Art: Paper by Çağrı Yılmaz
Crepe Paper Golden Coach Tether System
—for my H
You twist —dancer— that spine of dream into one of those
crepe paper chains i used to make. As if not understanding
that some other substance would make
better chains than treated paper pulp,
treated —celebrated— with sizing, then creased
by heated Yankee
cylinder, its doctor blade,
and soaked in water, —like magic becomes base —found-
ation —a shun—
for Easter egg dye, paper flowers,
on those Sunday church hats
seeking the majestic and
(finding smog base instead, essential black & white)
creped ingredient in lipstick and
sometimes in tamales, subbing for corn husks, mouth
still involved, always mine
also even now, saying your name which I
can freely do
especially where no one hears me, but
I hope that you do, whether i say Bob or
Robert Chad Geller; no, Kissing you was never like
kissing crepe paper,
all wrinkly and never smooth, blotter
for excess lipstick; nothing between us but the thinnest of space
but with the crinkles of crepe paper, there are also folds
of other realities of us together and
crepe accordions, musics, eardrum tapping and
skating on skin turned
to icy blasts, but usually
not even that for
in melding always so close, we are a single entity,
and I remain part of that closeness despite
how far apart we are physically, those
crepe paper streamers, one stretching,
all the way from Ann Arbor to Manhattan,
functioning perfectly
as tether of colorful Love covered with my Kisses
linking us permanently,
spring flowers springing
from crinkled cubes of crepe, nests
as crinkled as skin around your neck,
also crepe lasso linking us,
linking us wherever you may go,
eternal bachelor, except that I seem to be the one
who has snagged you crepe and all the golden coach
it drapes in the luxury of me
crepe paper creping all the time
—- a poem by Thylias Moss in Collaboration with Mr. Bob Holman
About the author:
Thylias Moss, a self-employed multi-racial “maker” Thylias Moss Writing LLC, is also Professor Emerita in the Departments of English and Art & Design at the University of Michigan.Author of 13 published books, and recipient of numerous awards and honors, among them a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and many other awards, including several Pushcart Prizes, and multiple appearances in the “Best American Poetry” series and is even included in in the “Best of the Best American Poetry” series, all of this part of her approach to making stuff known as Limited Fork Theory an approach to making and thinking developed in order to assist co-makers and co-learners to become more collaborative in thinking and being. All about how things interact across all boundaries, and encouragement of interaction that becomes more meaningful over time; all have collaborators. Nothing makes alone, and everything makes; there is nothing that exists that does not make stuff in some form, which is also open: any form that becomes possible; invent whenever necessary. “Making” is not static, is evidence of life.She has completed with her primary collaborator, himself a poet, spoken word artist Mr. Bob Holman, with whom she is in a meld, as he said to her, “The Fire will meld us together”, and this poem “Crepe Paper, Golden Coach Tether system” contains that precious word “meld” that defines their Love connection, and is actually a poem from an as yet unfinished collection of poems about his hat, a Golden Coach, as it says on the silken lining. She often wears his hat. She is working on a number of collaborations after her next collection of poetry Shawsheen Memorial Broom Society.
Connect with her on these websites:
http://www.4orkology.com
http://www.midhudsontaffy.com
http://www.moxiesupper.com
http://www.lex97.com
http://www.thyliasmoss-writer.com
Cover art by artist Selwyn Rodda
Art: Paper by Çağrı Yılmaz
In the artist’s words:
