe.

In each other they experience hope. Never has either felt so perfectly expressed. How happy they are. Thank God Milena was there speaking of the wedding. She says they discuss everything and everything in the end turns back to their discovery with each other. She speaks of the wedding all the time now. Milena recognizes Crawford for the true genius he is. She tells me in the evenings they often sit and listen to Wagner. I remember Blake and I were listening to Wagner once on 103rd Street.

I sat on the floor my head against the couch. I told him, “I’ve found the most wonderful apartment on 112th Street. It has lovely white walks and a long hallway in which to hang paintings that leads to a lovely room with an iron balustrade.”

“You lie a lot,” Blake said.

“What’s wrong?” I cried.

“What’s wrong with you?” Blake said, “and why do you lie so much?”

“I don’t know.” Oh, Because there are no curtains, no death or Valhalla, no standing on battlefields before Philippi, to lie is the only way to be recognized. I left the room and went out. . . . The next day I did not go to the Philosophy class we had taken together in the spring term. When I came in on the third day I hoped there would be a letter in the mailbox from Blake. There was none.

I imagined a ringing phone. But there

was none. I was driven from the silent apartment and hid in a section of Columbia’s library where we had gone often and watched for him. When I returned to the apartment he was never there. I could not sleep. On no night did he phone. And he did not come. I dropped the Philosophy course. . . . . . . Milena and Crawford.

Often the thought of them keeps me from killing myself. Did you know that Milena was the name of Kafka’s mistress? On one of the nights that Blake did not call I tore a sheet of paper from my notebooks and wrote him a letter.

I told him that he understood the beauty of the universe more than any other human being alive.

And that my life had been nothing but unfulfillment until I met him. And in him I experienced hope. Hope, when I read it I tore it up. And left the room. I walked along Broadway and looked for him everywhere. I felt like killing myself. . . .

I made up my mind, I would go to San Francisco. I didn’t stay on the West Coast long but came back to New York and lived in the Village. I often looked for Blake but I could not find him.

It occurred to me that perhaps I would go to Africa. Two days before my tea, in fact the first night I was in Accra, I went to a party at the Ambassador Hotel.

March Crawford was there. He was a handsome black man, light skinned with pale eyes. He told a great story of his trip to the Congo.

The next morning I was sitting in the outdoor terrace adjoining the hotel when I became aware of a girl sitting opposite me. She stood up and came toward me humming Wagner. A beautiful strain from Tannhäuser. I named her Milena. ● LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 25

AN IMBALANCE OF PINEAPPLE, IN ONE ACT KIM BROCKETT STAMMEN

Jerome: vague sense of missing out.

Peg: with a little wand. Behind halfopen bathroom door, pulling down one moist lower eyelid with a powder bluenailed middle finger. Jerome bumping the door as he passes on the way to their bedroom, causing her hand to jerk, eyeliner to smear down rouged cheek and her throat to exclaim: YOU ARE TAKING UP ALL MY SELF-CONTROL LATELY. Time together: four months. Cockatoo yellow paint barely dry on the apartment's entryway walls.

thought that these always came in pairs, like salt and pepper shakers. “Sold as a set.” Together both the antithesis and the goal, sentinel together on the audience edge of his life, with matching worried expressions.

Jerome:

DITTO.

The doorbell: ringing.

Behind it: Marchelle.

Hand on knob, mouth falling open at the same time as the door: Jerome.

Marchelle: about whom Jerome was thinking when he sideswiped the bathroom door. Her ass, monumental. Her soul, bounding up down in tandem with his. If he took over the lease, she could move out and she, in. Possibly without even telling one about the other. With him could be her instead of her. This would make all the difference.

Behind him: Peg, one pea-green earring dangling from an ear, the other between her fingers like a doubtful hors d’oeurves.

Parents: when he was a boy Jerome had

Marchelle (to Peg, totally ignoring Jerome):

26 | LITRO

The Earth: swaying under Jerome’s loafers.

Peg (to Marchelle): YOU'RE HERE FOR THE PINEAPPLE.

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LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 27

28 | LITRO

FICTION

I HOPE IT WORKS OUT. MY FRONT STEPS ARE BIZARRE WITH JUST ONE STATUE. YOU KNOW? Jerome (to both, croaking): YOU TWO KNOW EACH OTHER? Peg (to Jerome, shaking her head so hard the earring flops against her cheek, fibbing): CRAIGSLIST. GETTING RID OF THAT CONCRETE PINEAPPLE. IN THE SPARE BEDROOM. YOU KNOW. Jerome: vague sense of not knowing.

Interval (in which we contemplate Setting): A small apartment with a cramped yellow entryway full of three mismatched people, and beyond them two bedrooms: 1. the bedroom, where Jerome searches nightly without even the ability to know or name what he seeks, not realizing he, with his desire and matching dissatisfaction, is his own paired set; 2. the other bedroom, where reside unpacked boxes, junk, Romcom VHSs, squash racquets, off-season blouses half-used eye shadows crumpled photos a cellophane-sealed 1000-piece puzzle jumbled off-brand Tupperware without lids beach towels still-tagged iron shovel, rake and hoe three purple kites. I.e., all her stuff, whose purpose is mostly to color over what she fears, and his stuff which is mainly the discarded trappings of his futile attempts to ignore the overwhelmingly broad and broadening swath of things that do not fit together nor correspond to each other or how he has always thought they should be. In other words the spare room (like all spare rooms crammed with the past and the future).

Glances (starting furtively, then getting faster and faster): Peg at Jerome, Marchelle at Peg, Jerome at Peg and Marchelle.

Peg (holding on to self-control like an earring she can’t jab through the empty hole in her head): saunters down the hall.

Marchelle: lopes after Peg (globules of bum cheeks hypnotically swaying).

Jerome: follows the bum cheeks. Remembering two weeks ago at a roller derby, Marchelle cheering on a friend and stuffing her face with popcorn. Dark skin shining, seat next to her empty. They fucked in his car, and later when he walked with her up her front steps, slipping a hand on her hot neck beneath her braids, thinking he had finally found the one. He had not noticed any pineapples then, or lack thereof.

Peg, Marchelle, Jerome: squeezing into the airless spare room where along with everything else in the world is, apparently, a concrete pineapple.

Peg (shutting the door): THERE'S NO PINEAPPLE. The Air in the Airless Spare Room: close and stinky.

Marchelle (pissed): NO PINEAPPLE? Jerome (dizzy, nauseous, as if falling out of an airplane).

