Traveling the Road to Freedom: A Conversation with Dominique Moody

By George Howell

Originally published in Sculpture, July/August 2017

Last summer, assemblage artist Dominique Moody brought NOMAD, a “tiny house” on wheels that serves as her living and creative space, to Harrison House Music, Arts & Ecology, located in Joshua Tree, California. The 140-square-foot mobile shotgun house, whose title stands for “Narrative, Odyssey, Manifesting, Artistic, Dreams,” is a gem of a compact, self-sufficient dwelling that highlights Moody’s deft joining of aesthetics and practicality. More than this, though, NOMAD is a work of social sculpture; Moody often uses the porch as a platform for spinning personal narratives around issues of affordable housing, race relations, and art as a tool for healing.

The daughter of a U.S. Army officer, Moody, who was born in Germany, knows about the nomadic life firsthand. After her large family returned to the United States, they moved frequently. They landed in Philadelphia, where they restored abandoned houses with the promise of ownership through “sweat equity,” only to have the homes repeatedly snatched away by the banks just before completion. The skills and resilience that Moody developed from this experience came in handy when she was forced to abandon her work as an illustrator, due to macular degeneration, and began creating sculptures.

Her three-month residency at the Harrison House’s Art & Ecology space focused on the principles of permaculture. Founder/director Eva Soltes says, “What Dominique Moody has created in NOMAD is so integrated in terms of art and ecology, this was a perfect match for both of us. For 30 years, she’s been evolving a system of aesthetically practicing form and function in her daily life. She brought her extraordinary ability to this site and helped us realize it.”

George Howell: One of your assemblages, which is made out of layered cardboard with a peaked roof and wrapped in twine, looks like a miniature version of NOMAD. Was this the earliest seed?

Dominique Moody: Not quite, but it was certainly part of that process. The Santa Monica Museum of Art had invited me to do a piece for its Incognito fundraiser, and I needed to replace a small house, which sold within days of being made. I found an old roller-skate at a sidewalk sale, put a shoebox on top of the skate, and immediately it was NOMAD. It’s called My Road to Freedom, and it took on a different dimension for me in its simplicity and “pared-down-ness,” as well as in its title—what being nomadic would mean for me.

GH: Did the idea of making a social space, a space that you not only lived in, but that also functioned as a platform for storytelling and community exchange, evolve out of making smaller pieces like this, or did you have the concept in mind to begin with?

DM: It may have been a combination of both. Initially this was to resolve a critical question for me as an artist, which was whether my work could support me and all my life needs. I needed to find a way to re-shift how my resources were being used: Could I continue to maintain a studio? One of the very first pieces was called House Dreams of an Urban Nomad, a stack of boxes on wheels that rotated around. It was part of a dream series that I did for the Watts Towers Art Center, my first solo exhibition, which brought me to Los Angeles for the first time. It was an amalgamation of all the places where I had lived, and it talked about the sense of being often displaced. In other places where I’ve shown, people were intrigued by the collage and assemblage, but they didn’t seem to quite grasp the kind of narrative I was telling. But in Watts, it was different, because people were immediately engaged with the stories, which connected to their everyday lives. And that’s when I started to realize the impact of my work as a social medium.

GH: When your family returned from Germany, did you feel like an immigrant?

DM: Exactly. Even at the age of four, I was acculturated elsewhere, and so I had to learn the culture firsthand, and I wasn’t comfortable with the language. I realized that, even as a child, my artwork was a bridge for the language gap, because when people saw the work, they would talk to me differently.

GH: Was that the beginning of your awareness of narrative?

DM: Absolutely. I loved illustrated books, because I could know the entire story by reading the imagery. I knew from really early on that I wanted to tell stories.

GH: You were an illustrator in the beginning of your career?

DM: Exactly, because I felt that it would be the best fit; it was the tool to tell stories with. The next big leap happened in my late 20s, when my eyesight started to fail, and I realized that I needed a whole different way to communicate. I hadn’t lost any vision; I lost some sight.

GH: One standout piece is of a guitar player, built into a guitar case. Your early assemblage work was not just narrative, it was also figurative.

DM: That was part of a series of silhouettes, which I started in the late ’80s, right after my diagnosis. I would make cutouts, life-size or larger. I have always loved drawing the details of the figure—hands, the face—but I could no longer see the details, and so the figures became more generalized in shape. Then I would cut the shapes out of wood and piece them together, and all of a sudden there were two-dimensional pieces in a three-dimensional space, and I realized I could embellish them with found objects and materials.

