Five Photographs
Masks and Photography by Lavinia RobertsModels: Adriana Jones, Jennifer StepanykCostumes: Ben Philipp
Read MoreSunday at the Ortaköy Mosque
We’re tourists here, sightseers, although my partner’s Muslim so I guess maybe he’s a little less of a tourist than some of the rest of us. We sit with our backs against the wall to the side of the wide open floor, camera in his hand, maroon and teal shawl draped over my head. This…
Read MoreTwo Poems
After Whitman The boat adrift on the lake is me. The seaplane liftingits floats, leaving a trail of spray as it leavesfor the pale blue, me lifting. The truck releasingbrakes as the truck brings, me, snapdragons,the high pitch of songs birds. I am the motheron the bicycle traveling the trail. I captain the speedboat, my…
Read MoreNaming
They say there’s a history of mental illness in my family, but I didn’t grow up with the mentally ill—I grew up with crazy sons-of-bitches. That’s all they were, like the “depressed” kids at school were just whiners, or the suicidal drunks at Jimmy’s Tavern were just depressed. And that’s how we liked it. Until…
Read MoreThe Call of Birds
The sides of the ditches are twined with brambles, rushes, wide-stemmed umbellifers. In the cleft, thin streams of brown water seep across the sodden turf. My father holds my hand as we walk the fields inspecting the cattle, checking the hedgerows and water troughs. When we come to the dikes, he slings me on his…
Read MoreThe Basque Shepherd
In early autumn 2007 I headed north from Elko, Nevada, on my way to the Owyhee River region of southeastern Oregon. It was the sporadic continuation of a journey that began in 2004, annual month-long adventures to the West from my home in North Carolina. I grew up in Portland, Oregon, but left for the…
Read MoreThree Poems
RISING AT DAWN (After OU YANG HSIU) In the darkness I see little.The moon is stuck tothe sky by a nail.I hear distant thunder,as if stars were breaking.I rise from my bed.I stare at the mirror.I no longer know my face.I’m now seventy-eight.My hair is white.I’m a frightening sight.My life is only memoriesof the distant…
Read MoreFive Collages
‘I Love You’ Says the Heart
We can come to terms with things that can’t be seen,and reconcile ourselves to the fact that thisneed not be tied to a belief in the supernatural. Who stands behind the door that has just closed?And from the shards of broken pottery on the asphalt—can you reconstruct what the jar looked like?Or was it a…
Read More