Spring 2016
Under My Bed
If people always knew when intruders had broken into their homes, no one would ever die this way. I grab a chef’s knife, the knife that slices through raw chicken, bone and flesh, and return to the living room where the moth persists at the lamp. There’s only one way to be sure. I’ll have to check.
The Great Depression
Perhaps because of the housing boom and bust of the early 21st century, American society is now more aware of the “near poor” or people who are just getting by. But when I was a teenager, normal-looking actually meant “just like everyone else.” No one knew I was hungry and poor.
Novelty Fades
She kept her head down, noting pieces of chrome, the crunch of sandal on pebbles on asphalt, the sound of whirring cars, a dead hawk with its pure white breast ripped apart and wings frayed every which way.
Mrs. Blunt’s Bequest
Ruth had always said that when she was too enfeebled to live independently, she’d “off” herself, as she put it with characteristic candor. A Right-to-Die advocate for decades, she was now bequeathing possessions. That’s what people did when they were going to do themselves in. Ruth would have been proud of me for putting it that way, for not resorting to a more comfortable euphemism.
Nakedness
My body is a private and practical thing—something yielded to the production of children and the scrubbing of a bathtub, but not something I would find either pleasure or pride in offering to the public. And yet, here I am, sitting in front of a computer, offering its naked portrait to the public gaze because, as a writer, my job is to be publicly naked.
The Interview
“Oh yes, there was a famous woman organizer who lived on Evans. If she’s still around, she would be very old now. Older than me,” said Sister Jonnie smiling.
This piqued Valerie’s interest. It could be possible to have an interview.
Herrschaft (Territory)
Again, a question of language—I use the possessive pronoun and I become ill at ease, a little sick, the way you feel when you’ve eaten too many sweets—my rapist, the way I call my lover, my mother, my son.
The Housewife’s Huffing Club
Step five. Place mouth over nozzle. Inhale deeply. Enjoy the buzz that follows and repeat as needed. Huff on, bitches.
Discount
I frame you like a museumed artifact, safe from thievery and me.
Dear broken bread.
Dear broken skull.
Dear Thanksgiving.
Darling Daughter
[T]ell them, dear child, of the female narrative not born
of temptation & sin but of the blood of your blood singing out.
Three Poems
Generations are contained
in her wrist bones, in whether she can
constrain the nature of the bird.
Badlands / The Lakehouse
You’re tempted to find God in every abandoned landscape:
twist of black road snaking through dry grass, shroud
of white hotel cotton, blank heaven that cannot conjure
cloud.
The Devotion of St. Teresa of Ávila
But real sickness arrived like an invitation
slipped under the door
Artist Feature: Milana Braslavsky
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Artist Feature: Andrea Donnelly
This body of work will continue, as a collection of textile texts, to write its own meaning. It seems I will always be learning this language.
Artist Feature: Jane Hugentober
Jane Hugentober is an American artist. Born in Indiana, Jane lived in New York City and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Jane
Artist Feature: Courtney Kessel
In partial protest, I am putting the mother in the gallery. She is not the idealized mother painted with glowing beams of light smiling down
Artist Feature: Robert Mertens
Lying at an intersection of pedagogy, technology and post-minimal Fiber Art history, the performance installations I create explore ideas of failure, fidelity, language, transmission, and progress.