GH: These works seem really poetic, lyrical, and animated. Was “The Family Treasures Found” (2001 –02) the culmination of that approach?

DM: It was made with one of my first major grants, from the California Community Foundation, in conjunction with “Finding Family Stories,” and it is now part of the California African American Museum’s permanent collection. I had wanted to do it for a long time, because my immediate family is so spread out around the country, and we don’t possess a family portrait. After my grandmother died, I went through the family treasure, which was a box of old black and white and sepia-toned photos. On certain occasions, she would bring this box out, telling the story of the photos, and we were rapt with attention, because she was animated, and she would describe who these people were, their background stories.

GH: Can you describe one of the portraits?

DM: Mother Home is a portrait of my mom. Her body is made out of a tabletop, which is collaged like a kind of mapped tablecloth, and table legs; underneath there’s an object she treasured—an elephant with a fishbowl on top, and in the fishbowl was her second husband. Her arms are outstretched and she’s holding her silhouette. We grew up in a very eclectic house. The dishes were often different, but we appreciated the uniqueness of found objects and treasured them as our own. So, she helped me to select the teacups on the table, each teacup representing how she saw one of her children, and then they were placed on the maps where her children were located.

GH: This makes me think about Pop art assemblage and Edward Kienholz, Noah Purifoy, and John Outterbridge. How did they influence your work?

DM: They were often left out of traditional arts education. I came across them in unusual ways, and they captured my attention. The way that they incorporated objects together fascinated me and made me look at my dream life and the imagery that I transformed into my collages. When you cut out one image and put it on top of another, it becomes something else, but to do that in a three-dimensional way, to me, was magic. I shied away from it, though, until my eyesight changed, and I was almost forced to go into a more three-dimensional mode. Even though most of them were steeped in assemblage, or in collage, like Romare Bearden, each of these artists brought something really rich to my understanding of how to bring all of those elements together. I was surprised to realize that California had a unique form of assemblage. Watts Towers, for me, was an epiphany. Simon Rodia, who did not see himself as a traditional artist, built this thing over the course of 30-some years. All of the materials were found elements, and he constructed something at an architectural scale. I had always loved architecture, having to work on houses and do house-related jobs on the side, and here was someone who brought all of that together to embellish his house. I felt so attuned to that idea. I knew that if I had space and place, that was the kind of art I would do—not inside the studio, the art is the studio.

GH: When you talked about the sepia-toned photographs, I thought about the segregated world of your mother and grandmother. Purifoy and Outterbridge respond to being African American in a majority white culture with a kind of satirical finger-pointing. Why does your work, which focuses on bonding and family life, take a gentler approach?

DM: They had a responsibility to be a communal voice in a way that was absolutely demanding and revolutionary at the time. That paved the way for me, as part of a younger generation, to carve out a space where I could speak personally. While I was building that first solo body of work, my friends asked me if I would have an audience to go with me to that personal place. I wasn’t sure until I got to Watts, where people told me that their personal stories mirrored mine. All of a sudden, I really understood the saying, “The personal is public, and the personal is political.”

GH: When you use NOMAD as a platform, you don’t often talk about the formal issues of sculpture. Inevitably you’re speaking about the African American experience, sometimes to a white audience.

DM: I think speaking to an audience that mirrors and reflects you validates their feelings, while speaking to people who are not mirroring you allows them to have their own awakening, their own realization, and to speak through the piece again, to share their story. That, to me, is a really interesting engagement. I don’t necessarily talk in formal terms because the work is only complete when it elicits a response. What we were seeking was not the shell of a house, it was engagement with the community, and we never got that, so it was a Band-Aid on a wound that really is deep. To go back to the deepest part of that wound is something that America hasn’t done yet. I am able to sit on that porch and share those stories and have people understand that there is a thread, that I’m connected to you, that my pain is your pain, that your pain is my pain, and until we get to that place where we understand that and have empathy, that wound is still going to fester. To me, art can be healing, because it allows that space to happen.

GH: What did you do for the Harrison House’s Art & Ecology program?

DM: When Eva Soltes saw NOMAD, she was struck by how beautifully it fit her vision for the new Arts & Ecology site. She was excited that I could manifest those ideas in something three-dimensional and during the heat of the summer. site is a couple of acres, and its groundwork was already started before I got there. The compost toilet was in place, some trees had been planted, she had shaded a group of amazing vintage trailers and had started the framework of a solar shower.

