NO PLACE LIKE, 2025

The summer came sideways. We sent electronic messages with electronic tone, personal fear, public obsession. I guess we’re both awkward. I wake up and hear music from decades ago.

Red dragon, green dragon white dragon, BAM.

Can you ever enter the same river feeling twice?

Unknown expectations, place them in a box out back. Bell rings, the waste waits.

We just went downriver, we just climbed that tree, we just had a party for you, it really wasn’t that long ago.

Lists made on the back of security envelopes, lists made on your phone, lists made on an award from last year when you tried, lists made on the back of coupons you need to use. $55.99

There is a book you haven’t read yet, about a topic you understand better than anyone, about the memories that we forgot to take pictures of. Feel the ephemeral. Feel ephemeral. Fill in Em, or Will.

The bride held a cannon, we held the whiskey, the turtle held a tone, and we all kept our promises.

PAUSE. Oh, never mind. Sweet lilac, Stellar memories. Save the taco menu in your overalls, get lost in Montgomery, change the tone of your voice, put some socks on that baby.

Put that face away, put some color on it, pick up a cheap box of it from the discounted warehouse, lists of things that happened, expressed or not, said or not, true or not, this is the last few years.

Artist Statement, 2015

It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times. Everything was good and nothing was terrible.  He smells like oil in the afternoon, and like the woods in the morning.  It’s a very clean smell in the morning.  The bathroom floor is always wet.  On Saturdays there are pink boxes on the counter, and even though no one ever eats the cinnamon apple maple bar there is at least one always present.  There are red soda cans, hidden in the yellow cooler, on the back of his blue truck; sometimes mint candies are floating in a tin taste.  Your hands at that point are useless.  Call in white knights on pink hills.  There are five medications that weaken enamel.  Enamel and experience can go hand in hand.   Except when your experience has run out, you can regenerate more.  She loves banyan trees because they can connect to the earth, I hate banyan trees because they can connect to the earth.  We had a dog named Cinnamon, and a horse named Coco, and a bulldog no one liked but Michael.  I never understood why white families named animals after humans.  Frank was called ugly girl, Mike was white boy, and I was crazy legs. It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times.