2022
Marfa, TX
Traveled to Marfa, Texas, for a three-day field recordings study of the natural and built environment to inform creative, collaborative work as an invited poet and researcher.
Equipment: contact microphones and field recording device, iPhone, charcoal rubbings, watercolor color swatches, and written notes.
Art-based field study outcomes:
‘Light Wells, 2022.” A collaborative sound and language performance for New Media and Sound Summit Festival in Austin, Texas. Collaborated with researcher, writer, and sound artist Brent J. Crosson.
‘Cadmium - her figure, wild — blurred. Errant Elements, 2045’ forthcoming chapbook publication with Errant Elements series. Errant Elements is a two-year release chapbook series composed of 118 elements in the periodic table written by scholars, artists, writers, poets, and more. Chapbooks will be released as “issues” of 20 over 2-3 years. Edited by Marina Peterson, Gretchen Bakke, and Megan Gette. Design by Phillip Niemeyer. Funded by a grant from the University of Texas, Austin.
Marfa
War crimes expose us &
the hum of conductors split through &
between the wires that tangle us in -
'tap that stone,' until -
I am a stretch of chain link fence in charcoal.
Bricks pile above
deep hues of cadmium yellow &
grass shakes brittle. Here,
I've found a paintbrush in an old latrine
where light wells are vocal chords &
aren't we all victims of noise?
Watching is like living on the mesa &
I place my voice between cement cracks
until my body feels like-
stone burial mounds: my face a dirty white cross.
Ask me about color.
About tan lines &
pale winter &
what it means to write myself into silence, again.
To pivot my fist into a palm like a metal bird's wings
outside of Brook's grave. Here,
red is the coolest star &
I dangle
as explosive as a frayed electrical wire.
We web ourselves into the electric grid
as our city's prey & in Spectrum Eleven
I drift in the silver night sky until my breath
is a charcoal corridor that curves
like the rusty rim of that oil can.