GH: At first, I thought that you had done some really nice decorative work around the site. But weren’t you more like the ecological architect?

DM: In response to Eva’s vision of the site supporting work crews and a community program, I brought the knowledge and experience of how I had shaped NOMAD to be an “art dwelling” and to meet my personal needs. Infrastructure was needed on the site: How does the facility support the work that’s ultimately going to happen there? Shaping that use of space with a tighter organization of resources was something very much in keeping with my work. We developed rest areas, shade, and night lighting while bringing an aesthetic approach that tied the entire environment together, making it a place where people would want to work and gather. We had a major collaboration around Eva’s idea of making a sunken garden within the old wooden horse corral. In concert with the building of the garden, I transformed the surround into an assemblage fence called “Three Sistahs Dreamin’ of Earthworms Dancin’.” It combines reclaimed wooden forms from the Harrison House straw bale vault with an embellishment of colorful glass bottles, creating a space that is much deeper than just decoration. I’ve always hoped that NOMAD would facilitate my being in a place that ordinarily couldn’t cater to an artist because it didn’t have the infrastructure. With NOMAD, I could be within a community and help manifest their ideas and dreams. One of the principles of permaculture is “care for the earth, and care for the people.” It’s just as important to grow the community as it is to grow the food. What does it take for someone to put a seed in the ground and nurture the plant, and what is the support system for that person to do the work? Here, I’ve set an aesthetic seed and a functional seed.

George Howell is a writer in California. 

How Artist Rocio Hoffmann Silva Painted My Portrait

The Rosarito painter talks about art, protest and self-assertion in Baja Norte

Rocio Hoffman Silva (Photo: George Howell/CC-BY-SA 4.0)

By George Howell

Originally published by San Diego Free Press, October 9, 2017 

So, I find myself sitting in an old stuffed chair with worn arm rests, waiting for artist-activist Rocio Hoffmann to paint my portrait (video). As she preps her canvas with a wash of flat red acrylic, Rocio chuckles. “I always start with rojo, red, because this is the name of my gallery, ‘Roho!’”

A small, round-faced woman with a permanent smile and a sharp sense of humor, Hoffmann regularly interviews Baja artists, musicians and dancers while she does their portraits, posting the live feeds to her Facebook page as part of a project called “Conversaciones in ROHO.”  Galeria RoHo, her small, but vibrant studio-school-market space, is located in the artisanal district along Boulevard Popotla, just south of the big hotels and tourist shops of downtown Rosarito.

Today, we’re switching roles. Ever since I met Rocio a few years ago at Festiarte, Tijuana’s exuberant celebration of the arts, I have wanted to interview her because she is a rich source of information about art and culture in Baja Norte.

Despite her unassuming appearance, Rocio Hoffmann is an outspoken, provocative figure, recognized for her work as a co-founder of the Rosarito Art Fest and, more recently, for her participation in the mass demonstrations that turned Baja upside down in January and February of this year.

The portrait begins with my left eye, which Hoffmann outlines in dark acrylic.

“My father told me that when I met someone for the first time, I introduced myself as ‘Rocio, the artist,’” she says, describing her early fascination with art.

Born in 1963 in Coyoacan — the artistic district of Mexico City — Hoffmann remembers her grandmother taking her to visit muralist David Alfaro Siquieres in his studio. She was 7 years old.

“Don’t let anybody change your way as an artist,” the famous painter had advised her. “You were born an artist, you are an artist, just keep it in your mind.”

“And that impressed me,” Hoffmann said.

The biggest influence on Hoffmann’s art and life was Manuel Lizarraga Garibaldi, the internationally recognized painter from Merida, Yucatan, who was her husband and creative partner.

Lizarraga died in 2014, following years of cancer and the humiliations of Alzheimer’s disease. After he passed, the Mexican news journal Milenio published a sweet and touching account of Hoffmann’s life with the painter. A student fresh from art school, Hoffmann first obsessed on his work and then on the painter himself (he was 25 years her senior and recently separated from his wife; the couple had four children). In 1989, Hoffmann started an affair with Lizarraga that turned into a 25-year marriage.

In the last few years of his life, Lizarraga was nursed and cared for by Hoffmann and poet Francisco Morales, Rocio’s next and current husband. According to Milenio, “What began as a rapturous passion between a mature painter and a young student, ended in an almost maternal affection.”

