detail from a painting, Melting into Air

This poem was written while I waited for the A Train at 59th Street. It was cold that day since the station was still in winter. Upstairs on the street, though, it was our first spring day. I saw a young woman down the platform dressed for warm weather.

In the studio I took my scribbled notes, printed out the lines and made a roughbook cutting and pasting and then painting and drawing. I like the simplicity of a roughbook. It has the urgency of the moment and hasn't become a highly crafted and therefore removed object.. It is direct and immediate from my hand to yours. And, there is only one.



She Threw Her Heart

She threw her heart on the tracks at 42nd Street
Waiting in the fluorescent Tunnel of Love
She apprehended her tenacious Antarctica;
and today, a Monday in March,
she stood bare-legged in her Bass Weejuns
recently resoled
and in the instant
before the crashing machinery
pummeled the graphite air
she let fly her khaki self
beneath
the crossroads of the world.


Here's the Roughbook made from this poem.