Peg (glaring at Jerome): I FOLLOWED YOU. AFTER WORK EVERY DAY LAST WEEK TO HER

HOUSE. A GRAY AND BROWN HOUSE. COLORLESS. (WHICH IS MAYBE IRONIC.) FRONT DOOR EXACTLY IN THE CENTER, A PEDESTAL ON EITHER SIDE. BUT ONLY ONE PINEAPPLE STATUE. Marchelle (peering behind boxes, not catching on): THERE'S REALLY NO PINEAPPLE? Jerome (watches in disbelieving slow motion—as if this whole thing is some kind of drama he’s been forced to read many times, but now that he's on stage actually acting in it the lines are not as he remembered—as Peg lifts her shirt and removes a weapon from the waistband of her fuchsia plaid shorts): DON'T SHOOT! SHE'S NOT WORTH IT! YOU'D HATE JAIL, IT'S MONOCHROMATIC! Marchelle (hissing): WHAT DO YOU MEAN I'M NOT WORTH IT? Peg (aiming the weapon, a huge black blow dryer, at Jerome): ON THE HIGHEST SETTING THIS WILL SCORCH YOUR SCALP. Jerome (jerking backwards and staggering against a burst box, looking wildly from one woman to the other) falls. He tangles in a dangling curtain and brings it down with him, with a vague sense of his head cracking like concrete and his vulnerability a core of near-rotten, tropical fruit: farther than ever from becoming whole. ●

LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 29

CHAVISA WOODS INTERVIEWED BY REGIE CABICO A Gathering of the Tribes’ Chavisa Woods Isn’t About to Keep Quiet

T

he catchphrase for A Gathering of the Tribes is “Where revolutionary artists come together.” And where else in the East Village might you have caught the Sun Ra Arkestra, master satirist Ishmael Reed, artist David Hammons, and experimental poet Anne Waldman in its heady early days? Founded by the late novelist-poet-publisher Steve Cannon, the organization has lost none of its steam either. Cannon protege and current Executive Director Chavisa Woods is keeping Tribes' flame burning bright as recently evidenced at The Whitney Biennial where the organization is represented by a major installation on the sixth floor as part of the Quiet as It’s Kept exhibit.

Regie Cabico, a National Slam Poet with his own rich history with the Tribes, spoke to Chavisa about her mentor's legacy, the current Whitney homage, and the wildest party to come out during her early days at Cannon's side.

PERSONAL HISTORY Regie Cabico: My first experience with Gathering of the Tribes was in 1993. I was

30 | LITRO

INTERVIEW

reading at every open mic in New York City, after graduating with my NYU theater degree. I did cabaret open mics, stand-up comedy and at St. Mark’s bookstore, all I could see were anthologies by Gay & Lesbian (the Queer term was just being birthed) Asian American anthologies and while I never wrote poetry, I decided to write about my Asian American experiences growing up in Southern Maryland. The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which stands adjacent to Tribes Gallery, had its Wednesday night open poetry slam. Steve Cannon and Bob Holman would gather before the Friday night poetry slams to workshop poems before performing at the Cafe. I believe Indigo, the official unofficial gay poet scorekeeper for Friday Night Poetry Slams, told me about the workshops Steve Cannon and Bob Holman held before the slams. This was my first time at Tribes being in the camaraderie of poets who appear in Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe anthology edited by Miguel Algarin and Bob Holman: Diane Burns, Jessica Hagedorn, Patricia Spears Jones, Paul Beatty, Willie Perdomo, Edwin Torres, to name a few. What was your first memory of Tribes and meeting Steve Cannon?

Chavisa Woods: You’re talking about The Stoop. Those workshops were literally held on the stoop of Tribes, at the 285 East 3rd Street space. They were open to anyone who wanted to attend. The theme was, “If it works on the stage, it should work on the page,” as Steve always said. The stoop informed the work of so many downtown slam poets when slam was big in NYC. I heard a lot about The Stoop when I came to Tribes, but it was over by then.

I came in 2003. I’d been living in a queer anarchist collective in Saint Louis called C.A.M.P. (Community Arts and Media Project). I’d moved to Saint Louis when I was 18, from a small, conservative farm town in Southern Illinois.

For someone like me, at that time, a

queer, punk leftist from a working-class family; well one side is working class and one side has struggled with dire poverty for generations, Saint Louis cut two ways. I was able to find other queer leftists, many of whom also came from rural poverty, and we lived in a subcultural community, and supported each other in really innovative ways.

I’ve never found another community like that, actually. But, at the same time, there was definitely a glass ceiling as far as what I would be able to achieve professionally or as an artist. Missouri is a southern, red state.

I was introduced to Steve by a poet I met in Chicago. I wanted to move to New York, but didn’t have any money, connections, job prospects, or anything but an old car and a cat. I came on a train for a week and met Steve. He told me he was looking for a live-in personal assistant, to help with everything Tribes related, and more. Because he was blind. He needed someone to read him the paper in the morning and work in the office and help with events and the magazine. I sat across the couch from him and talked to him for a few hours. He asked me everything about my life I could imagine anyone ever asking. He had me read him some of my poetry. He asked me to describe the art on the walls in detail. Then he told me I could live at Tribes for free as long as I needed, as long as I worked for him from nine to five every weekday and helped out as needed. And so I went back to Saint Louis, packed up my car, and drove it to East 3rd Street.

It felt like home. It always felt like home. What I’m saying here probably sounds strange in today’s world, and this wasn’t so long ago, just 2003, but that’s how it happened. I told him who I was and what I needed, and he told me who he was and what he needed—we introduced ourselves—and he invited me in. That’s how he was.

RC: For those of us who were living the

1990s Friday Night Poetry Slam at The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, you would never forget Steve Cannon’s heckling, READ THE GODDAMN POEM! Can you tell me what Steve Cannon was like when he critiqued your writing?

CW: Oh wow. This is a really emotional question for me. A few weeks after he died, I finished a short story, and when it was done, I laid my head on my desk and cried, because I realized that for nearly twenty years, every single piece I finished, I would immediately read to Steve. Every piece. I didn’t even think about it until it was gone. It had become such a natural part of my process.

What was he like? It’s hard to put into words. It’s such an intimate thing. He was often the first person who read my stories and essays after I finished, which is when you’re most vulnerable, that first day you believe something is done, and therefore, good. I would read aloud to him, of course, because he’s blind, and when I read aloud to someone, I can feel them experiencing the piece. I knew without him telling me which parts worked for him and which didn’t. I could feel him responding while I read it. So, often, when I was done, he’d just say, “You know what I’m gonna say, don’t ya?” And I’d say, yeah, like “this one character isn’t flushed out,” or whatever, and he’d nod, and say, “exactly. You gotta fix that.”

He was a very clear editor. He was never shy about telling me when something didn’t work, so when he really loved a story, I knew it was actually good and he wasn’t just sparing me feelings. His honest criticism was one of the most valuable gifts he ever gave me.

Left: Chaivsa Woods LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 31

INTERVIEW

RC: What were some of his writing aesthetics & principles that you might have adopted?

CW: We’re very different writers. But when I was young, he drilled into my head, “SHOW! DON’T TELL!” Over and over again; “Show, don’t tell. Show, don't tell.” He would actually say it like that, just repeating the phrase when I finished a story when I first moved in with him, like he could chant the bad writing out of me. I thought it was a simple thing he was saying at first, but it really is the most difficult and the most important thing with fiction. It took me years to get a firm grip on it. He insisted I ground more in physical descriptions. He told me if the scene was set in a living room, that my readers should be able to smell the living room.

Steve was interested in including the grotesque and hyper-realistic aspects of humanity in his writing. In his famously dirty novel Groove, Bang, and Jive Around, there is a scene where a woman reaches into her pants when no one is looking and picks a dirty piece of toilet paper that’s clinging to her asshole, and then flicks it into the air. You read books and see movies that all claim to be realism, but very seldom does anyone take a shit, or masturbate or pick their nose. He notably included all that in his novel. It was a very deliberate choice.

He had other mentees, of course, and the writer who was most influenced by that hyper-realistic philosophy was Jade Sharma.

He was her mentor for many years as well.

