Bryan R. Monte – AQ38 Autumn 2023 Art Review

Bryan R. Monte
AQ38 Autumn 2023 Art Review
Anselm Kiefer, Bilderstreit exhibition, Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, The Netherlands, 14 October 2023–25 February 2024

                  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
                  Nothing beside remains….boundless and bare
                  The lone and level sands stretch far away.

                                    from Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Anselm Kiefer is one of the most prolific and successful artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. From humble beginnings in an small attic atelier in Hornback (Walldürn), Germany to his 50 hectare art village in the south of France, his art has gone from strength to strength after being recognized by the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan in the early 1980s. For more than four decades his art has won many important international (American, French, German, Israeli, Italian, and Japanese) prizes and honours. As Barbara Vos, Museum Voorlinden’s head of exhibitions explained at the press preview of Kiefer’s Bilderstreitexhibition, Kiefer’s CV and the access he gave Voorlinden’s curators to his galleries and depots—to choose what they wanted for their museum’s exhibition—made this show even more remarkable.
      Kiefer is best known for his immersive, 3-D, impasto-style extra-large canvases, with imbedded objects, such as straw and scythes that actually project from the canvas into the room. Another aspect of his art is its provocations. As Simon Schama says in the new Wim Wenders film Anselm Kiefer: ‘Kiefer’s art prods incessantly at the wound of German history’, (See film review also in this issue). For example, in the late 1960s, Kiefer had photos and paintings made of himself giving the Nazi salute in his father’s WWII military uniform and in his dressing gown. (This is still illegal in Germany). He also created a series of watercolours of himself giving Nazi salutes in a book entitled: Heroic Symbols, in the New York MOMA’s collection. (See Metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/486542 and Metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/486543).
      What is on view at the Voorlinden, which includes two of Kiefer’s historical provocations, is his Winterreise (2015-2020) ballet stage set in silver, grey, and black, metallic-like furniture and giant mushrooms. On its floor are cards with the names of important 19th century composers and writers such as Franz Schubert, Heinrich Heine, Herman Hesse, and Hugo Wolf, along with one notorious member from the Rote Armee Fraktion terrorist group: Ulrike Meinhof. The Rote Armee Fraktion was responsible for kidnappings, bombings, bank robberies, and dozens of murders in the 1980s and ’90s. It has been reported that Kiefer created these provocations because no one was talking about the war (WWII or the violent, more contemporary German politics for that matter).
      Lastly, Kiefer’s work is concerned with the mythic past: Biblical, classical, and Germanic with specific artistic references to the Garden of Eden, The Iliad, and Walhalla especially. It also refers to the mysterious pseudo-science of alchemy: changing base metals into gold. Museum Voorlinden’s Bilderstreit exhibition features work from these themes and provocations.
      The exhibition begins with a 3D grain field punctuated by scythes entitled Aus Herzen sprießen die Halme der Nacht. The title of the piece is taken from a line from a poem by Paul Celan, a poet frequently quoted in Kiefer’s paintings. It refers to ‘the stalks of the night, and a word spoken by scythes, inclines them into life.’ In it, the actual stalks of grain and metal scythes stick out from the canvas, the scythes glistening in the gallery light. Like many of Kiefer’s paintings, this one is metres long and wide and takes up most of the wall space. If one stands close enough, the artwork’s construction takes one right into the scene it’s depicting.
      The next two galleries had plaster books with portraits that resembled those of ancient Greece and Rome painted on marble. It also included a three-level vitrine with work from Voorlinden’s permanent collection and some Kiefer pieces displayed on tables from the mid-2010s, including some Parisian drawings.
      The third gallery had canvases with bicycles projecting out of them, one of which is a memento to Kiefer’s time in Amsterdam with the date 5.3.90 in the upper left corner. The next gallery featured bicycles as self-standing sculptures: bikes with fern wings, bikes carrying straw or bricks (one of Kiefer’s most-prevalent post-WWII motifs). Then we passed a gallery with heavy, lead books that were being gently placed onto a lead bookcase by a heavy lifting crane. The guide mentioned that some museum floors sometimes needed to be reinforced to carry the weight of this sculpture. Next, was a gallery of paintings or etchings on wood, which featured WWII bunkers along the Rhine River. One painting, Melancholia, was a tribute to Albrecht Dürer and included his mysterious, impossible polyhedron he had at the top of his own Melancholia (1504) Another piece features Kiefer, as a barefoot and bare-chested old man, lying down in a sunflower field looking upwards at the stars.
