October Playlist
“No 1” by Elizabeth Faraci
Welcome to the OCTOBER PLAYLIST on the theme of Shapeshifters featuring film, fiction, visual art, poetry, and plays by Josh Berkowitz, Elizabeth Faraci, Ellen K. Graham, Martha K. Graham, Amber Irish, Joe Marci, G.L. Marie, and Shane Rodriguez
Shame, Compassion, and Defence
By Josh Berkowitz
Grey Matters
By Amber Irish
Since the age of ten,
I’ve spent most of my dreams doing your laundry.
I walk through a field of lapis
under a melted emerald sky
make my way to the white river where
opal milk carves through a shore of red rocks.
There is a basket of brains and hearts waiting
and the washboard is where I left it, bone dry.
I go to my knees and pull a brain onto my lap.
It is old, well used, heavy with memories.
Swollen from years of use and
years of misuse and
just years,
full of black veins running through the crevices
a forgotten bathroom tile or
wild rhodonite left unpolished.
I dip it into the river and watch the milk
bloom gray. I wring it out and the river stains
like marble and pulls the veins away with the
current, beyond the horizon, to the bottom of the
universe, where all grey matter ends up.
I set your brain on the red rocks.
It is lighter than before, pink and more porous
than I remember. I think, this is good work,
I have done good work.
I hold it in my hands, take it
away from the opal shores, through the
lapis fields, hoping to surprise you with
a restoration of your favorite thing.
But I forget the memories of your favorite things are
washed away.
Lost in the river, pulled by the current,
far beyond the horizon, where all the grey matter in
the world ends up,
at the bottom of the universe.
Your memory of me is there, too,
One-Eyed Jack by G.L. Marie
Sound design by Bella Tuxedo.
Fruit and Other Deadly Things
By Amber Irish
When discussing apples,
we lament how easy it is for
spoilage to spread, how mold
can reach over and infect
another and another until the whole
barrel is lost and we call that a tragedy.
No one talks about what’s under the flesh,
tucked inside the fruit—
the seeds in their cores,
at their gravitational center, capable of
creating both new life
or cyanide which,
consumed in large enough quantities,
will cause seizures and
shortness of breath,
loss of consciousness
and death.
All this to say that
it’s important to remember how
even a very good bunch of apples
on a very good day
is still very capable of
killing you.
