Other Writings:

Statement for BathHouse Journal online reading held on October 13, 2022 (Ypsilanti: Eastern Michigan University), Issue 23. Web 2022. 

https://dev.bhjournal.net/issue-23/#deborah

Thanks to Ryan Cox and all of BathHouse Journal for publishing Parts 2 and 3 of Bumblebees in Issue 23. The first section is a free e-chap at BlazeVox Books with artwork by Geoffrey Gatza. And segments after Parts 2 and 3 are part of a work in progress.

For a long stretch my poetry involved a “seed text” such as Moby-Dick, or works of philosophy and commentary that I would fragment, build-out words from a small piece or single syllable refracted with ideas of social critique, pun, epistemic doubts, restless inquiry, that fore-fronted the texture of language. These practices continue but moved into ways that draw from small and large fragments of everyday encounter, high and low, as well as text as “seed” material. Some everyday encounter is recent, others distant and fracture autobiographical material. The environmental concerns recur.

Today I’ll read “Formative Period” (Bumblebees Part 2). It will be about six minutes.

Of references in Part 2, many may recognize the rock band Led Zeppelin, art color Klein Blue made famous by painter Yves Klein, the scientifically-developed Vantablack, the blackest black that was controversially licensed for exclusive use to artist Anish Kapoor, experimental dancer Simon Forti in whose early years she studied animal movements at a zoo—her work has regularly featured at the Box Gallery in my neighborhood, pianist Frederic Rzewski whose minimalist music was performed by Piano Spheres in the courtyard of the Colburn School shortly after his passing, some work by artist Alex Turner who uses border surveillance camera material that was exhibited in Mapping the Sublime: Reframing Landscape in the 21st Century show at the Brand Library, artist Sandow Birk who had a show near here that included work he made during the pandemic closures: a set of romantic old time postcards of Los Angeles that insert depictions of social inequality outside the usual utopian promotional images, and a reference to British artist Phyllida Barlow whose work was mounted nearby, a crowded room that referenced her childhood memory of playing in war-damaged remains: a sort of surreal fragmented sets of stairs to empty air, fractured theatre floors, enormous colorful orbs held above with streaky lumber.

To begin:

Formative Period (Bumblebees Part 2)

Left with contemplative surplus, supposed tricky finger, 

proposed rafters might look into pattern settled, for now, 

as law, saw there graphic tables, indices: loose riddle, 

double entendre worked out puzzle of existence if lawn 

cells click before the Learned were learning, before 

mentored gaze, conversed at lunch, a gift of attentive time.

Then erased files stand in for your old car in relation 

to empty streets, provisional cave, not entirely unmarked

drank deeply, nay quaffed to slake it for Time,

its relation to travel, language, cure, far away from   

darker side of persistence, crazed Obstinate in moral

frame descending, claw let loose from errantry’s 

perimeter, spinning child, once vacated trained dancer, 

scrap trailing on string, scrap elevating with centrifugal 

force, growth invites ice core centuries, lack, appointment 

system, dismay at reversal, left with Led Zep memory-worm, 

driven shoulder to hip way, chord compression mastered 

in basement with someone’s brother, perfected arrow 

analogy, audible practicum for tiny expanse covered phrase 

at a time, then Monday. Phosphorescent watch face 

discharged nighttime location, second sweep tending hand 

on a move to fold another plane ever-green, ever-commercial 

if you discount nonlinear space where we live most of the 

time. Initial it done to another done not fair, love or peace 

thumbs up or down ranked vote for middling talent tally-ho 

damage, equine progress granted an enviable future, musky, 

expensive, flat as proverbial flatness, and yet chip wafer 

thinness aside there might be much less to pack onto one

pack mule in service, cast in dream as unlikely passerby 

recognition shamed to a still, then big laugh flopped scene 

over—we’re here back together again faded green glow 

where we import history pre-fabricated, each square an 

eighth of the height-length of the whole, architecture 

promised uplift from mud furrowed lives that keep us going 

year after year, chromo-sky at university library, structure 

or more feeling for structure? Animal movement observed 

as holy day regularity, procession, turned by line’s end when 

not enjambed shoulder to knuckle ratio, thus turned in season 

pass for entry to everything from International Klein Blue to 

Vantablack and back, each migration, self-consoling Simone

Forti bear-movement, variation on scheme floored a zoo, pose 

as duration, drafted from angles sort out temporal terms, 

takes a long time to produce one, several studies, four to a page, 

say, stylized cut-outs, an all-seeing eye, visible scene on another 

plane just behind improvised so-called plan, free waters 

replaced by stolen, precarious piece joined to shelter piece, 

crate, calendric technology, governance of bodies, free-standing 

lollipops, wall work in crates, lines wrapped with lines, a sort of 

language of architectural plans corroded by overwritten 

horizons, draft elevations, open space, Frederic Rzewski’s

minimal piano plinked falling rain, entangled farmed or 

farmer, famed fungal spores, antidote to theories of sublime 

experience, dangerous heights, soaring ego-capped mount, 

yet down at the base we mailed draft essays, exuberant voice 

came across, lift up, made artists the talk to have, between 

continents and time, mystery of how distant tip communicates

vitality, danger, light across distance, filament mycelia, one 

face swapped for another, at war with language antonym,

metric synonym, nighttime cameras surveil deer, smuggler,

pack animals, border theme, perforate two fabrics to join

distich by hand, yet actuated by ear, we enter the picture, 

its craggy mountains, huts for those with walking sticks,

hard to take time for half-life of uranium, artist-made 

photograms with pieces of it, no sunlight: here’s a plant that 

draws out contamination, heals damage, O Tree! Awoke 

from default mode to wonder brain, all gets set aside, all is 

here, as ever, how did we miss guitars? Gate for you to be, 

help from amateur cultivators, milkweed, bandaged help, 

bundled from harm, emptiness, wait-jumper right here, light 

having traveled so far from extinction. Clay armature, clay 

collapse, willow fuzz floats backlit in breeze, but shelling 

continues over there; Los Angeles postcards Sandow Birk 

made during closures, dystopic elements in old time 

chromolithograph, pinkish at first promotional glance, our

palm trees’ promise, further out from war ruins kids played 

among is Phyllida Barlow, birds return through effort,

monarchs, too, effort at coral health, rehabilitated human

posture, mint, green onions, budding place modifier, nothing

to say but vocalize just to feel vibratory life attach to 

skein of star life.