      In the next gallery, we viewed Der Morganthau Plan, (mixed media installation, 2012-2023). The principal elements of this artwork are stalks of grain made from plaster-soaked wheat staffs, supported by a piece of metal, standing in sandy field. Three objects are partially hidden therein: a book, a watering can, and a snake. The installation was inspired by US President Roosevelt’s Secretary of Finance, Henry Morganthau, Jr.’s plan to de-Nazify the Germans post-WWII through starvation and de-industrialization. However, Kiefer provides no historical context for this project, which was suggested by Morgenthau in 1944 at the height of WWII, when the Allies were making uncertain progress on both their European as well as their Pacific fronts.
      And thus we have the exhibit’s second provocation. What one writer refers to as a false, ‘counterfactual’ event. (See thecounterfactualhistoryreview.blogspot.com/2013/05/anselm-kiefers-counterfactual-art.html Though the Allies did consider starving and de-industializing Germans in order to de-Nazify them, this part of the plan was never done by the Western Allies. However, a territorial loss for Germany was mentioned in Morgenthau’s plan. Russia and Poland were given territory in the East: Köningsberg became Kalingrad, Danzig became Gdansk and most of the disputed Franco-German western Rhinelands were returned to France.
      However, instead of starving and de-industrializing Germany, the Western Allies, principally America, helped rebuild Western Europe with the Marshall Plan, a system of economic loans, which enabled countries to rebuild with newer factories so that that by the 1970s, Germany was able to outcompete American. Far from exacting tribute, the Western Allies brought peace and prosperity to Western Europe and West Germany. However, this was not mentioned by our guide, nor was there any signage to this effect at the museum at the time of the press preview on 13 October 2023. Unfortunately, this is a textbook example of how a visual, alternative (fictional) history without context can be dangerous and inflammatory.
      Next we viewed what I can only describe as the gold galleries. One painting in particular, seemed to be a homage to Van Gogh reminiscent of one of his works, Wheat Field with Crows, (1890). Kiefer’s version features straw and reapers’ scythes, paint applied with a knife, embossed in gold. Its title could be Vincent in Heaven. Other gold paintings include a sunflower, (another one of Kiefer’s recurring motifs), in the middle of a canvas almost completely surrounded by a layer of gold.
      The last two galleries held what Bos referred to as Kiefer’s container art. The first featured large canvases with NASA numbered stars on predominantly dark brown and black canvases, fired first by Kiefer with a flamethrower and extinguished with water hoses by his assistants. One of these recycled paintings was Sterrenval (1998-2016). However, these stars are not bright, swirling, and captivating as Van Gogh’s, but rather distant, unremarkable points of light hermetically identified by international astronomical numbers. The second were a group of vitrine sculptures composed of bricks, wire, leaves, an old scale, a forest diorama, and a stack of old wheelchairs.
      The best of these works is entitled, Karfunkelfee (2009), (gold paint, chemise, jesmonite, snake, brambles, concrete, acrylic oil, emulsion, ash, and shellac on canvas in steel and glass frame). It features a white chemise hovering in a wood. The case’s glass also reflects the viewer so that unexpectedly a ghost version of one’s self appears inside the diorama as one views the piece. However, other works in this room, such as Valhalla (2016) and especially Im Herbst dreht sich die Erde etwas schneller (0,06 sec.) (2018), are far more static, which is ironic considering the latter sculpture is made out of leaves strung on an almost transparent wire to simulate their falling. Morovalvat, a sculpture of eight stacked wheelchairs (the three towards the bottom being increasingly crushed by the others on top), was for me, enigmatic, even though I am wheelchair user. What is Kiefer trying to say with this sculpture? Does this sculpture reflect the teetering balancing act wheelchairs users must often perform as they try to see and navigate exhibits in many European museums, where accessibility is sometimes an afterthought? Even in modern ones, let alone older ones, architectural integrity always seems to trump building accessibility, the location and number of toilets, (usually no more than two for museums with thousands of visitors per day), and sometimes the lack of space between the exhibits themselves as reflected in my past reviews of museum exhibits AQ6, AQ12, and AQ33.
