Materials: hinged jewelry box, embroidery thread, beads, ink, and card. Verse: excerpt from Pathways (Bullet Hole Riddle, 2014).
Glass, plastic, and paua beads.
Materials: Velvet hinged box, embroidery thread, beads and crystals, acrylic paint, and ink. Poem: Excerpt from Pathways (Bullet Hole Riddle, 2014).
Paint on blue velvet.
Ink wash and card on blue velvet - space for a personal message.
From the top: The Jewellery Box, 2017; The Survival Box, 2016; The Perfume Box, 2012
Materials: Old jewelry box with ribbon, collage (National Geographic and gift-wrap), ink pen. Verse: A) At the time (Bullet Hole Riddle, 2014) and B) The pursuit of happiness (2017, unpublished).
At the time...
there was too much to say / so she said nothing...
the words knotted their arms together / all octopus and impenetrable ocean...
swam furiously / but could not find the surface.
You say you only want to be happy like everyone else / but sometimes prison bars look like a face smiling or laughter...
sometimes they look like a human simply walking around in their skin / you can watch closely but you only see skin...
you see smiles and teeth / you see happy and sometimes happy is the same weight as sad...
sometimes happy puts sad in a choke hold / schoolyard bully, prison guard, lock.
I wake up and there are gaps everywhere / a gap on the bed / a gap in the morning / a gap in the night that follows it...
a thousand soft little gaps that creep up mute before me shadows of a thing I want to stay attached to / and you say at least and talk about other things after the right amount of time...
move me away from myself like it could save me from becoming a line drawing or gesture of myself / the mere suggestion of a body in space / like one of Matisse's five dancing ladies...
we always assume they are celebrating something / but maybe they are one woman in five positions / dancing around her griefs.
Every Hebrew noun is either masculine or feminine / eretz, the word for land, is feminine - bayit, the word for house, is masculine / emet, the word for truth is feminine and davar, the word for thing is masculine...
most names of streets, cities and countries are feminine Jerusalem, Aza, and Israel are all feminine / In Hebrew every verb must agree with the gender of its subject...
Dear, Israel this is just to remind you the words for mother are em and imah.
GALLERY
BOOK BOXES
Handmade poetry books hidden inside boxes. I re-purpose discarded gift boxes, old magazines, and found objects to create visual poetry books that fold out of box-lid covers.