She died right after he did. Her book, Problems, which came out from Coffee House Press a few years ago, Steve read that as it was being written over the course of eight years, and you can see his influence on her writing in a big way. You should all read it. It’s a perfect book. She wrote one perfect book and died at 39, and a lot of us are still grieving. She followed Steve.

God, I could write pages and pages 32 | LITRO

about what Steve taught me and what I learned about writing at Tribes, but I’ll just say this, read the authors he mentored, and you’ll see for yourself what he taught us.

Above all, he encouraged us to find our own voices, and that really is the most important thing. Not being derivative, not trying to please the audience, or emulate what’s popular, but finding out what your own unique voice actually sounds like and what it needs to say, that is the journey every writer is on whether they know it or not. Steve made that clear to me from the beginning, for which I’m very grateful. I didn’t have to figure out what I was supposed to try to do before I started trying to do it.

RC: Which poets did you have a crush on?

CW: Ha! So you’ve heard about me then?

I see. Well, I’m not going to tell you, but they already know who they are because I’ve never been shy about things like that.

Poets are truly wonderful lovers! Let’s leave it there.

RC: Can you tell me your personal history of writing prior outside of your experiences with Gathering of the Tribes?

CW: Steve published my first book, Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind when I was 27. I worked on the book for about three years with him as the main editor.

It is a collection of short stories/a novella about a mother and daughter growing up in rural poverty, tracing both of their lives from childhood to adulthood. That book sold out within a few months. It was then picked up for a second print by The Unbearables imprint of Autonomedia Press.

My second book, a novel, The Albino Album was then picked up by a larger publisher, Seven Stories Press which aslo published my subsequent collections of short fiction Things To Do When You’re Goth in the Country, as well as my most recent

memoir, 100 Times (A Memoir of Sexism).

Steve died the day the New York Times reviewed that book and that broke my heart because I didn’t get to tell him about it. In the hospital, he was still selling my books. I came to visit him and he somehow had many copies of my book (which again, was published by a totally different press by that time, Seven Stories Press).

He had them on the nightstand by his bed and was strong-arming people who were visiting him in the hospital into buying them. This was just a couple of days before he passed away, so no one told him no. Everyone bought one. I mean, they had to. It was humbling and so sweet and also completely ridiculous.

He was a fierce advocate and mentor.

I’ve never seen anything like it before. The things he did for you sometimes you feel like I don’t deserve this. Why are you doing this?

I have a contract with a great press now, and that is because of A Gathering of the Tribes. So, it’s hard to talk about my writing outside of Tribes completely, even though I have my own independent writing career.

Steve gave me a chance by publishing my first book. It was a chance that, as a queer writer coming from rural poverty, I don’t think I would have had access to so easily with any in the other institutions in New York City.

He gave me a chance to prove myself as an author, and when the book sold out, I got picked up by larger presses, and then a larger one.

That is the mission of A Gathering of the Tribes; to support traditionally underrepresented artists and writers.

Steve showed me what that really meant, what it looked like in real, human terms, and it changed my life. I know how important it is to continue to do the same for the writers who don’t see themselves represented by mainstream institutions coming up today.

INTERVIEW

RC: What was your wildest Gathering of the Tribes party moment ever?

CW: Oh man. So, okay. I’d been living at Tribes about a year. I’d been working very hard on the Charlie Parker Festival.

And sometimes Steve would do this thing with the young people at Tribes.

As a bonus for hard work, he’d like, give you Tribes for a day, and see what you’d do with it if you were in charge. Like, he gave the Sarah Lawrence interns the gallery for a day and let them curate and install wherever they wanted and host an opening, when their intern semester ended, as thanks for their work.

He gave me Tribes for a day at the end of the Charlie Parker Festival. I was in my early twenties. He told me he’d give me a budget of a few thousand dollars, and that I could have the building, the garden, whatever I wanted, and that I should curate the event that closed out the festival that year.

At that time, I just really wanted a parade. I loved parades. I loved art parades, and New Orleans style second lines. I loved weird, avant-garde art parades. I told Steve I wanted to throw a parade, and he seemed delighted by that, and so I hired the Hungry March Band, and put out a press release about dressing up in costume, and celebrating the legacy of the Lower East Side, and whatnot. We invited some poets to kick things off with a reading outside of Tribes.

Also, there was this club that I went to all the time a few blocks away called The Apocalypse. One of the former owners of the Limelight opened it, and it definitely had that party-kid, punk glam, wild vibe.

I told him I was going to be leading an art parade around the Lower East Side and wanted to end it at The Apocalypse and have the festival after party there. I told him I needed to reserve the whole club for the night. He said he would reserve it for me, but I guess he hadn’t actually believed

Chavisa Woods with Steve Cannon, 2013 me, because he only reserved a section of it. I showed up at his door around nine pm with about three hundred people, and his jaw literally dropped.

We’d led a parade all around the neighborhood, and the Lower East Side being what it is, half the neighborhood just came out and joined in the fun and followed us to the party. That’s one thing I love about parades, how they expand. People were dancing and the band was playing. Some people from the neighborhood grabbed their instruments and joined in.

We took over the streets, an entire block and a half with no permit or anything, in complete ravelry.

One of the strangest parts about it was that somehow the parade ended up

being led by a very large, nude man with a tiny penis and enormous testicles. He was some sort of performance artist, I believe.

He probably weighed around 400 pounds, and he didn’t wear any clothing, except an arm band. He was very sweet, and he attended and it was sort of a natural progression that he be in the front of the parade, leading, so that’s the first thing people saw, this naked man and all of these costumed freaks and hula hoops flying in the air followed by the band and all.

But the strange part was, and you’re not going to believe this, but I can have it verified by others, when we got to the bar, well, the owner hadn’t reserved it for us, and there was an artist there doing a drink and sketch night, and reclining on a bench in the window was LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 33

INTERVIEW

WHITNEY MUSEUM RC: How does Gathering of the Tribes connect with The Whitney Biennial? Certainly, Tribes also showcased visual artists as well as writers. Is the connection based upon the artwork as well as the writers who were published by Tribe’s own Fly By Night press?

Girl in the museum, New York, USA © Eric Akoto a second, very large, totally nude, bald man with a tiny penis and enormous testicles. The nude man from our parade and him immediately locked eyes, and everyone squealed like we were witnessing some long-fated meeting.

They did not know one another. It was a total coincidence. They looked like tweedledee and tweedledum.

We all crammed into the club, hundreds of us, and partied all night like heathens.

The two nude men became inseparable throughout the party and got a lot of attention, I might add, from the glam rock kids who were there. Someone even ripped their shirt and tied an arm band around the second one, so they matched. I remember, this glittered covered girl was flirting with them and her friend came up to her while she was talking to them and asked, ridiculously, “Oh, my god! Are they actually like totally naked,” and the girl giggled and told him, “No. They’re wearing armbands.”

Steve made me describe them to him over and over again, and it really made him laugh. He loved stuff like that.

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CW: The exhibition at the Whitney is a sort of meta-re-creation of the 285 East 3rd Street space. It showcases Tribes simultaneously as the artist, Steve Cannon’s life’s work, a collaborative project between hundreds of artists and writers over 30 years’ time, and a collection of archival materials including David Hammons’ red wall, Steve’s personal library, as well as the books and magazines published by Tribe’s Fly by Night Press, which add up to something much greater than the sum of their parts.