As she concentrates on the canvas, I ask Hoffmann where she learned this technique, of beginning with an abstract stain and pulling out recognizable details, like my nose and glasses. She teaches this method to students who come from both sides of the border to work with her.

“Manuel Lizarraga, my first husband and my teacher. I learned every day from him.” According to Hoffmann, he developed many techniques for encouraging creativity and bringing out the personal language each artist carries within.

She continues: “That’s why I teach my students techniques, to create a face or landscape, but I also teach them how to bring out all their feelings, and it is like a therapy.  Art is very personal, more so when you develop your own language. Art is not just about making a thing; it is a way to create a language with your discipline and design, knowing the techniques and then destroying the techniques. I know that I don’t own the truth for all the universe, but it’s my truth.”

Over the course of their marriage, Hoffmann and Lizarraga traveled throughout Mexico, painting and opening up galleries in Oaxaca and San Miguel Allende before returning to Rosarito. In the late 2000s, developments in Tijuana caught their attention.

As the drug wars that had turned Tijuana into a ghost town began to settle down, a group of artists persuaded the owners of Pasaje Rodriguez, a nearly abandoned marketplace on Avenida Revolucion, to allow them to turn the empty storefronts into galleries and artist studios. The artists, who formed a working group called PRAD (Pasaje Rodriguez Art and Design), cleaned out the debris, rebuilt and repainted the trashed spaces, and, in the process, lifted the city’s spirits.

“Pasaje Rodriguez is exactly a project that I love because they captured the attention of the public with art” Hoffmann says. “It was the worst times in Tijuana and Rosarito and they created another face for this corner of Latin America — the real one. Of course, we’ve got bars, we’ve got the Revolucion, those are good, but they are not exactly what we are, we are more than that.”

Hoffmann was invited to join the artists in the pasaje. “I had a show at Antonio Escalante’s gallery, Circulo Gallery, and I was part of it as an artist. But I had my health problem with my husband.”

Unfortunately, few, if any, of those original galleries are still open. In their place are used bookstores, coffee shops, the Mamut microbrewery, a small cinema and art space, and other shops, including a dentist who is rumored to be the longest running tenant in the pasaje. Does she know what happened?

“I just have a little information because I wasn’t there. But I know one thing: when the owners of Pasaje Rodriguez saw that this was good, they raised the price a lot, and most of the artists couldn’t pay,” Hoffmann explains. “Antonio Escalante and his team were the ones that created these magical things in Pasaje Rodriquez, but then the owners just wanted to see money. I’m sorry to say, but that’s true.”

Certainly, the murals that line the walls and corrugated metal gates of Pasaje Rodriquez are an ongoing legacy of that first creative burst of energy. Hoffmann says that one of her favorites is by “Varrona” [Manuel Rodriguez], “who lives in downtown Tijuana. He paints many artists that have already passed away. But I like them all because they are all very good. David Silvah is from Rosarito, and Norteño [Alonzo Delgadillo], he’s a young artist from Tijuana and he is very good.”

How does she feel about Pasaje Rodriguez now?

“They are doing a good job because they keep the art tradition of Pasaje Rodriquez alive. And I always say to everybody, everything is in movement, nothing is going to stay like this forever,” she says.

Looking around the gallery-workshop as she paints, I realize that even during her husband’s illness, Hoffmann kept herself busy in her hometown. What projects did she take on in Rosarito?

“First of all, I created one of my youngest kids, Ivan, and he’s an artist, too,” she laughs as she continues to paint. Ivan Lizarraga, a talented dancer, is the youngest of her three children with Manuel Lizarraga.

“I cannot say that I was very active. I just did what I thought somebody had to do and nobody was doing it.

“When I came back to Rosarito, there were many, many artists living here, but they were all apart and I started to talk with the business men and the artists about the importance of joining together to create a better quality of tourists. And then I did many things, like decorating the Condo Hotel with original art because they wanted to put up reproductions, and I proposed to them to put original work from local artists and we did it.

“I started to make little festivals in various parts of Rosarito — Armando Gonzalez and me — and we named this Arte en Movimiento, Art in Movement, and I was one of the founders of the Rosarito Art Fest. Now it is the best festival in Northwest Mexico for art.”

For her efforts, Hoffmann was named Rosarito’s “Woman of the Year” in 2010.

