

From Ancestors, Mothers, and Muses: An installation
Artist’s Note: The series, Ancestors, Mothers & Muses, is inspired by powerful koans from our ancestors and by our individual and collective experience. Patterned after my mother’s wedding dress, the form of each ancestor embodies story and wisdom. The installation uses cloth, paper, and embedded objects, words, and images. I am drawn to create environments that stimulate others to listen to their own ancestors, mothers, and muses, to experience mysterious and surprising connections, to conjure a kind of conversation in community.
BLOOD-RED THREAD
still life with pomegranate
the knife in hand
her unrest gathers as clouds purple
the blade poises over rind
she knows she will find rubies
tart and sweet in the cut
she tears membrane
the inside out
and with lightning’s flash
what she desires comes
clay reddens streams as rain is hard steady
the river sweeps up cruelty and debris
rips rusted barb and post from sandy banks
oil drums tumble down arroyos
join uprooted tree boulders pound the night
she welcomes this momentum
slicing through the skin of the earth
the water’s fierceness as it carves
deeper to meet the Rio Abajo Rio
the source
the blood red thread pulsing with
birth the throes of death as ordinary as Monday
THIN-SKINNED WANDERER
catch the rawness
— of a world preparing for war,
collecting hate as rain forms a pool
in the slightest depression of slickrock.
Invite the world in.
Take the poison, chew it
like the Inuit woman chews seal skin.
Chewing takes time, a winter undertaking.
We have plenty of darkness.
Witness.
Grasp the world’s fear
roll it in your hand
until the edges smooth,
then return to the world
that which comforts any hand
a blue gray river stone.
OCEAN ANCESTOR
form recast
satin ties cinched my bodice
I turned en pointe in stiff net skirts
slippers with rigid shank-and-box
until
my bare feet (a requirement
in this tradition) pressed
into wet earth into the worn stone
of the spiral passage
now I keep the lighthouse
my face to the sea I attend ships of men
throw bone relics
spark the mirrored lantern
I join countless unknown women
stitch earth to sky to earth
say yes to the next step
unbroken
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