RC: Steve Cannon’s literary Rolodex (they were a ’90s thing) is impressive. One of the reasons I write poetry is because of an NYU production: for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. Steve Cannon knew ntozake shange, Thulani Davis, Robbie McCauley all iconic writers and theater artists who spoke of their gender powers and Black identity. I knew that I could connect my birth as a poet to ntozake shange and Filipino writers Jessica Hagedorn and Cyn. Zarco. Steve Cannon gave me a historical womb to be birthed as a poet. I do think it is this history that made me feel safe and that I would be welcome. Can you tell us a little about where this hospitable and magnanimous space that is Gathering of the Tribes comes from?

CW: Tribes 285 East 3rd Street Salon was always open, literally 24/7, though I’m not sure it was hospitable. It was never a safe space. It was actually a space fertile with provocation, heated debate, potentially

offensive statements and material awaiting you at every turn.

Steve was a multiculturalist. In some ways, Tribes was like the opposite of canceled culture. He rarely kicked anyone out for anything, even when I sometimes thought he should have. Even if he did kick someone out, they could still return the next day. I don’t think he ever 86-ed anyone.

This is complicated to talk about. He did something so special with that space.

He really believed diversity could change the world. He felt that people who had experiences of oppression in this society were stronger together, and that in order to work together, we really had to deal with each other.

When I first moved in with him, he asked me what I was reading. I gave him the list and he asked me, “Why are you only reading white people?” He said, “You’re only reading white, gay authors, like you.” I was 21, coming from the rural Midwest and South, and hadn’t really thought about it before, but as soon as he said it, I knew it was true. He gave me a list of authors to read, and I did. He expanded me intellectually because of that.

He didn’t cancel people for their xenophobia, conscious or unconscious, but he also wouldn’t let it stand. He confronted it. We confronted each other.

I remember, a friend of his was sitting at dinner with us and saying some really homophobic things, specifically about lesbians, and he said, “Why don’t you ask Chavisa how she feels about what you just said.” He made me confront the man. We argued. He bristled and left in a bad mood, but a few days later, when he came back to Tribes, he apologized to me and told me he thought about what I’d said and had never talked to a gay woman about those types of things before. It’s different when you are in a space with a human being, looking right at them, saying “Your bigotry hurts me,” than when

INTERVIEW

you’re calling someone out online, in text, so separately.

That wasn’t the main goal of Tribes.

The Tribes Salon was, above all, an intellectual space. It was a creative, experimental space that allowed for some of the most avant garde artists to play however they chose. But I will say, the multiculturalism that was foundational to the mission when it was founded in the ’90s did provide a bit of a different template for dealing with the politics of intersecting marginalized identities than much of what we see today, even though today, it gets more lip survive than it did back then. I personally prefer Steve’s way. There was more of a humanity to it.

AESTHETICS AND FORMS RC: I’m at the MLK library in Washington, DC, and outside my study room is an anthology published in 1968, Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American writing edited by Amiri Baraka and Larry Neal and inside the book are poems by David Henderson who is a Gathering of the Tribes board member with me. I am impressed at the power and legacy of an anthology and its ability to freeze a moment in time.

Describe some of the range of books that Fly by Night has published and what you are looking to publish in the future.

CW: Fly by Night press specifically publishes debut books and emerging diverse authors of diversity. For traditionally under-represented authors, those first and second books are so pivotal in getting their foot in the door of the literary world.

About 89% of books published in the U.S. are written by white authors.

That’s unacceptable. All authors of color published only account for about 11% of books that get published each year. Then

when you talk about female authors of color, it’s smaller. Queer authors of color, smaller still. And even the white authors who are getting published, the majority of them are straight cis people from affluent backgrounds. Representation matters. It matters for the working writers who deserve to be given a chance to fund their audience.

It matters for the readers who have never seen themselves in the pages of a book.

I would like to start up Fly by Night Press again, and I am currently seeking additional funding to do so. But the A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine Online brings in more than 60,000 unique readers each year, and also provides financial incentives to many of the diverse writers published on our site. We have some amazing fiction, features, and poetry up right now. Give it a read at tribes.org.

RC: How can an emerging artist writer find their way to Tribes and say I am part of this. In what ways can we sustain and continue Steve Cannon’s legacy through A Gathering of the Tribes?

CW: A Gathering of the Tribes has many current programs that build on the original mission. Tribes is committed to serving traditionally under-represented artists and writers of diversity, amplifying the emerging and established revolutionary voices of our time.

Right now, A Gathering of the Tribes Magazine Online employs many diverse artists and writers, connects our published authors to a wide audience, and provides stipends for creation and publication of new prose. Our reviews specifically focus on increasing visibility of books by traditionally under-represented authors as well.

Submission guidelines can be found on our website.

Tribes Spotlight Series is a virtual reading series that occurs five times a year, featuring diverse authors, connecting

them to wider audiences and also providing financial stipends to our readers. Our limited, in-person pop-up events, like the Marathon Reading at the Whitney Biennial, function with the same goals.

This summer, we will be publishing the first print issue of Tribes Magazine since Steve left us. Tribes #16: The Black Lives Matter Issue, edited by Ishmael Reed and Danny Simmons, with assistant editor Margaret Porter-Troupe, is coming out very soon, so stay tuned for that!

And recently, Tribes launched a fiscal sponsorship program for individual artists and artist groups. The low-threshold entry design of the application process and qualifications is specifically geared to traditionally under-represented artists and writers of diversity. You can apply at the Tribes website.

We are of course looking to increase our offerings of financial incentives and resource supports. I took over as Executive Director in April of 2020. It has been difficult re-starting our programs during a pandemic, to say the least. I am deeply grateful to all of our major donors, including, of course, David Hammons, the donors who support CoSA, of which Tribes is a member, Poets and Writers, The Amazon Literary Partnership, the Christopher and David Murray Fund of Stonewall Community Foundation, and which just today, awarded us additional funding.

I would be remiss if I didn’t pass the hat.

Steve always made sure I passed the hat at the end of everything we did. If you believe in our mission and the artists we serve, of course we would love for you to donate, either directly, via our GoFundMe Campaign, by purchasing an artist-designed T-shirt, and even just sending it via Venmo.

We’re working hard to keep his legacy alive and help ensure a diversity of voices are able to find representation in the arts. ● LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 35

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WHERE ART THOU HEART: VISUAL LANGUAGE LOST ON DEAF EYES JEREMY CANIGLIA “IF ART IS NOT AS BRUTAL AS IT IS BEAUTIFUL, THEN IT DOES NOT EXPLORE THE TRUTH OF THE HUMAN CONDITION.” Jennifer Scott, Director, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

C

reative expression through narrative storytelling is a powerful tool for fighting oppression and breaking through indifference.

Few artists are willing to go against the grain and use their compositions to interrogate the darkest parts of human nature. Attempts are made to silence social activism, and only a handful of artists take a stand in verbal and visual commentary.

My artwork embraces empathy and the power of the human spirit to rise above natural disasters, disease, poverty, and wars.

My paintings and drawings are a visual language that far too often falls on deaf eyes.

I now create with an urgency to awaken minds before it is too late. People always ask me why the majority of my work centers on birth, love, and death. I suppose the

answer is that grappling with these themes helps me to understand the impermanence of life on this planet. When an artist paints from the heart they are usually isolated or ostracized because society and the viewer find the work to be too brutally honest and hard to ingest.