Meanwhile, along with her gallery, Hoffmann continues to run Trastiende (Back Room), a weekly series of television interviews with artists, musicians and art promoters. Over the past seven years, the show has migrated between local channels in Rosarito and can be seen now on Channel 73.

When I point out that she is much more active than she claims, Hoffmann laughs. “I’m active because I’m probably hyperactive! But the most important thing is that I’m doing what I love — that is, painting and I’m making a living with my work. And I think all artists have a little responsibility, a social responsibility. I did what I thought I had to do.”

So I have to ask an obvious question. Is she a provocateur?

“I think I’m a cultural activist,” she resonds. “Someone has to say these things and many people don’t make the effort, or they don’t know how to. I say what I think is right, and if the people get hurt, I’m sorry. But it’s my truth. They have the opportunity to say, ‘No, you are wrong,’ but it’s my truth and I have to fight for my truth.”

On Hoffmann’s Facebook page is a photograph of the artist, microphone in hand, standing on the back of a pickup truck as she addresses hundreds of protestors. At the end of last year, the Mexican government raised the price of gasoline – the gasolinazo – at the same time that the governor of Baja California called for the privatization of water. Citizens in Baja Norte, already hit by a declining peso, took to the streets. Hoffmann joined them.

“I can’t help myself!” she exclaims. “I had to say something and I’m not shy!”

Hoffmann caught the attention of the Mexican edition of Newsweek and she was interviewed for an article on the protests.

According to Newsweek, Baja California is often considered to be less politically active than other parts of Mexico. Things changed in January. Protestors shut down the border crossing at San Ysidro and the Pemex oil refinery in Rosarito, posing a potential economic crisis in the region. The government mobilized armed troops to keep the plant open.

“I became part of the manifestations because I’m angry with the government,,” she says. “They make the reform, telling us that it is not going to raise the price of the gasoline. Now they change their mind.”

Hoffmann is convinced that the Mexican government is selling oil to American companies and that is driving the price hikes.  “And these few Mexicans — the government, [President] Peña Nieto and all these stuck up people — they believe that they have the guts to sell what is owned by all the Mexicans. Why? It’s not theirs. It belongs to us.”

How did she get to speak at the rallies?

“I heard that many people were going to meet together to tell the government that we did not agree with the gasolinazo and I just joined them.

“I’m very bocona. In Mexico we say, bocona — I have a big mouth! Because they were talking and I said I have to talk about the art part and I jumped in and I talked. They didn’t tell me, ‘Rocio, could you talk now?’ No, no. I jumped in. When you are sure of what you have to say, I think nobody is going to stop me. “

Hoffmann told Newsweek that she was frustrated with the lack of support for local artists and disappointed when the mayor of Rosarito, whom she voted for, decided to use city funds to purchase a luxury car for “official business.” (Mayor Mirna Rincon later thought better of her decision.)

“They asked me about how I became an activist. I didn’t became an activist — I was born an ‘artivist!'” she says with a smile. “I’m not afraid to say or do whatever I like. I know that I have just one life and I am going live it!”

On that supremely confident note, our interview is over and the portrait complete. As we talked, I lost track of the painting and, not surprisingly, when I see it, I love it. And then I move out of the way as Hoffmann greets dancer and Tijuana native, Iliana Edith (video). Hoffmann immediately settles Iliana into the old chair I just occupied and launches into her second interview of the day. She starts the portrait with a wash of flat red acrylic.

***

More information about Rocio Hoffmann Silva (in Spanish):

Tijuaneo: Exposición “Roho” de la artista plástica Rocío Hoffmann

Local poets take the stage at Sun Alley

Award-winning poet L.I. Henley waits for the audience to settle down. Then she brushes back her long black hair and launches into her poem, a powerful childhood memory. As her mother explains that she is separating from the poet’s father, their Buick is caught up in a flash flood.

A drought     she thought     a walk across the Mojave

& then

water like thick honey from the comb

             I’ll know when it’s time she said

to go out the window

Henley (the “L” stands for Lauren) grew up in Joshua Tree.  The winner of many poetry awards, including the 2017 Perugia Press Prize, she writes spare, highly polished poems capturing the magic and the dangers of this beautiful and harsh landscape.

Since February 2017, Morongo Basin poets have been gathering around the Sun Alley stage on the second Sunday of every month to hear featured writers like Michael Dwayne Smith, Cynthia Anderson, Susan Abbott and, of course, Henley. 

