To Die of Love
A tree
A verse
A dove
From love I am trembling
and I am cold
crazy cold with anguish and joys.
The dying
little by little
makes me sick.
Exile!
I want to die
all of a sudden
Zaz!
so suddenly
to feel the impact
of my body in battle
against yankee fire.
To feel, then, nothing more—
Dream
of the fertile land
Dream
of life at play
Dream
of peace.
Ruth Vollmer, Musical Forest, 1961, 9½ inches diameter. Courtesy Jack Tilton Gallery, New York.
A Question of Life
Death
ambushes at every corner
and at times
brute sentiment
and rage
distend my heart
like a stretch sock.
Between life
and death
is an ongoing battle.
One is like an old shoe
and the other like a bare foot.
At times I like dry flowers more
than the fresh-cut
and at times death,
it seems fruitless,
and, life so alone.
Translations by Zoë Anglesey and Daniel Flores Ascencio.
Daniel Flores is a painter, poet and filmmaker. He is Founder and Director of the Institute of Arts and Letters of El Salvador in Exile, INALSE.
Staging historical justice in Hernán Ronsino’s Glaxo
“A writer worried about reception is cooking a dead book. A writer’s job is to produce the best possible book in absolute freedom, so the category ‘acceptable’ does not play in the process at all.”
From the train I could look out onto the infinite blue of the sea. I was still exhausted, wakeful from the overnight transatlantic flight to Rome, but looking out at the sea, that Mediterranean sea that was so infinite and so blue, made me forget it all, even myself. I don’t know why.
Originally published in
Nicolas Echevarria, Pam Yates, art by James Nares and Tom Otterness, writing by Daisy Zamora, Kathy Acker, Glenn O’Brien, and more.
Work that is just about the technical or conceptual, personal or political, is fine; it meets the world with what’s in fashion. But there’s something else bordering on magic, that brings an artwork home, makes it land and resonate. You can’t really teach that so much as conjure it.
Kara Walker
