Artwork © Ira Joel Haber

 

Righteous Rumors

my head is too big for my shoulders
you see how it lolls
I didn’t find a hat in my size
so I wore my righteousness instead

you talk too much,
I can barely hear you
is the plan to whisper me to death?

flap your ears wide
let the air in
your throat is tight
we can still see your sin

beneath the rows of pearls
the stitches of theft,
your story is on every lip
the air is rife with your name

ravaged by pride,
strangled by skin
flap your ears wide
won’t you let the air in?

 

Chukwudaru Immaculata Michael is a Nigerian writer whose work, through its treatment of text on a technical level, inherently resists socio-cultural expectations. Chukwudaru’s latest pieces are a merciful eroding of an internalized rage accrued from growing up in a dysfunctional multi-cultural society. She currently schools and lives in Portland State, Oregon.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, writer, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in the USA and Europe and he has had nine one man shows including several retrospectives of his sculpture. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum Of American Art, New York University, The Guggenheim Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum,The Albright-Knox Art Gallery & The Allen Memorial Art Museum. Since 2006 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 300 online and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Creative Artists Public Service Grant (CAPS) two Pollock-Krasner grants, two Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grants and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. in 2017 & 2018 he received the Brooklyn Arts Council SU-CASA artist-in-residence grant.