The reading series is the result of poet Rich Soos’ efforts to support the high desert writing community. Soos publishes Cholla Needles, a monthly literary magazine launched at the beginning of 2017. He approached Space Cowboy Bookstore, located in the Sun Alley, about hosting a series of readings by poets that he publishes and the owners agreed.

“There is a very obvious tight-knit group who have been doing things together up here for many years,” Soos says, “and they are very open about allowing new writers into their fold and sharing themselves while listening to others. The respect they have for each other, and the support they show for each other, is an inspiration.”

Along with the featured poets, audience members can add their names to the sign-up sheet and read a poem of their own.

During the October 8^th reading, for instance, the audience heard from sixteen other readers, including Dorothy Baker, speaking in her persona as “The Queen.” Ellen Baird read her eleven-year-old son Lowen’s poem about betrayed trust, and writer Gabriel Hart related a nightmarish journey down the Morongo Pass in a gale force wind.

Regarding Cholla Needles, Soos says, “I put a small ad in the Hi-Desert Star and Facebook asking folks to send poetry and short stories. I wanted to print one magazine a month, and I was determined to print at least 6 books this year. So far we’ve published ten issues of the magazine, and 16 books of poetry, art and fiction by local writers.”

Soos has plenty of experience running small presses. In the 70’s & 80’s, while living in Monterey, San Diego and San Jose, he published over 200 issues of Seven Stars, a monthly magazine, and 100 books under the name Realities Library.

For his current book projects, Soos uses Amazon as his printer. This gives him flexibility in terms of the number of books printed at any time and offers speedy turn-around time.

Soos obviously takes great pleasure supporting local writers, and, for full disclosure, that includes me.  This spring, he published a few of my poems in the issue 5 of Cholla Needles, and I was one of those sixteen other readers on Sunday, October 8. High desert writers owe Rich Soos much gratitude for his love of poets and good books.

For more information about Cholla Needles, go to the website or pick up a copy at Rainbow Stew in Yucca Valley, Space Cowboy in Joshua Tree, and Raven’s Books in 29 Palms.

L.I. Henley and poet Jonathan Maule are editors of an on-line poetry magazine, Apercus. In addition, they feature visiting poets at the Beatnik Lounge on the 3^rd Friday of every month.

Cholla Needles, Issue 5 (2017)

Pajaros Callados

Thanks to Alberto Garcia Zatarain

Tus palabras amargas

me retan cada día.

Por la mañana,

en la cama solitaria,

los rayos del sol vuelan

a lo largo de las paredes

como pájaros de oro,

pájaros sin voz.

No encuentro mis palabras,

las palabras que se escapan

como pájaros callados.

El cuarto brilla

con la luz del sol.

La cama espera en la sombra,

Silencio.

Tus palabras amargas

me retan cada día.

El rayo de sol

se posa en la mano

como pájaro,

espera un momento largo

y después, se va.

Las palabras se escapan

como pájaros callados.

En la cama.

En la sombra.

Solo.

 Quiet Birds

Your bitter words

challenge me every day.

In the morning,

In the lonely bed,

The rays of the sun fly

Along the walls

Like golden birds,

Silent birds.

I cannot find my words,

The words that escape

Like quiet birds.

The room shines

With the light of the sun.

The bed waits in the shade,

speechless.

Your bitter words

challenge me every day.

The sunbeam

perches in my hand

like a bird,

Waits a long moment

And then is gone.

The words escape

Like quiet birds.

In the bed.

In the shadow.

Solitary.

3/21/17

The Empty House

Off to the side

Of the road,

A deserted house

Looking onto the long plain

Of shrubs and gravel—

A house with its share

Of ghosts?

I want to fill

The empty house

With my emptiness,

I want to sit

In the ruined living room

And look out

At the snow

On San Gorgonio,

At the clouds marching

Across the sky,

At the peach sunset.

Watch what is full and outside

Of the walls

Of this empty house.

I am an empty house,

Standing upright

And facing the fullness

Of the outside

With eyes emptied of

Opinion, expectation

Or hope.

An empty house.

5/10/15

The Mountain/Ahab in the Desert

The hump of the mountain emerges

Out of the clouds

And recedes back into the clouds,

The layer of snow on its flank

As white as spume.

Like an adversary waiting on the horizon.

An exile, I am miles from the ocean.

