memory card: "quantum": 5 june

 

 

Is there not a sufficient quantum of distress and misfortune? The door opens to a room of fluttering post-its: lines of Proust, grocery lists, small maps of a house, inspirational blurts. My card would say: I am white; I am not here for you. If this disturbs you, please check my privilege at the door. “We're not the same race,” my son says to me. I am not bird to his bird, but bear, sheepdog, meerkat. Merchant of origins, time's your tarp, cover-up. Find faces in the leaves, death's graft in green. Pinned like butterflies on cork, my son's eyes look out at me. Last night he browsed headphones on amazon, read the 3-star reviews. I tell my student to use the past tense, personal pronoun. Love of origins breeds sentiment: not these leaves in resin, post-it notes. A fan sweeps back & forth; the Black guard thinks he knows me. Short white English professor, woman.

                                                                  --5 June 2014

Notes:

Is there not? 1789 W. Belsham: OED.

Card based on Adrian Piper's work.

Faces in leaves by Binh Danh. 
I found the image on a page with poems by Robert Schultz. Synchronicities. Nominal, if not family, resemblances...
I was thinking of a particular exhibit at the Smithsonian last summer, but when I tried to find it on google, I got this.