art that bites back

i am a word person
i say
which means the difference
between contract and agreement
intervention and direction
_______

sweater draped on the line in the sun to rid it of that thing that happens when you ( i ) hug someone wearing perfume/too much ‘rain’ oil
_______
over a gigantic bowl of baba ganoush
and huge pot of quinoa tabouli
six of us plan an elaborate happening that revolves
around the board game/movie clue
the list generated includes but is not limited to:
a stage production in the back yard
creating squares on the house floor to mimic the squares on the board, fuzzy dice to be rolled and we are the game pieces
rose flavored things
sorbet
and somehow incorporating monopoly pieces as well
a you-had-to-have-been-there kind of scene
laughing at each new ridiculous addition
and it’s not about following through on the vision
as it is so much pushing ourselves to imagine/dream
which reminds me of the school bus
that brent and q and i never bought
and therefore never painted pink
never gutted
never built bunk beds in
never prepared barrels of chex mix for the road
never got matching pink bus tattoos
and in q’s artist statement
he thanked brent and i
for the dreaming
because it is what got him through
the grief of his fathers unexpected death

_______

one thing we have in common:
a shared early morning affliction
i hope sleep finds you before 4am tonight i say

_______

iowa city on the other end
(hey teed)
digging into the shared issue of making work in an environment of sometimes subtle and sometimes overt misogyny where our work demands such vulnerability how do we navigate the bs of academia and not get hard?
keep your heart in your fist i say
and keep making art that bites back

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