      Hanging on the wall behind these last four vitrine sculptures is a typical Kieferesque painting of a post-war, barren, snowy, winter field with protruding stalks or fence posts. However, on the wall to the right, is a painting of Templehof Airport with a mason’s compass hovering over the scene inscribed with a German and French phrase on each of its legs. This compass, which takes in this enormous airport landscape, reminds me of William Blake’s painting, Ancient of Days, where God uses a similar instrument to construct and measure his creation. Another Blake painting, Newton, has the inventor of calculus and the discoverer of the laws of celestial motion holding a similar instrument.
      However, our guide or someone from the press, referred to Templehof as a disused Berlin airport. Once again, if they had known their history, they would have realized the historical significance of this airport. From June 1948 to May 1949, it was the centre of the Western Allies Luftbrücke (air bridge). At Templehof, the C-47 Skytrains unloaded their cargo, one landing and another taking off every five minutes. This airlift kept West Berlin well-stocked from the air, and ultimately broke the Soviet’s land blockade, which was designed to put all of that city, even the French, British, and American zones, under Soviet control.
      In addition to the lack of historical signage, I have another issue with one of Kiefer’s signature pieces, his lead books, which are so heavy they must be placed carefully on to bookshelves with a crane. Here, I believe, I concur with the dean’s response to Lord Risley’s comment in EM Forester’s novel Maurice. Risley says that Maurice ‘shall soon forget the cutlet he is eating, but never our conversation’. The dean interjects that Risley is confusing ‘what’s important with what’s impressive.’ Yes, the heavy, lead book sculpture is impressive, but is it important? I don’t believe so. A book is weighty and important due to the ideas it contains, not due to the weight of its construction.
      Coincidentally, a few days later, I received a copy of the 2 November 2023 The New York Review of Books with an article on the rapid rise of Nazis to power in March 1933. However, what made this article most memorable was a photograph with the caption: ‘A book burning after SA troops stormed the offices of the Dresdener Volkszeitung, a newspaper allied with the Social Democratic Party, Dresden, Germany, March 8, 1933.’ (‘When the Barbarians Take Over’, Pankaj Mishra, The New York Review of Books, Vol. LXX, #17, [2 November 2023], p. 8). I’ve seen many photos of Nazi book burnings. This is the first I’ve seen taken in broad daylight, with dozens of SA soldiers milling about the burning stack, which is guarded by two policemen with rifles. I can tell you the weight of this photograph on my memory was far greater than any piles of bricks or lead I’ve ever seen.
      And yes, Kiefer’s output is impressive, but I miss the change or evolution of newer, innovative styles as by other 20th century artists such as Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, or Henri Matisse. Kiefer’s Klimtic transformations of Van Gogh’s previously tortured, crenulated, cerebral furrows of black crows and a dark, ploughed field and threatening sky, are meant as a homage. However, drenched in gold they actually miss and negate the point of Van Gogh’s mental disturbance and suffering which he graphically projected onto his landscapes.
      In Wim Wenders’ film, Anselm Kiefer, (see review also in this issue), we see an exhibition by Kiefer of wall-size canvases in a Venetian palazzo. Here, Kiefer used the same motifs, endlessly reworked in the same style. These are the relics of war, empty, snowy fields, bunkers along the Rhine, building bricks from bombings, old sunflowers with bulging seed heads, or lying in a field as a boy or as himself: a shirtless, barefoot, old man, perhaps contemplating the stars like Elon Musk and the world’s rich clique of financial titans, dreaming of living on another planet among the stars, instead of depicting the urgency of saving this one, in less than a decade, for everyone. Where are Kiefer’s images of our warming, polluted, storm-tossed, dying planet, and its hundreds of millions of displaced persons as well as the world-wide current rise of totalitarianism, the decline of free speech and a free press? Where is Kiefer’s call to save the earth and its climate-displaced inhabitants within the next decade?
      There are only seven years to go to stop the earth’s looming environmental disaster. What if Kiefer painted canvases entitled: Miami or Venice 2050, where most of that state or city were underwater, or Siberia 2050, with holes burnt into a snowy landscape by his flamethrower to show the increasing occurrence of underground, Arctic, methane explosion craters that now pockmark the landscape there? These would definitely be a provocative clarion call to the super-rich in the art and the fossil fuel energy industries (almost one and the same these days) to pay attention to the global climate crisis before it’s too late.
      Kiefer should address these subjects or visitors, both earth-bound or perhaps from other planets, may someday report on his art village and the planet in centuries to come, the same way as Shelley described Ozymandias’s ruined ‘great works’.    AQ

