Marisol Baca – Remedios Sketch 5

Marisol Baca

Remedios Sketch 5

 

Remedios, sixteenth in queue,
sixteen blue myths escaping her brush,
sixteen ways to get to town,
sixteen secrets to tell when she arrives

Remedios, if her coat were a watercolor
it would be soaked
its ragged edges would be many wings
her nimbus is flaking gold and robin’s egg blue

 

Marisol Baca’s artist statement:

Over the past 15 days, I have been writing a poem a day. This concentrated workload allowed me to sit face-to-face with poems that I have been wanting to write for a long time— stories that I have wanted to investigate for a long time. It was a difficult thing to do, but the right time to do it. These poems are about exploring the work of a favorite artist of mine and finding out more about my family history. The first eight poems are interrelated and are about the surrealist painter, Remedios Varo. Her paintings evoke wonder and curiosity in me, and I love them. The second set of poems deal with stories about my great grandmother and her sisters. There are some stories in these poems that I have been thinking about for a long time, maybe even years, and have not been able to write until now. Last week I had a dream about my great grandmother standing at the entrance of a doorway telling me to go ahead and get it done. So I did.

“Personaje”
Personaje, 1961.
Oil and Silver / Cardboard Sheet.
© All Rights Reserved 2015, Remedios Varo.
For any use or reproduction of the work, please contact vegap.
Cat.315-Character-1961

“in eights // octaves”
El Flautista, 1955.
Oil and Nacre Embedded / Masonite.
© Copyright 2019.
For any use or reproduction of work, please contact vegap.
Cat. 127-El-Flutista-1955.

Jeffrey Schultz – XI. No Regrets

Jeffrey Schultz

XI. No Regrets

 

Bare of birds
This morning
The freeway trees
Cease to sway
The gentle sway
Of freeway trees
Above idle traffic’s
Low rumble and chug.
Bare of birds,
The freeway trees’
Stock collapses;
They lose political power.
And their browns then
Grow browner,
Their greenish-browns
Browner too
Until they give in
Finally to fate,
The foreordained
Unfolding this morning
On the freeway.

 

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.

Marisol Baca – Remedios Sketch 4

Marisol Baca

Remedios Sketch 4

 

She is in motion
her neck is as long as a swan’s
there are fleur des lis traveling away from her
she rides on a machine of wheels and on the engines of flight

She comes with a raiment of clouds and interstellar dust
there are webs fluttering between the galaxies in her fur stole

 

Marisol Baca’s artist statement:

Over the past 15 days, I have been writing a poem a day. This concentrated workload allowed me to sit face-to-face with poems that I have been wanting to write for a long time— stories that I have wanted to investigate for a long time. It was a difficult thing to do, but the right time to do it. These poems are about exploring the work of a favorite artist of mine and finding out more about my family history. The first eight poems are interrelated and are about the surrealist painter, Remedios Varo. Her paintings evoke wonder and curiosity in me, and I love them. The second set of poems deal with stories about my great grandmother and her sisters. There are some stories in these poems that I have been thinking about for a long time, maybe even years, and have not been able to write until now. Last week I had a dream about my great grandmother standing at the entrance of a doorway telling me to go ahead and get it done. So I did.

“Personaje”
Personaje, 1961.
Oil and Silver / Cardboard Sheet.
© All Rights Reserved 2015, Remedios Varo.
For any use or reproduction of the work, please contact vegap.
Cat.315-Character-1961

“in eights // octaves”
El Flautista, 1955.
Oil and Nacre Embedded / Masonite.
© Copyright 2019.
For any use or reproduction of work, please contact vegap.
Cat. 127-El-Flutista-1955.

Jeffrey Schultz – X. Poem of Fruits to Come

Jeffrey Schultz

X. Poem of Fruits to Come

 

Liberation is not at hand.
In my parents’ yard,
A modest three-quarters of an acre,
Stands a single late Elberta peach tree.
In my childhood and youth,
Before all the remaining
Valley acreage was torn out,
The fruit could be found at roadside stands.
I remember one Elberta in particular:
My friend Marshall who lives now
In Missouri and god knows
What’s come of him there brought one
To me at my work. We stood
In the valley’s August heat
Next to the dumpster
At the back of the brake shop’s lot.
I pulled off my grease- and gas-
Soaked gloves and we ate,
The sweet nectar dripping
Down our chins and arms
In such a way that I am embarrassed, now,
To describe it for what it was.
I am embarrassed, now,
To describe much anything at all,
And for the life of me can’t figure
Why other people seem not to be.
Shame follows from the fruit.
I see this now, though it means other
Than what I would have guessed.
There will never be another one.
My parents’ crop this summer
Was small and still pretty good.
At the end of the Permian,
Almost all plant life gave way
To extinction. What thrived
Were the fungi, whose subterranean
Brain burrows toward the scent
Of death and decay and, sending up
Its stalk and cap, opens the veil
Of itself to the flat, lifeless light and feasts.

 

Jeffrey Schultz’s artist statement:

Title of series: Fifteen Variations on Themes from Levis.
In a series of fifteen brief variations, Schultz will meditate on a number of themes–some of them poorly recalled from memory, some of them badly obscured or poorly understood–from Levis’s work.

Marisol Baca – Remedios Sketch 3

Marisol Baca

Remedios Sketch 3

 

There is an owl face
looking out at me
and a ghost ship of a mouth

Somewhere between her last home
and her future self,
the sun is at her back
she is on a country road

 

Marisol Baca’s artist statement:

Over the past 15 days, I have been writing a poem a day. This concentrated workload allowed me to sit face-to-face with poems that I have been wanting to write for a long time— stories that I have wanted to investigate for a long time. It was a difficult thing to do, but the right time to do it. These poems are about exploring the work of a favorite artist of mine and finding out more about my family history. The first eight poems are interrelated and are about the surrealist painter, Remedios Varo. Her paintings evoke wonder and curiosity in me, and I love them. The second set of poems deal with stories about my great grandmother and her sisters. There are some stories in these poems that I have been thinking about for a long time, maybe even years, and have not been able to write until now. Last week I had a dream about my great grandmother standing at the entrance of a doorway telling me to go ahead and get it done. So I did.

“Personaje”
Personaje, 1961.
Oil and Silver / Cardboard Sheet.
© All Rights Reserved 2015, Remedios Varo.
For any use or reproduction of the work, please contact vegap.
Cat.315-Character-1961

“in eights // octaves”
El Flautista, 1955.
Oil and Nacre Embedded / Masonite.
© Copyright 2019.
For any use or reproduction of work, please contact vegap.
Cat. 127-El-Flutista-1955.