Artflux

Portrait David Svenson, 2011 Victor Carnuccio

New York hotels are overpriced. I discovered airbnb.com where you can list your spare room to guests who want to save while visiting the big apple. Their catch phrase is travel like a human. My first quests arrived over Columbus Day weekend from Montréal. The guys were actually charming guests. I’ve booked my spare room all the way through the middle of November.

Fashion Week is over. Whew… My solo soho show was canceled due to bad weather and a wicked bike crash I had two days before the opening. I was on my road bike traveling on a downhill at about 20 mph.. Then unexpectedly someone turned abruptly without signaling. I flipped over the handlebars landing on my my right shoulder as well as knee head and who knows what else. X-rays showed a level 1 or 2 shoulder separation. It’s been almost 3 weeks and I’m almost totally recovered.

It was kind of funny to ask me to go slow ‘haste makes waist.’ I explained that road bikes are designed for racing. The idea is to go really fast.

Untitled Water Color on Paper

Quiet still of sinking
summer sun
the prattle gone
half-life of eyes open always
worlds they have swallowed
in duplicate
thoughts they drowned
clutching our common
unhappiness shadows in habit
dawn loiters
all through the night

wrest from torment
sobbing through my teeth
without measure weep
till my ashen hair drowns
coloring my muteness
hopeful sorrow a bruise
of flowers
waiting for the beat
of skipping rope

R. Cherry
8/2/01 E.H. NY

War 1, watercolor Regina Cherry

Breath of spume
our life
forgotten cliches
find fresh purpose
for fatted flesh
mouths puckered on gall
oozing lacunae

your smell between my lips
there is darkness in this afternight
sound staining the sheets
petals swollen with blood
enfold a wrinkled sack
of viable children
flapping inches from death

moon is rising from a branch
behold the pound of dust

R.Cherry
8/2-9/3/01 E.H.NY

Untitled 91-98, watercolor on paper

This still—born life
dream compote flecked
with occasional pits +
genes of despair
your intaglio image etched
too deep to bleach
taste of amaranthine
mourning at
heart’s trap-door
suck in the desert
breathe out water
spit magma
melt into cypher

12/14/99

War #3, 2006 Watercolor on Rag Paper

Hesitantly
I touched you tired
afraid to hurt the toy
with trepidation
I entered you
felt no resistance
searching longing to
release you
reach your brain
explore
the lone sombrous chemins
felt you wetting
wetting pulling myself
touching
your most intimate realm
seeing
travelling interior spaces
you are opening up
letting
me in I felt you
surrender
almost myself
come again
visit

5/5/98 NYC~
pour S.

Silence got deeper after
your departure
even when you had said
nothing
space replete with
the pressure of your mind
presence of your being –
intermittent muffled clicks
of your keyboard –
now void

trembling falling
tulip petals shedding
revealing erect nakedness
skin snowflakes covering
the ground; if I gathered
reassembled sufficient flecks
of your molting skin
I could possibly
reconstruct
a semblance of you

At twenty hours
the wispy spine
pink in the sky
throwing last rose highlights
onto sap-green pine tips
only the tallest
largest fish whale flying
ancestral reminder dissolving
moving east
tail end thrashing
cross vast milky way’s path

lone dragon flies in locked
tandem working next year’s
alchemy
a sky scattered tonight
skeletons fossilized translucent
heaven as oracle

7/30/02 E.H.
4/2/-5/23/03 NYC

War #4, 2006 Watercolor on Rag Paper

Gray overcast late afternoon
September Saturday – a bicycle ride
to a large irregular corner room
four beds, one empty – visitor chatter
Clinton has a view, inward now
into his own space – know it well
every gasp a deep struggle without
the feed line – lunch untouched
we talk – quotidian – just so much
searching for humor, graze politics – he knows
Allan’s time foredrawn – eschewing clearly
that hope of the terminal
“Take the apple” – “you’re sure?” –
I hate to waste food. ‘Take the Times,
can’t read much – just leave the art page.”
Air is getting thin, the tight
smallish cadmium medium/dark Red Delicious
weighs heavy in my pocket.
Tuesday Clinton decides to leave.

Another Saturday, brighter this time, earlier
hazed sun illuminating roof tops
a pale blue sky across town looking east
Allan speaks of his treatments, his pain
Irma goes for ice cream, vanilla – home made
nothing tastes any longer.
I sum my last visit with Clinton
“How was he ? did he gasp for air ? I know
nothing of this last part of his life”
I tell him all, the little I talked with him –
that I kissed him on his clammy forehead
good bye – Irma goes, Bressler comes
issues to tend to – I ride home in cotton reality,
keep the apple around.

Took it out of cold storage today
its girth still firm – skin
wrinkling over its humpback,
color dulling, bruises appearing on resting points
stem still attached after six months, picked
too soon – I return it to the cold.

For Clinton and Allan
3 26 04
R. Cherry NYC

Good Old Army

Just above the Mexican border,
Fort Bliss is the spot,
Where we are doomed to serve our time,
In the land that god forgot.

Down with the snakes and lizards,
Down where a man feels blue,
Right in the middle of nowhere,
And a thousand miles from you.

We sweat, freeze, and slave,
It’s more than a man can stand,
We’re not supposed to be convicts,
Just defenders of our land.

We’re soldiers of the desert,
Earning our measly pay,
Guarding people with millions,
Just for 2.50 a day.

Living with only memories,
Wishing to see our gals,
Hoping that while we are away,
They haven’t married our pals.

Nobody knows we’re living,
Nobody gives a damn,
At home we are forgotten,
Because we belong to Uncle Sam.

The time we have spent in the Army,
The best ones of our life we have missed
Boys don’t let the draft get you,
And for God’s sake don’t enlist.

When all of us get to heaven,
To all the saints will tell,
We’re soldiers of the desert,
And have had our share of HELL !!!

JUST A COUPLE OF LONELY FORGOTTEN “G.I’s”

George R Childress

Van W. Malmstrom

Van W. Malmstrom my Great Uncle contracted polio and died as a result shortly after this poem was written.