Bryan R. Monte – AQ38 Autumn 2023 Film Review

Bryan R. Monte
AQ38 Autumn 2023 Film Review
Wim Wenders Anselm Kiefer, (Road Movies; German with Dutch Subtitles), 93 minutes.

On 12 October 2023, I attended a special showing of Wim Wenders’ new film, Anslem Kiefer, in combination with the press preview of Anselm Kiefer’s Bilderstreit exhibition at Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, The Netherlands. The film was shown at the Haagse Filmhuis in the centre of The Hague. The official premier of the film was four days later on the 23rd, so this was something of a treat. In the film, Wenders shows Kiefer at work in his enormous atelier in his art village in the French countryside, which also includes sculpture gardens, warehouses, and exhibition areas.
      However, the film does more than that. It also recapitulates important scenes from Kiefer’s youth and his career as an artist. We follow Kiefer from schoolboy with his traditional German knee-length trousers to his first art awards, through his different and increasing larger ateliers in Germany and France, until Wenders captures the old master himself at work on some of his most recent, large canvases—with a flamethrower and assistants at the ready with water to put out the fire before it completely consumes the canvas.
      The film begins with work not included in the Voorlinden’s collection: concrete-like white dresses draped over metal frames exhibited outdoors among the trees reminiscent of fashion designer’s sketches for their dresses without a body to fill them. From time to time the textures of the natural surroundings, such as birch tree trunks or the edges of the artwork come to the fore due to Wenders’ filming of scenes in 3D. In the background the sun is low in the sky, perhaps a sunrise or sunset, but due to the undefined celestial orientation of the camera, that is not certain. Some dress frames are capped with what appear to be representations of atoms, similar to the one atop the former GDR Weltklok, in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz; others with bricks, blocks, or wire. There is the sound of breathing and next the viewer sees Kiefer’s art towers on the grounds of his estate. Then the scene changes to a greenhouse which shelters more of these white dresses representing women of antiquity with books, cubes, ladders, bricks, a bird cage instead of heads, and even shards of glass in the folds of one dress, thus introducing many of Kiefer’s recurring materials and themes.
      Next we see Kiefer riding a bicycle in one of his enormous storage areas or ateliers. There is the sound of airplanes overhead as Kiefer passes enormous shelves with various objects he will recycle into his artwork. In particular he sees old aircraft wings and names them after Biblical angels: Uriel, Raphael, Michael, etc. In addition, Kiefer looks through drawers of old photographs for inspiration/material for other artwork. Lastly, he bicycles past his large canvases.
      Then, Wenders mixes the past and the present in his film by showing the young Wenders, (played by his grand-nephew, Anton Wenders), looking at a black and white diorama, then photos of boys running through the snow, and lastly, the young Wenders walking through Kiefer’s art village. It is also a filmic technique and metaphor repeated throughout the film: the child being the father of the artist. Another is the interspersing of historical films and photos, such as women sorting through and recycling bricks in post-WWII Germany with the present.
      After that, Wenders adds a third element: quotes from Martin Heidegger and Paul Celan on Kiefer’s oeuvre. Celan’s Totesfuge is read, a poem about the Shoah. Next we see Kiefer on an enormous bed with white sheets illuminated by one bare light bulb in his enormous workshop surrounded by his metres-large canvases in progress. Next we are shown Kiefer’s library of heavy lead books, and then X-rays of patients with advanced brain cancer. A voice over says that Kiefer would have liked to have met Heidegger. ‘He did meet Paul Celan in the ‘60s. Neither of the two mentioned the war.’ Another voice over is by Columbia University art critic Simon Schama. He states that Kiefer’s art ‘prods incessantly at the wound of German history.’
      Then Wenders shows Kiefer at work in his different and increasingly larger ateliers: an attic in Hornback where he draws a scene from a photo projected onto a canvas, an abandoned factory in Buchen and a disused brick factory in Hopfingen, Germany, during his German period. In 1992, he moved to France and bought a former silk factory in Barjac, where he established his above mentioned art village. Wenders cuts between old or recreated footage from Kiefer’s former ateliers to his present one in Barjac and connects some of them with his own narrative. For example, an artist, portraying the 30-something Kiefer, drives an orange VW bug, with some canvases attached to its roof, from his workshop in a snowy, forested landscape to a photo of another, the abandoned brick factory in Buchen ‘because he needs the space’. Here the artist or the actor states, he likes to put photos in books ‘to have them for the next 2,000 years’.
