Page 19 - the NOISE January 2013

IMPETUS
by Jason Cassella
Last night I offered an old Navajo man a cigarette.
He responded by telling me that water is life,
and forgiveness and love are the only things worth living for.
We are all listening to the echos of our personalities, bouncing back off the crags of others, listening to ourselves so closely that hot breath comes to the ear.
Only mothers are as familiar with our voices, quiet ghosts through tower signals, red-tailed hawks that visit funerals,
nodding with the current and
carrying the dead away into the great mystery.
And I crossed San Francisco and into the arms of a woman,
bark and earth muddy with sweat into a canyon river,
drifting down passed walls lighted by crepuscular bird calls,
into capriccio rhythms broken by honeysuckle and coneflower,
and finally into the coconut whimper as oceanic as the residue of my childhood dreams, floating in the deep waters with the unknown all around.
That’s how it is letting go of what’s called the survivalist mentality, and breaking at a dead run for the surf and its pull.
LUMIÈRE
by Lauren Patridge
The city haunts, in my mouth
the way the bottom lip pouts,
matches its twin in an accordion refrain, Tu me manques—
The way the teeming aqueous tumble of the place, the cruel cold mania somehow transformed—
salacious, without mercy.
The way it all still mingles,
Vim and bits of mauve glowing,
Harvesting fetish consumption without even a s’il te plait.
That was then. Before it merged and stuck then abandoned. When it still hummed alone I thought the city vacant merely motif, mais maintenant, c’est où le vide?
photos by Danielle Vorves
thenoise.us • the NOISE arts & news
• JANUARY 2013 • 19