Tag: minimalism
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Her
I wrote “Her” after waking from a dream that felt like a visitation from memory itself. The poem explores how forgetting can become a form of intimacy—how the act of brushing hair in a childhood house can reveal the limits of recognition.
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Reverse Erasure
Reverse Erasure began as a mirror to my earlier poem Erasure. I wanted to see what happens when destruction runs backward — when the horror of disappearance becomes a slow reclamation of form. The poem’s reverse sequence borrows from Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible, but replaces cinematic violence with the mechanical violence of graphite, paper, and dust.…
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The Dress
This poem began with the image of a man holding a dress in a dim room, an object behaving as both memory and disguise. Its theme is how clothing can momentarily alter the body’s outline and expose what grief refuses to say.
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A Loss
I wrote A Loss after burning a photograph that refused to fade on its own. The poem examines how ritual and chemical reaction replace sentiment, turning memory into residue and pressure.
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Peace Wheel
I wrote Peace Wheel after watching monks construct a sand mandala outdoors, where the wind kept undoing their precision. The poem explores the friction between breath and wind—human control against the inevitability of dispersal.
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Family Tree
Family Tree began as an image of a house without windows and a river carrying away its debris. The poem explores how time erodes lineage—the way humanity sloughs into the river’s swell and becomes part of its current.
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The Watching
I wrote My Pigeon Heart after watching a pigeon settle on the ledge of an abandoned building downtown. The image felt like a mirror — a creature surviving in ruin, indifferent to collapse. The poem’s architecture is vertical: a descent from observation to fracture. It’s about the violence of stillness, the small greatness of endurance,…
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Each Morning Before Dawn
I wrote Each Morning Before Dawn after noticing how the small rituals of care—refilling a bird feeder, waiting for song—can reveal the violence beneath domestic calm. The poem began as a record of sound and silence, but it evolved into a meditation on expectation and dread. The mockingbird and squirrel became emblems of persistence and…
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Stones
“Stones” emerged from a walk with my autistic brother, where the gravel beneath us felt like a ledger—each stone a record of what we’ve inherited and what we must carry. I wrote it to honor the physicality of memory and the way lineage shapes our future terrain. The poem resists sentimentality and abstraction, staying grounded…
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Wrinkle-less
Wrinkle-less emerged from a moment of reflection on how survival—through illness, loss, and aging—leaves marks that are not always visible. I wanted to resist the cultural shorthand that equates wrinkles with wisdom, virtue or experience, and instead offer a poem where absence becomes a site of consequence. The scars, deafness, and neuropathy I reference are…