The fear of rejection from galleries and collectors is undeniable. I have dealt with it firsthand, and I know artists who fear losing their income if they shock the public or upset the viewer with a composition whose subject matter challenges the norm.

Even my fellow educators fear that schools will fire them or create consequences for participating in marches and taking a public stance on issues of social or environmental justice. They make “safer” paintings and sculptures that conform, such as simple

portrait or landscape work. While these pieces are valuable and relevant, they fit a genre separate from that of activism artwork, which initiates a dialogue of change.

I believe as painters we have moral and ethical obligations to document the truth of our world and our hearts.

I have been showing my work professionally for almost thirty years in galleries and museums. As an illustrator, film concept artist, gallery artist, curator, and art historian I have seen my art featured in over 120 novels, numerous magazines, and movies. I am also a teacher and adjunct

Left: A Painting by Jeremy Caniglia

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ARTIST ESSAY

© Caniglia

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professor on the high school and collegiate level. I teach drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture, and filmmaking. I take time to lecture at galleries, universities, and schools, as well as for community outreach programs. My lectures explain how I use painting as a visual language to tell stories.

Specifically, I explain how my painting is activism, addressing wars, climate change, and educating the public on the importance preserving our natural world.

It is a mistake, however, to assume that the viewing public is complacent.

Caravaggio, Giuseppe de Ribera, Artemisia Gentileschi, Francisco Goya, Käthe Kollwitz, and my teacher Odd Nerdrum among others, were willing to refrain from “prettifying” or embellishing the human condition and instead exposed its darkest realities. The timelessness of their work can be measured in increasing demand for it, both in collections and as seen in viewership numbers at museum shows. That timelessness is anchored by the simple fact that beauty is not the only archetype of relevance to painting, nor even the most important. Others, such as pathos and ethos, imbue art with greater meaning, a fact that the aforementioned artists understood explicitly and that the public does implicitly.

Archetypes referencing despair, sorrow, and death are more than simply grotesque.

Rather, they force a light upon the deep shadows of our complicated world, forcing us to confront fear of and complacency toward unseen tragedies occurring every day.

The future depends on our action to right wrongs sprung from apathy and greed.

Art can play an essential role in combating those vices, but if it is beautiful without simultaneously being brutal, it furthers the complacency that leads society away from the warnings of scientists and experts and towards vacuous promises of a poorly remembered past.

We must recognize that painting is not all beauty and life is not always beautiful.

ARTIST ESSAY

Having said that, though, we must also recognize that beauty need not be found at some vantage far removed from the harsh realities of life. Rather, seeing the beauty in the struggles we face and looking for light in the darkness that can surround us helps us create an understanding of who we are and what we are about. This exercise gets to the heart of the central questions of the painter’s profession: Why does an artist create? Can we truly create a painting if we have nothing to say with it? Are we capable of giving ourselves to something even if we do not fully understand it?

These are some of the questions that have been the driving force behind my narratives.

As I mentioned, most of my work explores climate change, wars, revolution, poverty, and endangered species. It takes an anti-establishment perspective. I began using my artwork in the late ’80s and early ’90s to confront issues of universal concern. My deep commitment to human rights, social justice, and biodiversity has never swayed. I find strength in civil disobedience.

In 1986, at the age of 16, I went to the Civic Auditorium in Omaha, Nebraska, to see a man who brought a message of peace, atonement, and human dignity for all through his political activism. His name was Elie Wiesel. He had just won the Nobel Peace Prize and was on a small tour. I listened to this man, who was so humble that he didn’t even want his award. I remember how sad his voice was, and yet also how uplifting. His words would inspire me for the rest of my life. He spoke about teen suicide, and against violence, repression, and racism.

He said that it was up to us to be the change we want and need in this world, and that no one would help us.

In the early ’90s, I was in a punk industrial band that pushed for social justice in the inner cities. I toured through the Midwest and created visual graphics

for each show that brought awareness to issues I did not see anybody talking about.

Inspired by Elie Wiesel, I participated in marches for those who were marginalized.

I continue to advocate and attend social justice marches, but now with my children. I want them to understand and take a stand on matters that are important to them and our natural world.

In the mid ’90s, I moved to the East Coast and lived in Baltimore, Maryland, during graduate school. My work and activism changed, and I spoke through my paintings about the inequality, racism, and injustice that I witnessed on the streets.

IT IS A MISTAKE, HOWEVER, TO ASSUME THAT THE VIEWING PUBLIC IS COMPLACENT. One of my paintings, Welcome to America, made the front page of the Washington Post on July 14, 1994. It was the first time I realized the power of art. My artwork and the issues I addressed reached a wider audience and served a higher purpose by raising awareness.

In 1998, Odd Nerdrum, a fellow painter that I greatly admired, declared that he was no longer an artist, but rather a “kitsch painter.” Disillusioned with modernist ideas that he saw as absurdist and that fostered apathy and ego in artistic expression, Nerdrum embraced his association with the technical skills of the Old Masters and sought to use their trade to render empathy on his canvases. Nerdrum could not have cared less what society

thought of him, and he embraced largescale narratives full of timeless archetypes.

I would eventually find my path to Røvik Gård and study with Odd Nerdrum personally. Beyond what he taught me technically, Nerdrum also left me with the lesson that—whether we are called kitsch, grotesque, dark, or low brow—narrative storytellers are painters searching for sentimentality. He showed me that this is an honorable pursuit, and that I should never apologize for being genuine.

In a masterpiece, time and place are captured so vividly that a viewer is moved to the moment, to joy or sorrow more than tears. A masterpiece lifts a veil, exposing the heartstrings of life—it allows those heartstrings to resonate and reverberate in the depths of the human condition.

In our less than picture perfect world, finding an artist who can draw inspiration from life’s oddities, struggles, and melancholy is rare. Painters who can find meaning in this world’s oppression and also have technical training in narrative storytelling is even more uncommon. Even for the few who possess both, issues showing their work arise because few venues exhibit work labeled “kitsch painting,” “imaginative realism,” or “dark art.”

It was around 2000–2005 that my artwork started to shift again. At that time, I would often take my children to the botanical gardens, and I was studying the diversity of plants and insects. On one visit, I was in a huge pollinator section with a variety of butterflies and, all of sudden, they began landing on only my son and daughter. It was a magical moment because I noticed that they were not landing on the adults.

I had an idea for a painting that I called Birth of Spring, with butterflies kissing the innocence of youth. The glow depicted in the painting was the love and empathy that came from our natural world.

Around this same time, my art started to bring awareness to the monarch popuLITROMAGAZINE,COM | 39

ARTIST ESSAY

© Caniglia lation that was (and still is) in an historic decline. I decided that I would paint a new series of butterfly pieces. One of the paintings was of a butterfly that was tied to a brick. I called the piece A luminous, fluttering melody tethered to a dystopian dream.

The idea was that no matter how bad the apathy in our world becomes, dreamers are still willing to fight and overcome obstacles no matter how daunting they may seem.

The monarch represents the mysteries of the soul: love, death, and rebirth. It is a symbol of transition and hope. In my work, I portrayed the monarch as having the ability to lead us out of the darkness, confinement, and restraints of oppression and into the light.

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From 1996 to 2010, my art and activism started to get more organized.

I realized that I was getting better at portraying and talking about the issues that I was passionate about.

I began to put all my efforts into my narrative storytelling.

In 2022, I have found that our world is at a tipping point with climate change.

Our natural world has been compromised by politicians and corporate greed.

