april / Eva Phillips

Robert Diebenkorn's Green (1986) 1 on my lesser days I am unwanted rockthatcoversmineraldeposits, a ten letter word that weaves through previous friend and situ accumulate, griddled squares sandwiched between the horoscopes and covered in droplets of oil and flat beer above me, Azerbaijan pharmacology guacamole [clue: seasoned avocado spread] I watched someone make see above while they read eight letters, down on the floor the night you always made sure I was okay abrade breeds blind, edible the inevitable search for white beans on saturday afternoon queuing outside the small shop space, fingering the purse zip and being scared of choosing a milk. no more picking olives out of the tub no more old salsa jars to put sesame in these days, where radicalism is putting a bag of flour back on the shelf and rebuking is an act projected through pleated cotton containers with deep effort I centre myself around the table and realise I do not know the word for when, in chemistry *it* does not contain carbon I know the pictures of dolphins in venice the dog asleep on the dead dog’s bed me in a city garden with a plicate fringe you drinking beer in a basement i do not know if you like me and give myself lower case pronouns when i feel small in the day time, with time to spare, my father tells me stories: 2 Kathan brown [b.1935] runs san franciscan art programs ran a length of paper through an etching machine in a garden in edinburgh ran, I imagine, along the landlocked shoreline of the tenderloin with six packs of beer that she would not share palette of glass stopping the foam from slopping into the next hemisphere i try to listen, but crosswords and stories run long in the sun and the eye drifts to a bird-based interlude k-k-k-kk—k-k feathery friend dipping into bucket of water fed by untethered down pipe where once we found a mynah drowned in the black mirror. behaving less like narcissus and more like a libra the contemporary moment was marked with the internet almost immediately and the water was not tipped out doubly distracted, I draw lines across canals, watch the idea of haight-ashbury disappear into the poesies of emilia romagna where today the flags are lowered to half-mast and the people are all inside but before there was fire, and anonymous francesco traini’s fresco was removed. imagine sinopia in the mid-40s, left to blaze in the heat of pisa and surrounded by pure luck everyone is excited by the exposure and camposanto feels a trembling of a revival a feeling that their giornata stretches long into the evening past the purple deadline of sunset i imagine st clare creaming her feet with nivea the cracks filling with mineral oil and wax before she once more beneath her robe tucks them st clare roasting ox tail topped with egg whites I am not certain about the dietary habits of the fransciscans, can only imagine francis consuming grouse with fat green grapes then stroking his belly, humming soft eschatological preachings to the meat inside it is a warm dream, like a hand dipped in water while asleep 3 1918 June wayne is born in chicago 1940s June wayne moves to los angeles my father snaps the wooden spoon against the pan as a way of getting my attention he wants to tell me about the tamarind institute hollywood and new mexico john wayne in drag dragging lithographic knowledge through the desert, dumping it at the epicentre of albuquerque education and then running off to europe, free from the ties of mitigating ink and paper and personal relations there is, apparently, a tamarind trained printing man in brisbane’s northern suburbs knowledge that impresses the water soaked flour where my brain used to be there is, apparently, a tamarind avenue on the southside that runs between archerfield rd and poinsettia street. serving as outer echelon casing to the blue fin fishing club in hock davis park and placatory sweet preserve in the mouth of any plicate fringe in the tristate area, the avenue’s sexy similarities with the northbound walk from hollywood forever to sunset starts with t and a and ends with d john wayne the republican was told hollywood would be lost by a woman saved by a virgin desperate to be liked he unfucked himself and never touched a woman again much to the consternation of an adolescent Joan didion hollywood’s own June wayne wears cat-eye glasses short curled hair and thick upper arms June wayne fucks with henry t heald of the ford foundation in a secular way to secure funding of a hollywood lithography workshop on tamarind avenue June wayne ‘invites a group of women to meet in her studio to discuss the hurdles they face and learn practical ways of navigating the business side of the art world. She titles this series of meetings Business and Professional Problems of Women Artists, but the class soon renames it “Joan of Art.”’ [Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago] June wayne’s class draws a line between June and thirteenth century france desperate to be included in my own diagram, I unfuck myself and listen closely to the nearest bells which are electric and come daily from a primary school 4 back in edinburgh Kathan schleps an etching press across the atlantic via the canal crown point press freighted through a landscape peopled only by roald dahl dying in the desert and a tiny island of durrells childhood things with stickier residue than most things I read today in san francisco her husband builds a studio while she gives birth to kevin they divorce and kevin runs a bookbinding company with vested interests Kathan is a master printer with many notable clients i love Kathan because she is out there living a life while i am wasting away on a daybed and will probably never have conscience-free babies or a mortgage 5 ten twelve years after June wayne dumps the tamarind institute in the dust of new mexico Eileen writes joan 1982 on paper peopled by droplets of oil flat beer bloodless white doves one god and lots of numbers. stacked on top of each other i read it like a stake made from bells and feathers, and teetering buckets of drink with angles of coloured glass stopping the beer from slopping into the next hemisphere. they write on the east coast write, I imagine, with anyone but hollywood’s June wayne on their mind and the way her businesslike workshop was wrestled into a line of catholic derivation by its members Eileen was is a catholic at least raised one and i get nervous writing about them catholics and Eileen if I make June wayne mad she might make a lithograph about it Kathan would roll me through an etching press catholics will tell my mother but Eileen might ignore me for the sake of art art and the double joan arc I draw a circle on the map between June and Eileen due to natural curvature I catch Kathan brown in san francisco and bring her too for no other reason than that i like her and have decided it is not just the members of the Business and Professional Problems of Women Artists class who get to draw lines between west coast printshops and thirteenth century france there is more to Kathan i read her as the pen moving as she did from east to west, or moving as June did across the atlantic and back again hauling trunk and being cool i tear my plane ticket into little shreds, watch videos on the panama canal and treat Kathan as wings Eileen as mineralised bore water June as demarkation of time there is more to all of them but writing runs long in the shade and two kookaburras that i have sent you before have landed on their branch as bird-based interlude between this checkered tablecloth a walk along the river and dinner: white beans from the balaclava street deli, cooked long because there is time to spare my tired sister on the counter top mother inside father inside k-k-k-kk—k-k the sound of an onion as it prepares for the pot.

[published as part of pps/FORA #1]

#ppspoetry #evaphillips