More Articles...
Print
Two Poems
by Dan ShanckWhen we run out of water, only the good die young and everyone in California is terrified of autumn. And we, who reject all villainy, fail to comprehend these desert seasons, safe as a bogus Wild West backdrop to an elusive moment. But it’s working on us regardless, and a hundred million miles away it will infect us in a month or so, making our leaves turn yellow when the wind picks up. We’ll step out into it and age a little, taking deep breaths like hungry burglars. And with a thought like that, I’ll throw a rattlesnake through a storefront window, an alarm will go off, a leaf will hit the ground and someone out west will refuse to go to the doctor.
When we run out of water, repeat after me— I, misanthrope, from this day forth do vow to stand on my head at all costs and treat grids as labyrinths. At one with my vulture attributes, I will scatter each morsel of trash and confront these blessed breadcrumbs with the glare of intimacy, standing frontal, knowing how quickly they take to the wind. Meanwhile the air (that tyrant! that conductor!) will stagger and stumble as it kisses the concrete with a broken bone. I will be there to brush its ratty hair aside, with pride or with scorn, knowing four to five messages await me when I return home. And amidst the convictions, a blanket is sewn with sensitivity and circumstance, glued together through the combined efforts of some foreign community.
Contributor
Dan ShanckDan Schank currently lives in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, where he spends most of his time deciding whether he is a painter, writer, or both. He expects his MFA from the University of California, San Diego in June of 2002.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
California Landscapes: Richard Diebenkorn / Wayne Thiebaud
by Hearne PardeeMAR 2018 | ArtSeen
In iconic works from the Bay Area Figurative Movement, Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud defined a California vernacular in the early 1960s—Diebenkorn with suburban views of figures at windows and Thiebaud with arrays of desserts.
Smoke and Water, ideology and viewer
by Greg LindquistRIVER RAIL | River Rail
A reimagined signification of ash swirling in water broadly reveals the hegemony of the coal industry and the way that its power serves the pursuit of capital through the dispossession of land, water, clean air, health, property value, and financial stability from surrounding communities.
Water Out of Nowhere:
Technological Solutions to a Legal Failure on Salt River Reservation, 1910 – 1939
by David Michael Buhl
RIVER RAIL | River Rail
In a modern impulse to perfect nature and make it as productive as possible, either through spiritual or conservationist principles whose mandates dovetailed nicely, the settler population changed the environment of the area forever and severely limited indigenous water supplies in the process.
The Water Was Drained
By Diego Gerard, with illustrations by Tatina VazestRIVER RAIL | River Rail
Water, in its geological nature, belongs where Mexico City now stands. The valley, now home to over nine million people, used to be the lacustrine system of Texcoco, a body of water extending over 1,200 square miles...
RSS