Narrative

Twin velvet sofas. Commercial district neon blue pulsing against the rosewood
dining table set. Descending the elevator cage to the post office, butcher, grocery.
Bad coffee. Repair/decay.

Some people need to tell children we are the greatest. Hold the baby. Switch off
the lights. In a pale-yellow kitchen peeling potatoes with a knife. Lighting your son’s
heater with a match before daybreak. Responsible/accountable. A dilemma reflecting
the larger dilemma. The white china dog of your white silk blouse. Your mother sewed
lipstick, photographs and cash into her fox fur stole. Forcing us to see what was concealed
from thought.

Narrative

Made to be discovered two inches off a city sidewalk. Pale skin in high weeds.
The incomplete street. Mutilation as language from redesigning the edges of your mouth back to your ears.

A westward expansion drawn to stranger corners. The rotten egg scent of oil fields floating on the Pacific Ocean. Chaparral land parceled. Quick to laugh and sleeping in your sable coat for days. Chumash. Tongva. Tataviam. Begin again/living twice. Biting your nails in your Raven Red lips, you can return to the soft glow of your reinvented future. The illusion of control, a magician’s trick. Defiance in your jaw, the places that made you.

Narrative

Left the champagne reception. The air defense system. People who think they can control the weather. A sheet of vapor inside the window triggered the sudden ache. Your fingers glowing blue and pink, the brushstrokes of thinning tissues.

Dissolved by touch or any words, you cut your hair close to the scalp. Stepped into an ocean in the desert. Awake/without. Liberty/abasement. A hum of color seeking the elimination of almost everything. Called upon the innocence of trees. Skin-to-bones-to-brain. Curved-to-spiked-to-porous. A visual mantra asking us only to sit and look. Lose your mind to it: warmth arises from nothing, dwells in the space between rain.