Poem by Rysia Burmicz

I care because you do

I let a monster into your safari.

I apologized but [and you apologized too]

It is possible that we could
never see each other again
create a fictional future forever in moments for ourselves that feed into ourselves
again and again

But then again it’s creeping me out.

Considering to drink solids as I do
when I reach the espresso’s end,
that is brave, I feel.
You have no idea.
When the grain comes to the tongue I begin to ink:

What am I doing? Protocol has run amok!

Sit down and chew, for god’s sake or you’ll surely choke.
And then a similar dilemma. Can I walk and drink soup? Will they find me drowned?
Eating and drinking–so exclusive, yet bafflingly communist. I cannot do both, it seems,
simultaneously.

Your words resonate in words I read. In movements of my legs. In pavement tightrope walking and
eyes smiling over tops of collars. In ways my mind plays plays. We have a complete resonance in
language unheard. Even looks are language, touch, manifolds rolled around in eyes that emerge
from yours to shock mine. But some words (words for sensations) are not there, and I could never
explain that POW of my head buzzing – in love with a notion? Longing like lightening… You talk
too much. Your words crown out of my thoughts and actions. And then the vital scream. All we have
is silence but now

I feel like I AM YOU
[Just like the knotted log when I ouch bring the axe down wince every time.]
So won’t we lose nothing when we part?

Yet I have no resolve in that regard.

When I looked at the pile of laundry
on the dining table
I saw a face and
I imagined that I believed in
God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost
and wouldn’t it be exciting if I thought it was
the face of Mary folding laundry
of various shades of beige
perhaps a khaki or two, but never white.
Domestic Goddess scrubs holy shits out of gussets, till [of course] they ‘come immaculate.
Poor woman, if only it was Her. She could teach me how to fold my laundry like a pro.

She could get my head down.

But I see your movements as code everything coded + veiled. The movements of your fingers over
music. The flop of your tongue: code.
I heard music once, once when I fell up the stairs. It was loud, a bang of orchestra and I laughed.
Trying to navigate into that secret place the venn center of our minds.
the air pheww out it goes through your teeth.
Now where is that word? Is that were your mind is?
I look in your eyes you say yes
But You are either hiding Something or you are evacuated, empty like paper is empty.
To see empty eyes
That is not life.

You want to kill me though now maybe I don’t know maybe with a gun or an axe and chop me up
feed me to a pig.

Rysia Burmicz is a multimedia artist living in Bulgaria. Her work has been exhibited across the seedy underbelly of London, with prose poetry previously published in the now defunct Pontius Paper.

Ira Joel Haber was born and lives in Brooklyn. He is a sculptor, painter, book dealer, photographer and teacher. His work has been seen in numerous group shows both in USA and Europe and he has had 9 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 and The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Since 2007 His paintings, drawings, photographs and collages have been published in over 160 on line and print magazines. He has received three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, two Pollock-Krasner grants, the Adolph Gottlieb Foundation grant and, in 2010, he received a grant from Artists’ Fellowship Inc. He currently teaches art to retired public school teachers at The United Federation of Teachers program in Brooklyn.