      The narrator states that this is when Kiefer made it big in the US at the MOMA in the 1980s, showing some of his books, sculptures, and black and white photos. Wenders also shows some of the Hitler salute photos Kiefer made of himself while wearing his father’s former WWII German army uniform as a protest against people forgetting what happened. (The Hitler salute is still illegal in Germany and punishable with up to three years in prison).
      Next, the real Kiefer in the present tosses clothes, that he has made flat and heavy with a substance, from a spiral staircase in his present workshop. One item is similar to the white chemise he used in his Karfunkelfee (2009) vitrine sculpture. (See exhibition review Museum Voorlinden’s Bilderstreit exhibition for more details). Each falls to the floor with thud. This is followed by a 3D section about Jason and the Argonauts, a bit of the story read in a child’s voice. Then a section about Lilith in the Garden of Eden followed by a historical footage of the bombed ruins of a post-WWII city. In German, a voice over says ‘the great myth is humankind itself’ and little later ‘myth is the way to understand history.’
      The scene returns to an aerial view of Kiefer’s art enclave with the sound of airplanes overhead as the Der Morgenthau Plan is mentioned. Henry Morgenthau was US President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture. In 1943 during throes of the war when Allies weren’t making progress in Europe, Morgenthau suggested starving the Germans into pacification after the war was over. (See my review of Museum Voorlinden’s Bilderstreit exhibition in this issue). Then a constructed ruin in Kiefer’s art park is shown, a shaft of sunlight revealing a subterranean, sand-filled area.
      Next, a boy wearing the traditional 1950s German child’s school backpack rides up on a bicycle to a palace. He walks up the steps. Inside, he sees a drawing, which includes portraits of philosophers speaking to themselves or each other. Then the scene cuts to Kiefer or the older Kiefer actor looking at photos from the 1950s of his family, then footage (recreated) of when Kiefer won the Jean Watters prize in 1963, which enabled him to visit the places that had inspired Van Gogh. The film briefly shows pencil sketches of a man’s and a woman’s faces. It reveals, perhaps, the reason Van Gogh’s lasting influence on Kiefer’s work, and in particular, Kiefer’s repeated use of the sunflower motif. Then, the child lies down in a field of sunflowers. Next, Kiefer is shown lying down on the ground with stars overhead. After that, the film cuts to some of Kiefer’s bicycle sculptures: a bicycle with two large fronds or feathers attached to the handlebars and another bicycle carrying bricks.
      The next scene is in Venice where Kiefer himself walks down a marbled portico, and then he is in a room with one of his enormous wall-size canvases. Then, a scene of post-WWII Germany with people still living in flats with the occasional wall blown out, followed by a possibly historical film of a man walking a tightrope over the ruins. Then the camera pans higher and higher until a scene in a forest replaces the sky. The schoolboy Kiefer stands by a lake. Then the older Kiefer replaces the boy in the same position. With Lilith dresses in the background and a voice saying ‘Childhood is time of education, that’s where the man begins.’ the film ends with the sun again low in the sky with one of Kiefer’s winged, semi-abstract metal sculptures in the foreground.
      Wenders’ Anselm Kiefer provides a praiseworthy look into the artist’s development, including his now spacious atelier, his artistic enclave in Barjac and some of his artistic production methods. However, a deeper insight into Kiefer’s psyche, especially his flesh and blood relationships, is missing. What about his relationship with other contemporary artists and his own family? How did these people influence his art? How much would we really understand about Picasso if someone made a film about him, but didn’t mention his female lovers, models, partners and the artists, writers, and artistic movements with which he associated in Spain and in France?
      After an hour and half film about this master, I have little or no idea how his human and artistic relationships are reflected in his work. To really know him better, I would have preferred a bit more flesh and blood.   AQ

