a remedy for spring

The stalk of the thistle is rather rhubarblike: a solid barrel of burgundy growing skyward, interrupted along its path by arching swords of thorn-filled leaves veined in lavender. A black ant circumnavigates the base of a tilting spikelet unpierced. The head of the thistle erupts in pale pink cups fringed with pale green swords-to-be pressed around two young flower-melons striped in purple and white like the jaws of a Venus flytrap beginning to unswallow dessert. A ladybug finds shade beneath it.

bells for her

A fragment of Tori Amos' "Bells for Her" sung and played by me.

a magical box

This is a sentence I wrote and then had carved into a piece of walnut. It will eventually serve as the lid of a box. An ice-blue velvet-lined drawer will slide out from the side of the box. Nestled by ice-blue velvet pillows in the open drawer will be a photograph of a blue sky with clouds. When you pick up the photograph you discover that it is actually an accordion of photographs and the promise of magic is fulfilled.

savannah friandise

Enchanting is to haunting as breathing in is to breathing out: two sides of one see-saw not two. In walks a dog and out walks God. Wow and Mom are palindromes. Except for the sweet potato, brown dwarfs have no opposite and the visions I see in my head are not dreams, they are oranges. Oranges. A turquoise glass bowl glowing with sunshine-shaped pomelos. A lion-embroidered pillow. A two-tier white-wedding-cake costume garlanded in pink-and-green flowers, modeled by a lean orange cat, upright and humanlike but oranger and hairier in a pair of old-fashioned yellow heels. The cat's arms are unseen inside the white-wedding-cake costume or else the cat is armless. The cat is definitely headless. On the top layer of the cake where the cat's head does not protrude, an old green-bubble television tuned to a staticky station airs a digital cartoon of the head of an orange cat winking. You belong to every vase. Even nuns perspire.

paris hilton perfume

Paris Hilton

Paris is sharing the spotlight

with her first perfume.

Like Paris herself, it is Mysterious, Intriguing

and Beautiful. Rich in its appeal, it defines

that moment in time when powerful sensuality

and breath-taking beauty are captured in a

way that

all can enjoy.

Share a bit of the magic

that is Paris Hilton.

Find out what it smells

like to be a Star.

the earlessness of visages

The Mona Lisa has no bird's-eye view, so who knows what's on top of her head? The Mona Lisa also has no profile, so who knows if her nose is jutting? The Mona Lisa has no rear. The Mona Lisa has no ears. Seen from either side the Mona Lisa disappears. And behind the Mona Lisa is the wood on which she is painted.

the opposite of thanksgiving

THE DAYS when fruit-trees grew gold dimes were over. Years of yellowing drought had emptied the valley of its rivers, draining the yams of their magic. Goats starved on sick and scattered grasses and the fruit-trees grew only bitter citrons if they managed to grow anything at all.

one half of a magic trick involving an apricot

Apricot: Wikimedia Commons/Ian Fieggen

Brain: Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

the pointing space

Divina Proportione

(the golden proportion as applied to the human face)

Luca Paoli, Venice, 1509

A face is something formed, something crafted.

the opposite of magnetic

Woke up at 4:30 with the realization that my technique of scattering things on concrete and photographing them from above is a lot like Jackson Pollock's drip-and-pour technique, in the sense that a) the works are created horizontally without regard for up, down, left, right b) materials are dropped from above c) the works are physically inhabited and walked around in as they are being produced d) they are eventually converted to a vertical image that is meant for hanging on a wall.