JD Pluecker
Foreground
middleground
background
but the camera or eye
sticks to the back
banana leaves
grandpa's beard
a moss
What does it mean to be a thing
always returning
ever coming back to thingself?
Thing is
worlding's so long been wrong
To re-do
To turn
come back
insist A move
Pauline Oliveros listens
as this body throws down
wails cries
fetal position
a friend afar
who knows it is not okay
but how how to awaken
cry harder til roused
from sleep
Takes decades to re-learn
epigenetically
how to grow in a place
beyond yellow brittle of leaving
tomato jalapeño
"This lonely feeling is deep"
said the plant to the artist
who came to our house equal
clumped the pots into an altar
prayed for the leaders to unsettle
more than those who never consented
For once the manager be more troubled
than the waitresses
The clay says I know how to unsettle the settlement
settle from the word sit
settle meaning also reconcile
To reckon with sitting
still language of intimacies
intimates signified
voiced or signed
A clump A knot
tears
a quipu
whispers an earful
inside intimidation timid
sand murmurs
Time
"is a shifting liquid"
said Lorenzo Thomas
"a shame / Nobody Understands /
shy"
summertime and the living is
okra malabar
bananas papayas
Wintertime repeats
ushers in gray and brown
sub-tropical drapery
process convokes
ritual a manner to stop
time or pause a
reminder water spurts
gush Time to
settle up
An altar
wrapped in perished leafery A time as ever
for
well-aimed undercuts