Helen Ferris – A Pilgrimage

Helen Ferris
A Pilgrimage

A mother wakes to a starless sky,
work on her mind and in her bones.
She scrubs under soft water
with hands that are used to hardness.
She scrubs floors that will never look clean.
It is comfort that the coast is near,
the landlock of London left behind,
grey smothered by the light of home.
Sweat and salt are her second skin
as her children ask questions about war.
The window is a siren call and a threat.
A small drip from the ceiling sinks into the sheets.
An ant carries a fragment of leaf above itself,
greener than still rivers.

A boy returns to school after everything he owns,
everything he knows, has been destroyed.
His towerblock up in flames, his flat a home then gone.
Stinging knees scraped by the concrete,
glowing rubies crusted with dirt.
A girl glances down at her scuffed trainers,
the flapping soles drawing unwanted attention.
One of the boys says she flinches too quickly.
She doesn’t trust how he laughs.
Answers catch in her throat. She fears further questions.
On the way home, the wind whips through her hair
veiling her chapped, rosy face,
a futile barrier to the spitting rain.
They fall through the cracks because they are quiet.
Wherever they go the air is thick
and the chimneys breathe slowly
into guzzling lungs.

A curious mind finds menageries in the clouds.
A sturdy hand finds black diamonds underground,
moves staccato, while light is swallowed
by shadow. As music is pulled from her
The mother wonders
how many have ripped their hearts out
to provide comfort for another.

Helen Ferris – That year

Helen Ferris
That year

Life was fast until we started losing time
quick breaths keeping time with the beat of the tube carriage
no more car rides
lingering and sickening

The air thickened
meaning summer
the screaming ache in my back telling me I had worked hard enough
wondering how it had been two weeks since I last ate
and why I felt emptiness but no hunger

You’re unsure how much to take from me
tipping the scales too far to bear, too far to go back
chewing your name
unfamiliar and intimate

Jennifer L. Freed – Crossing Boundaries

Jennifer L. Freed
Crossing Boundaries

The woods beyond the old stone walls
lot-by-lot scraped flat
for curving streets and backyard pools.

We see more of fox, deer, bear.

Today, a band of wild turkeys
strolls across a landscaped lawn
as though at a garden party.

A morning walker kneels,
whispers calmness to his yellow lab,
who barks, strains at his leash.

The turkeys do not falter.
They strut closer,
closer
toward sidewalk, man, dog,

and when the man moves
to take a photo, they flare
and still press forward,
all black and copper fret and glare.

Dark pinion feathers scrape fresh pavement.
They make a fricative hiss
as they approach.

Tom Gannon Hamilton – Nickel Iron

Tom Gannon Hamilton
Nickel Iron

Recalling piglets at a sow, a score of grade four pupils,
we vied for position around a photo, framing a woman,
her upper thigh bruised black.
Transfixed by the famed image, such incomprehensible
odds, mixed misfortune and privilege
to be chosen by debris set in motion, we’d been told,
by a fourteen-billion-year-old event, still unfolding.
Discussing the Big Bang when the bell rang,
once dismissed, we dismissed the notion as irrelevant.