The mechanics of destruction and the gears of war are now a felt reality and have devasted families in the Middles East, Africa, and now in the Ukraine. Everything has been affected. The planet is still warming at an alarming rate, wiping out important pollinator populations and causing massive biodiversity loss. With so much at risk and on the verge of extinction, we need to come together as good citizens, environmentalists, and art activists to make the change we seek.

The fact is, if we are going to save the world we love, protect its biodiversity, and humankind, we need to come together in solidarity and fight for a better tomorrow.

There is no longer room for indifference and standing on the sidelines. Even though our society will deny the reality of climate change, I have found common ground in our communities’ efforts to initiate change—especially those concerning polli-

nators. It seems everyone is willing to rally around bees and butterflies, which are a universal symbol in art and the cycle of life.

My narrative paintings are created from the mud of my palette with muted, earthen, neutral colors depicting a blend of detailed realism and emotional distance filled with pathos. My work strives to grant agency to the poor and downtrodden. I give strength to those who have no voice and hope my work becomes a call to action to the contemporary public and those willing to listen.

We do not live in a vacuum . . . in lightness of emptiness, mindless men rattle words and sabers frantically bumping into one another seeking some way to exist together on earth. They do not know what they are looking for since they are blind to one another. Most think they have the answers and definition of what this world is about, but they are clueless to the multiple truths that exist. As Odd Nerdrum told me, “If you think you have the definition right then you are part of the stupidity.”

The people on top and in control realize that the human mind . . . the storytellers are the most dangerous enemy, and it is these minds that they must oppress and destroy before they shine light on the truth and lies that wait for us in the shadows.

The governments, corporations, and art critics wait in the wings like wolves watching for our one misstep so they can pounce on us and take us.

Art activism can come in many forms.

Ask yourself what role you could play.

Maybe you are a writer and could send an editorial to your local newspaper discussing climate change, poverty, or global wars; or maybe you are a photographer and could take photos of biodiversity and animal struggles with climate change. Perhaps, you are an art activist like me that could use visual narratives for change. We are the light for the human condition and need to fight for a better and brighter tomorrow. ●

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

ERIKA KECK

Litro: Can you tell us about what you’re currently working on?

Erica Keck: I’m currently in between bodies of work right now. For the past year I was primarily focused on a series of flower and vase drawings. These are slowly evolving into a new body of paintings and other objects that will be part of a bigger exhibition being planned for the near future.

These recent drawings had more of a rep-

resentational image within them that had been missing from some of my previous work. I’m excited to see how I can pull that forward.

Litro: Although many of the materials you use are traditional, their employment in your work is often not. Can you tell us a little bit about your creative process, namely how tradition and experimentation affect your work?

EK: I like to think of tradition as the karmic circumstances and parameters we inherit in any situation, form, or practice. To be merely traditional is to just blindly subscribe and stay within the borders someone else decided was historically the right way to approach or do something. Being locked in tradition is stagnant and oppressive. To just rail against tradition is reactionary and blindly nihilistic. Both approaches are overly moralizing and yield lousy results. Between

Above left: EK_DRAWING_2022_044, Ink & oil pastel on construction paper (unframed), 2022, 9 x 12 in.

Above right: EK_DRAWING_2022_017, Ink on Japanese paper (unframed), 2022, 9 x 12 in.

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ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

EK: These evocations are distantly conscious at this point in my work. While I’ve pushed more towards a materialist approach rather than an imagist approach in creating paintings the human body has always been my primary object.

At some point I did consciously start thinking about paintings as a surrogate body. This allowed for a more playful approach in creating abstract art while also not becoming locked into traditional ways of representing the human form or the trappings of identity politics.

@ Keck those two binaries lies a sweet spot where I’m forced to engage with the past but also expected to look forward to the future. That continuity is always full of possibilities and joy where fresh and unpredictable things are created. Even if those experiments fail in some way, the process of staying curious and engaged gives us the tools and inspiration to create a world we want to be in rather than a world where we're subject to oppressive and exploitative forces.

Litro: Despite largely not using overt figuration, your paintings still manage to evoke a sense of place or the body. Are these evocations always planned or do they sometimes happen by chance?

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Litro: Your oeuvre, on the whole, plays with the real and/ or perceived distinctions between painting and sculpture.

Are these experiments in genre conscious interrogations or more intuitively based?

EK: I wasn’t consciously trying to make a painting that jumped genre simply for the sake of doing so. That said, genre-nonconforming artworks or paintings behaving badly resonates deeply with me. For a long time, I was very interested in creating situations with paint and paintings that pushed all the materials and boundaries to a point where everything oozed, spilled over, and fell apart under its own weight. Maybe that makes me a painter trapped in a sculptor’s body, or would it be the other way around?

Either way, it’s all just formalism that's

probably gone too far.

Litro: What role, if any, does narrative play in your paintings?

EK: I’m not sure it plays an obvious role to the viewer. However, it probably plays a prominent role in my inner voice while creating. As I mentioned before I see painting as a surrogate form of my body/physical form.

I’m not so interested in sharing my personal stories with people, largely because they’re probably boring to other people. I do aspire though to touch into the texture of those stories and share that with the viewer which I see as being more relatable.

Litro: Your artistic style has drawn many comparisons with the work of painters like Francis Bacon and Chaïm Soutine.

Are there any specific artists or movements that you can cite as influences? Have they changed over the course of your career?

EK: My influences have absolutely changed over the course of my artistic practice. And there're countless amazing artists who have influenced me in different ways, including Bacon & Soutine. Currently I’ve been thinking a lot about holes. Holes, voids, portals, and passageways. Donald Moffett and Lee Bontecu are masters of this. In particular, I've been interested a lot in the relationship between Bontecu's sculptures and drawings.

Litro: Do you have any advice for new artists today?

EK: I think we exist in a moment where there’s an overabundance of certainty and small mindedness which is breeding unnecessary hostility. I think artists have a responsibility to overcome those impulses.

Stay curious, sensitive, and engaged with the world by trying to listen a little more and talk a little less. ●

ARTIST SPOTLIGHT

EK_DRAWING_2022_017, Ink on Japanese paper (unframed), 2022, 9 x 12 in.

LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 43

LITRO'S INAUGURAL

SECTION

I

t is apropos that Litro’s Inaugural Emerging Art Section is featured in the experimental edition of the magazine. All of the arts share in the pursuit of discovery—finding new ways to represent, view, and

understand reality. With this inherently comes experimentation and the ongoing process

of forming and

implementing new

ideas and methods.

Experimental art is

a purposefully broad

c ategor y, me a nt

to give a r tists free

reign to imagine

and create work that

is unbounded by notion of what otherwise, should

Who is your favorite emerging artist in this section?

Vote by scanning the QR code.

a ny preconceived art, experimental or be. The artists and

work featured in this section are on the cutting edge of art being made today, and all engage with the breadth of meaning contained in the word “experimental.” Though the mediums or ideas presented may reference traditional modes of art making, they are still boundary pushing in the ideas and methods they employ. Experiments often fail, which is why it is so compelling—both in literature and visual art—when an experiment works.

It is then a call to action for the viewer to feel, think, or consider the world from a different perspective. ● 44 | LITRO

EMERGING ARTIST

DIANA BUITRAGO Diana Buitrago is originally from Colombia, and lives and works in New York City and Jersey City.