Does the wind cast away the waves

The way it tosses gravel

Across the windshield?

Does the wind make it impossible

To stand on the good leg

And the wooden one?

Nature signifies its disapproval

And we draw our lines in the sand.

Is it unjust, or simply absurd,

To take it to task

For the misfortunes

That sweep us off

The good foot and the other one?

No matter how quickly I drive,

The mountain recedes into the distance

Like an adversary slipping beyond the

horizon.

Its lack of humility

Weighs on my soul.

5/18/15

Cul de Sac

The mountains to the east

Are neutral, featureless

In the afternoon sun.

That is the condition

Of this place,

Looking through the windshield,

At this moment,

Looking for certainty

And only finding

A cul de sac,

That place that wakes me up

At three in the morning,

Words reverberating,

Threats, accusations, rage –

The sun not yet

Reddening the tips of the mountains.

Close the bedroom door,

It’s cold out there.

My brother calls it

PTSD.

The mountains are heartless

And I am alone.

My goal this year:

Start the motor

And drive myself out

Of the cul de sac.

11/7/16

The Leonardo Mountains

I was always a child of the city,

I always loved the crowded sidewalks,

The old museums and the refined culture.

In the midst of the noise of the city,

I accepted the silence between the people

Around me as the price for

A life of the mind.

But the cost of life

Amongst the skyscrapers 

And the run-down apartments

Was beyond my reach

And now I find myself

Before the brown mountains

And the tough, green shrubs,

At a distance from the sidewalks

And the cool faces.

Perhaps I truly find myself

Now in the midst

Of the mind’s silence.

But each time I face

The mountains, angular

And sharp and blue in the distance,

I remember the canvasses of Leonardo,

And in my mind,

culture is still alive

And worth the pain

Of exile from the distant city.

5/11/15

(The Leonardo Mountains also appeared in Cholla Needles 2017 Yearbook.)

Mojave River Review, Spring 2017

Read the issue

Contrails

I noticed that the pepper tree

Is gone, a tree of life

We planted over Chuck’s ashes,

And the circle where we sat

Remembering our old friend

Is replaced with a swimming pool.

It’ll be 95 today,

And many of us

Who sang and cried and wished

Our friend a good farewell

Will float on our backs

And watch the contrails overhead

Dissolve into wispy

Nothings.

5/12/12

Scorpion

I don’t like to kill things.

The critters live here, we’re just visitors.

Remembering the sidewinder

That crawled under my chair

In the garage last year,

Sunlight sparkling on the silvery arms

Of the lawn chair & the snake

Finally slid away as the sun went down.

I don’t like to kill things.

I found a scorpion sitting on the air mattress

Where Maria slept

Last night.

I’m cleaning up her bedding

& there he is, all bristly,

Pincers at the ready.

I try to sweep him out the door

With a broom

& he scoots underneath the baseboard,

Tail curled up like an angry fist.

What do you do?

Live by chance?

Leave the door open

& hope he exits gracefully?

What if he scurries into the other room,

Burrows into our suitcases.

Or crawls into the pile of sheets

Laying on the other bed?

Snip off his tail?

That’s where the poison is.

And leave him defenseless

Against his enemies?

What do you do?

You get a sharp knife from the kitchen drawer

And jab it precisely under the baseboard—

A puddle of blood staining the saltillo floor tiles.

I hate to kill things.

Sometimes you don’t have a choice.

Nov. 2012

Headlights on the rolling hills

A hand once swept across

This darkness, pushing up

            The hills that swallow

            my headlights,

Pushed up the hills,

Rising and dropping in the night,

            And I speed along,

            60 miles an hour,

            scanning for red-eyed coyotes

                        scrambling across the road bed.

We meet like this, at night,

Your headlights in the rear view mirror,

            The ghost light of your car

            Sweeping under my car,

                        Its shadow imprinted on the hills

                        And vanishing when you drop into a dip.

We meet like this as if the hand

That pushed these hills in place

            So many heart beats ago

            Set our wheels in motion.

I don’t want to be lonely.

I love the rush of the unknown,

            Speeding down these hills at night.

            Meant to follow and to lead,

            Headlights on a back road.

Over how many hills will time lead me?

And who will carry my ashes in a jar

When the headlights go out forever?

Do you, too, think about dying

On a dark road in the desert,

Your headlights shining in the rear view mirror,

My car leading the way?

10/29/16