Yet space-time, writ-large, writes off as commonplace,
the stuff humans hold so dear: gemstones,
being mere silica, that mineral class comprising
over half earth’s crust: keen obsidian, quartz pegmatite
and our own exquisitely blown glass
are just so much fluff, a buffer for the nickel-iron core,
earth-science reckons to be quite similar
to meteorites, which, despite their mass, almost
always entirely combust after entering the atmosphere.

Over eons, our planet, on its annual orbit, has enjoyed
a rendezvous with an asteroid belt.
We watch the resulting showers from sleeping-bags,
under quilts, atop a frosty hillside, entranced for hours,
until hypothermia threatens, our host
promises hot cocoa and we repair indoors, where
he displays them: some resembling black chewing gum
wads, one specimen, cut into thin sections,
each plate, condensed calamity, a micro-mayhem.

I dreamt those interior designs: frozen Aurora Borealis,
lightning-bolt chorus line, crystalline chevron,
zig-zag Navajo blanket, then shuffled back to the sack
after emptying my bladder; a radiance arose
behind Venetian blinds, brighter than a cop helicopter
spotlight, white as the molten pellets arc-welders drop.
The ensuing split-second brought a muffled pooohmm,
as when you spit on campfire embers.
I presume it struck the riverbank or hit the river itself.

Deborah Harvey – A family history of refractive errors

Deborah Harvey
A family history of refractive errors

Tell me about your mother
the therapist said

and I stared at the floor, unsure how to start
all I could see was the grain of her skin
the knot of her nose, cherry pink
lipstick smeared on a tooth

It took me years to look past the wood, focus on tree

Now I’ve climbed to the top to take in the view
only to spot our distance
running at twice the speed of silence
over the clouded horizon

Is our gap wide enough now?

If I dress in hi-vis and wave both my arms
do you think you might see me?

Jerl Surratt – A Face in Flower

Jerl Surratt
A Face in Flower

No further away from you than one remove,
my having just leaned in close as a creature could
without landing in your neighborhood, the power
of my vision multiplied by nearly ten thanks to
this magnifying lens, a microscope of sorts
I’ve commandeered to see if I could figure out
what makes your velvet petaled surface glow.

My hand shakes just a little bit. Now from beneath
the rim of my transparent looking glass I purse
my lips, breathe out, and see you shy away as though
I’d tried to kiss a cheek too suddenly on our first date.
Then you look back at me with all the rods of which
your single eye’s composed and leave me blushing
to have dared to try transcending our divide.

One must at times risk doing what one’s not supposed
to do despite the risk—to take into a metaphoric bed
a distant other, with coitus there as punishment,
as Kafka said, for the happiness of being together.
Speaking as your admirer, I’m the one who fed you
sunlight in a tended garden bed to have you live
with me awhile indoors in lamplight, just like this,

so you’d stand in for another’s velvet cheek I’d once
made blush whenever leaning in to ask my kiss be met
halfway. Too late to change the fate of my attraction
to that other face in flower, to have the kiss I’d tried for
time and again, always too soon. But the risk itself
will always bear repeating, for love’s not fully felt
until returned. A lesson, thanks to you, I’ve now relearned.

Jerl Surratt – Speaking As a Child

Jerl Surratt
Speaking As a Child

Being that this thing I am
is in some part the very dust
of a bright star that I’ve been taught
to single out and call Arcturus,
I wonder on this summer night
what’s happening with the star
I’m fondest of, imagining
of all the stars you are the one
that I am most made of?

Are you as yet still bright as when
the bodies you were captured in
were born at the same time as me
in all Time’s zones around the world,

Or dimmed a little bit by now,
the now we never see from here,
your energy so radiant
another star eons ago
grew envious while drifting by
just close enough to siphon off
some of your outmost rays,

Or are you brighter still,
if imperceptibly as yet to us,
for having faintly flared because
within your heart, your core,
the heat your life depends upon
has almost reached the point at which
it cannot be contained and you’ve
begun to die, as all stars must?

