calamity in 6 colors

1. yellow 

as in yellow! my name is knife. just gonna squeeze on by ya: midwestern greeting between the 4th and 5th rib. do you mind if turn my head into a giant staircase, and you, the protagonist of our story, roll down and out where my mouth ought to be? 

good god, i am falling in love with the way i let things lie 

2. blue

oscillation / isolation
simple slept in weapon 
pistachio, moustache, pastiche, succotash, ganache, panache

sung: these are some of my favorite things. 

3. green 

i was smart until i became pope, then everything changed. first your hair becomes grey. they tell you that. but they don’t tell you your insides go gray, too. i can peek the steel with a long hard stare down my throat—can see see it creeping up like aluminum moss.  

i wanted to be a part of the city, but instead the city became part of me, and no, it doesn't go both ways. and no, i don't sing when i'm alone anymore, and yes, my head has gained 13 lbs of raw metal, and yes, i will live another day, but no, not w/ you 

4. red

Burn something down and call it a candle. Burn everything down and call it a séance. Gesture toward r(e)u(n)i(o)n.   

Look both ways before you look both ways. 

5. orange

when you close your mouth, my heart is like a fisted sock.  

6. white

keep in mind the closest exit may be behind you 

do you feel you have taken

one step forward, then two more 

steps in the same direction facing backward 

does it taste like anything 

to be so wrong about everything 

or just your usual mouth 

is it your usual mouth 

because you feel like you are always 

so wrong about everything 

do you pretend to love 

your mother 

with that mouth 

what about light 

& seeing the fact of things 

is so embarrassing 

when something disappears 

don’t you think

you know it a little better 

what does my willingness

to hide from my life say about my attitude 

toward those who choose to stay 

do you think a miracle 

is something 

that just happens 

do you think in the future 

you will say 

something, anything to me 

how is the phrase ghost pipe

both a flower & an accurate description 

of my loving surrender 

anything that pleases you should 

be miraculous when 

everything else displeases 

i think if i could give you anything 

it would be one pleasure 

or one amnesia 

if i had control over the world 

nobody would ever go bald 

vote for me 

if i ever go bald 

i will invent a new person 

to be angry at 

i need an image 

but when i imagine anyone 

your face spills on it 

River / Water

1. Water Front

On rainy days my mom would take us to the Museum of Natural History. At that time, there were only permanent exhibits. Still, every time it felt new. 

Across from the information desk and next to the big stairway, a small glass case much like this one, full of passenger pigeons. The rest of the museum was down the stairs. Musty halls of mystery, all winding their way back to now. 

I grew up in an old city. I grew up in an old house. The paper mill had long been closing; it would be a decade still til the valves were shut. Years, ten more, until the smokestacks scrapped. But even then, what is a shadow? 

The chain link stayed around the site. But I believed I could see through it. The curtains had opened a hundred year dark. Gray waves lapped a mile of shoreline. Young trees breathed their first light of the low orange western sun. 

At what age do we begin to learn that time and space are functions? Parabolas were paths I knew first by walking slowly. “Travel through the Depths of Time and see the plants and animals!” Cambrian. Devonian. Permian. Triassic. An ice age melts into itself and becomes a shallow sea. Miocene. Pliocene. Pleistocene. Holo. Dense tropics dry to desert.

Was it when I turned around to look for mom? Three epochs away and around the bend, yet somehow straight behind me? Or was it in Habitats re-learning “what calls them home,” transfixed by the epoxy?

 

2. Exhibit Materials 

Tire tube 

Plastic water bottles

Plastic scraps of unknown objects 

Pill bottle 

Plush

Budlight can

Budweiser can 

Dr. Pepper can

Smirnoff can, Strawberry Lemon 

Light beer can of unknown origins 

Aluminum scraps

Unlabeled tin cans 

blue plastic plate from a child’s toy dish set 

Sunglass lens 

Safety goggle lens 

Pair of sunglasses 

Nike shoe 

Horseshoe 

Men’s work glove 

Women’s work glove

Blue jean pocket 

Flannel shirt cuff 

Collared infant sweater 

Wire fragments 

Iron fragments 

Kitchen trash bag 

Plush 

Land survey stake 

Blue surgical mask 

Blue plastic straws 

Cotton strips with faded geometric patterns 

Coca-cola glass shards

Unidentifiable glass shards 

Ceramic fragments 

Silk flower petals 

Giant Express Rewards key tag

Plastic human figurine 

Black spiral bound notebook cover

Bouquet of brittle brush flowers

Butterfly wings, Sleepy Orange Sulphur 

 

 

3. Old News

The fact that the Santa Cruz River is dry most of the year is nothing new. Two small blue pills are nothing new. Then four. Then five aren’t either. The fact that the river was not always like this is not something new. 

Trash in the Santa Cruz River is nothing new. When it rains and every wash in town drains its contents there, the trash heaps are, at first, alarming. Not the usual highway heaps. But entire streets that appear to have been swallowed, churned up, spewed out. Couches, mattresses, car doors, 2x4s. Not long after though, nothing new. 

The fact that ads are fucked is nothing new. You are just so used to scrolling over on your phone or passing them on the highway that turning the pages of a magazine one morning has you lingering. Objects connect. Hermes. Welcome to the road to happiness. Illy Coffee. For people who could use a triple lift. Neutrogena. What if your phone learned, adapted, evolved, and became a reflection of you? Google Pixel. 

Monsoon rains are nothing new. But 2020 was my first year in Tucson and that summer it never rained. This year when the monsoons came and the rivers swelled and the hills turned green, everything once again felt like magic. 

Sometimes being reminded of what you think you already know is annoying. Like when you’re a kid being told and then retold: before you go outside to play you have to wash the dishes. Or when you’re feeling pulled down an unpaid road, but your phone dings ten til meeting. Other times the reminder leaves you weeping, amazed that nearing 30 years old, you still don’t know how to listen. Grateful, though, something deep is still there to remind you. 

4. Collecting Notes

I found myself most afraid to reach for the things I was afraid to find. The fear: that each battered shoe might contain a foot Or that each cotton strip unearth a whole garment. Sand has a weight that provokes every question. 

Eyes cast down roving rock studded sand, I slipped into the waters of a long forgotten joy. Evening beach comb, Childhood, Lake Michigan. 

Here was another return address: I reached for most quickly anything small and blue.