If You See Something, Say Something by Thylias Moss

by | Nov 2, 2018 | Poetry | 0 comments

Art: 10:00am – Shedd Aquarium from 17 photographs in 10 hours, in Chicago, Illinois by Nicola Olic

–in response to the poem: “If you See something, Say Something”, a collaboration
with my Thing, Mr. Bob Holman

 

“IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING” (IN SHAWSHEEN)

 

Banana”

white shadow
crescent moon

Wax (ing)

Wax banana
Wax grapes, apples
in bowls
On my mother’s dining room table

lunch
kitchen sink
I see this also
my father washing dishes
scalding water
his skin
down the drain

plates clean, heavenly,
full of banana water spots
we eat the shadows.
two of which
are my father’s
diseased lungs

yet I float on clouds
into such a clean, pure kingdom
that nothing else matters
just a banana which I eat the moment I arrive.
Buddha
in suds.

Originally published in “The Fiddlehead of Canada”
URL: https://thefiddlehead.ca/issue/268

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.

http://www.4orkology.com
http://www.midhudsontaffy.com
http://www.moxiesupper.com
http://www.lex97.com
http://www.thyliasmoss-writer.com

Art: 10:00am – Shedd Aquarium from 17 photographs in 10 hours, in Chicago, Illinois by Nikola Olic

In the artist’s words:

These 17 photographs were taken a few weeks ago during 10 fast-paced, fulfilling and weather-challenged daylight hours in Chicago, and represent a modern, abstract and playful view of places and buildings that can be both familiar and new to Chicago locals, and inviting and surprising to visitors, such as myself. My award-winning photography has appeared in galleries, art events, museums, magazines, newspapers, spaces and websites around the world, including Wired.com, The Guardian, CNN Style, Yahoo.com, ArchDaily, Digg, Curbed, Seattle Post Intelligencer, and SkyScrapers.com, as well as the Dallas Museum Of Art, Dallas’ MADI Museum, Fort Wayne Museum of Art and many others. This Chicago visit was a part of the ‘Cities’ project (http://bit.ly/2LsL49G), a collection of published photography projects that represent quick and unpredictable explorations over a few hours or days. This year I had visited Las Vegas, Denver, Fort Wayne, Galveston and now Chicago. All photographs had been published in interesting local magazines, newspapers or online, and my hope is for that to continue with these Chicago photographs as well. A few words about me — I am an independent Nikon World Photographer, originally from Serbia but living and working in Dallas, Texas, focusing on architectural photography and abstract structural quotes that reimagine their subjects in playful, dimensionless and disorienting ways. Each published photograph is accompanied with a short description and the location where it was taken, offering a direct connection between the unexpected visual space of the photograph, and the real world of cars, buildings, people and noise in which it exists. These are intended as demystifying tools essential to abstract photography, reminding that these subjects — beautiful or otherwise — are on every corner, in places we visit and places we live in.

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