Here on my back on a quilt
on the grass, an old quilt
mother’s let me have,
I’m asking childish questions
while I can. More fun to ask
sometimes and not to know
what is in store for you
while I’m still young and still
aglow for being unaware

of all that is in store for me,
while I daydream by night
and stare into the meadows
of the Bear, the Northern Crown
nearby and feel your energy
alive in me, your heat, your dust
my guiding light, Arcturus.

Jim Ross – Unassigned

Jim Ross
Unassigned

In a dream, I’m on my deathbed. As the moment approaches, I ask, ‘Is this billable? ’ followed by, ‘To what do I bill this?’

###

      I ask friends for advice on interpreting my dream.
      A high-school classmate, Ron, now a medieval historian, advises, ‘Ah, but who will be answering? Sounds like an illustration out of the medieval ars moriendi. Look out!’
      Knowing the ars moriendi were medieval texts outlining protocols for ‘a good death,’ I ask, ‘You mean dying isn’t billable?’
       ‘Au contraire,’ Ron answers, ‘but who will be holding the divine credit card reader?’
      A mutual classmate, Bob—a middle-school teacher and Assistant Principal—sharply disagrees: ‘The question might be read: “To what account do I bill this?” meaning “To whom am I accountable?” It’s not a matter of ars moriendi but of ars vivendi.’
           College classmate John, who ekes out a living through sweat of his brow and strength of his hands, suggests, ‘The experts are hill people: the rugged terrain where they spend their lives puts them a step ahead of most bill collectors. Ask them.’
      Another college classmate, Gus, a lawyer, promptly emails me a do-it-yourself manual for setting up and maintaining systems of billable rates.
      Yet another college classmate, Gary, known as the ‘poet lawyerette,’ says, ‘Instead of asking, “Is this billable?” I’d ask, “Can we make a deal about the value of the time that’s left?”’

###

      I spent my career in an industry that demanded its workers bill each quarter hour to any of numerous charge codes. As it happens, the company’s name was MACRO. Colleagues committed to a single client and project had little reason to ask howto complete their timecards. However, those who worked on multiple projects and sometimes performed non-billable work—tasks that couldn’t be billed to clients— often characterized the time-reporting experience as ‘vexing’ or ‘unsettling.’ Everyone knew, being billable was highly correlated with being valued, and having ‘billability problems’ meant your ‘future’ was ‘at risk.’
      Management made it clear we were expected to bill every moment we reasonably could to client-billable projects rather than to overhead. When asked to attend an all-staff meeting or perform a small, non-billable task, someone inevitably asked, ‘To what do I bill this?’ MACRO management bridled at such micro questions. They speculated that askers believed they operated on a higher ethical plane or suffered from a deficiency in ability to read between the lines.

###

      Former MACRO work colleague Trish, now a mindfulness coach, says, ‘Your dream is a reminder that every moment counts.’
      Another MACRO work colleague, Stan, an anthropologist, says, ‘You worked way too long in that milieu. Asking for someone else to take responsibility for providing a charge code, even in a dream, is either a way of avoiding responsibility or quibbling over meaningless details.’
      MACRO’s CEO, Frank—long the final arbiter of billability questions—advises, ‘Your time should be charged to “unassigned”’.

###

      Returning to my dream, I’m lying in bed, I know the end is near, yet I’m asking whether this is billable. I want to know to what account I should bill this. After telling colleagues who asked how to fill out their timecards that they knew the answer, here I am, asking the same niggling questions, on my deathbed no less. Am I too unable to read between the lines?
      Only I can decide. Nobody can tell me how to fill out my timecard. Only I know how I’ve spent my life. The moments that mattered were hardly ever client billable. I can’t abdicate to others my responsibility to answer the hard questions.
      Perhaps by asking on my deathbed, ‘Is this billable?’ and ‘To what do I bill this?’ I’m really asking ‘Am I still valued, even in the moment of my death?’ And if I am, ‘Does that mean my future is freed of risk?’   AQ