They were trained in the classical Atelier Method, and their work falls largely under the tradition of Classical Realism. Their aim is to bring the tradition of the Old Masters to a contemporary reality.

Reclining Pose, Oil on Linen (Framed) 2018

William, Oil on Linen, 16x20 inch, 2018

Back Pose, Oil on Linen, 2017 LITROMAGAZINE,COM | 45

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EMERGING ARTIST

ALUU PROSPER

Left: Aluu Prosper. This little, light of mine, 2022. Oil on canvas, 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm).

Aluu Prosper (b. 1999) is from Afikpo North, in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. He is a multidisciplinary, self-taught visual artist that creates art that requires the fusion of two-dimensional and three-dimensional art forms, fusing oil paints and sand in paintings that focus on Afrocentrism and Pan-Africanism with surrealism and mannerism.

Alluu Prosper. The hour has come, 2022. Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 in.

(61 x 61 cm).

Alluu Prosper. Who’s there?, 2022. Oil on primed panel, 24 x 24 in. (61 x 61 cm).

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EMERGING ARTIST

AMY BASSIN Amy Bassin is an artist from New York City who uses photography, video, moving images, and works on paper to explore power struggles, survival, and personal histories in relation to socio-political events.

She is co-founder of the international artists’ collective, Urban Dialogues.

Amy Bassin. Ethereal Landscape 106, 2022. Archival inkjet print, 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm).

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EMERGING ARTIST

Amy Bassin. Ethereal Landscape 107, 2022. Archival inkjet print, 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm).

Amy Bassin. Ethereal Landscape 118, 2022. Archival inkjet print, 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm).

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EMERGING ARTIST

IMAN JABRAH Iman Jabrah is a Palestinian American multidisciplinary artist currently based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her main focus is to shed light on the losses one cannot control, and how the fragments of these memories remain to linger as a form of identity.

In 2022, Jabrah received Artswave’s Truth and Reconciliation grant to sponsor the exhibition Amid during her curator-inresidence at Wave Pool gallery; Amid showcases artworks by Palestinian artists from the West Bank and diaspora.

Iman Jabrah. The Map of Palestine, 2022. Thorn sculpture and digital projection, dimensions variable.

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EMERGING ARTIST

Iman Jabrah. Make America Great Again, 2021. Sculpture photography, 36 x 36 in. (91.5 x 91.5 cm).

Iman Jabrah. Three Factors, 2021. Sculpture photography, 36 x 36 in. (91.5 x 91.5 cm).

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PARENTHETICAL CHARLIE KITE

W

e (and by we I mean Claire (the woman I swore (vow (we still vow, we still pledge ourselves, like honourable (‘honour you’, that’s a wedding vow (there’s that word (words hurt, she said (where did she say it? Was it in the park? (sunlight streaming through the branches by that willow (there were willows by my old school (I met Claire (first time (so many firsts, eroded (standing on the Devon cliffs (a first holiday, funded by pennies (God, we’ll need to divide (promising in front of an obsolete altar (you laughed when I said we should go to church, in case we had kids (the perennial question (how did we not talk about this? Surely we should have talked (we didn’t talk (I never talked (I don’t talk, my therapist

Left: Peter Schoolwerth. Model for “Personality Inventory”, 2018. Oil, acrylic, inkjet print, and mixed media on foamcore.

78 ½ x 68 x 19 in. (199.4 x 177.8 x 48.3 cm).

Courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York.

(therapist not psychiatrist, that’s a firm line I draw (that’s another issue I have, apparently, drawing arbitrary lines in the sand (the pebble beach, scratty (one of her conjured words (words matter, she said over a coffee in Cambridge (when did we go to Cambridge? Why did we go to Cambridge? That’s gone (sitting for the first time alone on the bed (we bought that bed second hand (the first time we went to IKEA, so proud of being able to buy joint, new furniture, but we never did (despite the years (years gone, years faded, all chucked into a pile of memories (I read an article today that said all memories are constructs (so what do we remember? Seeing Claire in school for the first time, was that real? My mother’s (I should (lots of things I should be doing, instead of standing here (how did I get here? Who are all these people?

I can’t recognise (I realised a few days ago that I can’t remember my father’s (a tall man (I’m short, not like him (I don’t even look like him according to the few photos (discovered one wet weekend a few years ago, nestled beneath the coffee

table (I wonder if they bought that table together, so proud (he was (is? was? There’s a quiet horror (it was a horrible divorce, I remember that, screaming and hurled plates (I’ve a temper (another reason for Claire to leave (he left, my father, he went one day and that was the end of our relationship (we never had a good (not terrible not violent, but we never truly connected (bar a shared love (I say love, for him it was a deep burning passion while I simply enjoyed casually watching (tucked up on the old green (green was a colour between us - the colour of the countryside we lived in where he’d drag me (I wish I’d gone willingly, wish I’d walked with him knowing how little time (there’s such little time (my whole childhood with my father is nothing but a small book (like the mid-century book of tennis rules he found (I never (like so many (an endless list that stretches (my father stretching out his arms (before he was gone (my parents divorced (my father left me) when I was eleven) forever) for me as I jump over a creek) ever growing before me) things undone) found him) and

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FICTION

Peter Schoolwerth. Shadows Past 7, 2013. Oil, acrylic, inkjet print, and oil pastel on canvas.

80 x 57 ½ in. (203.2 x 146.1 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York.

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gave me) of recollections) for us) we had before he vanished) on endless dog walks, Plymouth Argyle kit, his favourite coat) sofa) alongside him) of tennis) in the way fathers and sons are meant to) relationship, mind) in its entirety) in the end) too, like him I suppose, so maybe that’s what passed down) and lawyers, the whole nine yards) in that I’ve no idea) very houseproud, mother says) of buying joint furniture) I had ignored my whole childhood) my mother didn’t destroy), according to my mother with broad shoulders) face, not really) faces) with a glass in my hand gurning like an idiot) call her) face? My father’s smell? Are all these strong held things simply fabrications?) and I realised I was having a panic attack) and tourist tat) we didn’t do so many things) replace the bed) online) and the light was somehow greyer and stiller because she had gone) now, another memory that flickers but vanishes) as rain pounded the windows) that has stolen its way into my vocabulary) sand laced with rough stones that chip the sole) over issues without consulting others), the difference between casual help and medical attention) says, as a way of coping with potential past trauma), I don’t know why) enough about things that mattered) about this?) that tore everything up) and they needed a good school) to remain together until death, that’s a laugh) assets, won’t we?) barely saved from jobs that barely paid) with the wind buffeting, wondering when the whole coastline would evaporate into salt water) into past) seeing her, in the sixth form, just another girl that piqued a teenage interest) at that school), I think, though they didn’t sit over water) by the lake, gold and green and red) In the kitchen? Maybe she said it more than once), words cut deeper than you think) again), isn’t it, that’s one) people, like knights), promise, commit) to remain with until death) and I) got divorced. ●

A ROGUE CURE RAE DIAMOND

O

n sunny afternoons, I go out to the street to eat tar. It reminds me of black licorice, and maybe it is a medicine for an ill I intuit but cannot articulate.

I pull foul, gooey berries, sun-softened and caustic scented, from mended cracks in the street. My mind—still, silent, and numb—watches my attentive teeth bite and scrape tar from my fingers; watches the black, bitter gobs slide down my throat like pills from some netherworld.

Whether remedy or poison, my intestines are furious. They want the tar out. A pain in my gut turns into a voice like creaking branches that chants—

bloom * let them teach the tar * how to turn into clouds * that rise to your eyes * condense like rain * and fall * iridescent pearls onto petals * the colors of milk and of night *

* breathe green air in liquid light * follow wind to its source * undress * swim in a swamp * crawl inside of an alligator * hatch out of its egg * fly away, a crane * with your beak, write a message * in mud * watch it crack in the sun * and become dust * fly backwards until you are * human again * plant hollyhocks, black and white * on graves of the forgotten * pretend you remember them * weep until the flowers

When the viscera song ceases, the atmosphere is viridescent, and the sun’s light descends in slow swirling flows like warm honey. ●

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Raz-Shumaker

book prize series

2021 Winners

PRIZES

JUDGING

$3,000 and publication through the University of Nebraska Press for one book of short fi ction and one book of poetry.

Finalists will be chosen by a panel of guest judges. Final manuscripts will be chosen by the Editor-in-Chief, Kwame Dawes.

ELIGIBILITY

HOW TO SEND

The Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize Series welcomes manuscripts from all writers, including non-U.S. citizens writing in English, and those who have previously published volumes of short fi ction and poetry. No past or present paid employee of Prairie Schooner or the University of Nebraska Press or current faculty or students at the University of Nebraska will be eligible.

We accept electronic submissions as well as hard copy submissions.

WHEN TO SEND Submissions will be accepted between January 15 and March 15.

For submission guidelines or to submit online, visit prairieschooner.unl.edu.

POETRY TRYPTIC URAYOAN NOEL

ISABELA NOTEBOOK CUADERNO DE ISABELA ISABELA, PUERTO RICO, 07/2021

Town Pueblo Tell me if there’s a city like the one with the horse staring at the sea in front of windows with iron bars Dime si hay una ciudad como esa del caballo frente a las rejas mirando al mar entre las pilas de and flanked by piles of car tires and the minimal graffiti surrounding the shirtless old man who gomas de carro y el grafiti minimal entre el cual gesticula un viejo sin camisa hablándole a una gesticulates while talking to the woman next door whose reply to him is drowned out by the salsa that vecina cuya respuesta queda ahogada por la salsa que retumba de la casita multicolor en la thunders from the multicolored house on the corner that looks as empty as if in a daydream of another esquina que pareciera estar vacía como en el ensueño de otro mundo habitable y de repente los habitable world and suddenly the salsa horns are wind giving way to the faint echo of a dembow beat vientos de la salsa dan lugar en la distancia al leve eco de un dembou y una voz fina de hombre and a whiny male voice all processed and slathered with effects in a romantic fantasia both procesada con efectos en fantasía de romance cosmopolita proletario que no hace sino resaltar cosmopolitan and proletarian that can’t help but underscore the painful beauty of the ruins in the la dolorosa hermosura de la ruina en el callejón aledaño con un colchón detrás del caballo que adjoining alleyway where a mattress lies behind the horse that now looks as if it’s eating dirt and ahora es como si comiera tierra y piedras por que no hay nada en el lote vacío salvo una lata de pebbles because there’s nothing in the vacant lot save for a beer can in the sewer. cerveza en la alcantarilla.

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POETRY

Beach Playa The melanerpes portorricensis pecks at the dried out trunk on the rocky beach with mountains behind it El melanerpes portorricensis pica el tronco seco en la rocosa playa con las montañas atrás y un and a skinny and taciturnly handsome fisherman whose smile is full of sun says that the only things you pescador flaco y taciturnamente guapo con sonrisa de sol dice que aquí lo que se cogen son can catch here are sardines and the tunnel is a muted voice or a mountain that the almost sardinas y el túnel es la sordina de la voz o la montaña que el canto casi indistinguible del pájaro indistinguishable song of the woodpecker soars over as it flees toward the sea even if neither you nor carpintero no rebasa sino que revolotea y huye en dirección al mar (sabes que es macho por el he will get there (you know it’s a male by all the extravagant feathers and the irony is not lost on you derroche de plumas y la ironía no se explica cuando te la aplicas sino que se pierde como el sueño and there’s nothing to explain away only to let go like a dream of coral in a boiling planet). de coral en un planeta que hierve).

Shop Tienda You have no family in this town but you once did and now memory sustains you even if your No tienes familia en este pueblo pero la tuviste y ahora la memoria te sostiene y tal vez tu companion doesn’t understand all of this and of course there’s more than the nuclear and procreative compañero no entienda esto del todo y claro que hay más que la familia nuclear y procreativa family that doesn’t fit on your bed or on your neuronal map but still it’s hard not to rhyme family with o sea esa que no cabe en tu cama ni en tus neuronas pero igual es difícil no rimar familia con isla island as if you didn’t live on the shoal of the voice and the two of you wander like lovers from some como quien no vive a la orilla de la voz y ustedes dos se pasan como amantes de otra antigüedad futuric antiquity always staring at the display windows of the few stores open this imperial holiday futura mirando las vitrinas de las pocas tiendas abiertas en este fin de semana de fiestas de weekend and there are dresses in one of them with geometric vertical stripes in primary colors that imperio y en una hay trajes con rayas verticales geométricas en colores primarios que evocan el evoke the twilight of global modernism against the soft brutalism of the half-built streets of the tropics ocaso de modernismo global ante el brutalismo suave de las calles mitad construidas del trópico y and you both laugh wondering which piece would look best on whom and betting on a desire whose se ríen pensando a quién le quedaría major cada vestimenta y apostando a la lógica no law isn’t reproductive but refractive. reproductiva sino refractaria del deseo.

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Q&A CATHY LINH CHE

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My grandmother.

Who was she?

A stranger.

Why strange?

War, I guess, and time.

What will razing history do?

I want to bridge the distance.

She may have given you salt plums?

Watermelon, mustard greens, fish-salt drying on the salt plum air.

Irretrievable, this grandmother.

She is a ghost.

Wisped inside of you, egg drop soup.

Eaten up.

You are ravenous.

Not satisfied.

Not sated.

I haven’t disappeared.

You’re here.

Were flowers on her casket?

Did you wear white?

My mother did. She was a good/bad daughter.

Like Antigone.

No, not like Antigone. She received the telegram from Vietnam, but did not return home to bury her dead.

In a dust storm, she was—like Antigone.

POETRY

Dear child of the wind: –– past the sea and the green gullies, past the tangerine tree which you grew in the backyard, I knew you, in the taste of the flower stems you chewed, that tart summer scent of cut grass, I knew you in your bowl cut, the red car in the driveway, the lens of your father’s eye.

Something recedes in the distance. Your father took her to sea and watched the stars materialize, mathematical, as if there wasn’t a bond left. Your mother left me,

then your uncle was taken. It was a war, a war. You couldn’t see me, not through the haze of refrigerated air.

Above: Wura-Natasha Ogunji Faster (2020)

Your mother bought us a toilet seat on the ground. She bought concrete so that they could lift my bed up, above the floodwaters. She bought me medicine when I was dying, and when you came home, I knew you. The smell in the air was my body giving up. You could smell my stink. I knew you, your American scents. I knew you, your pink tones. I knew you didn’t know my life, but you knew me by name.

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Cafe / Bar / Restaurant Terrace Breakfast / Lunch / Dinner 246 Tenth Avenue New York, NY bottinonyc.com

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