Poem: Rotten Avocados

rotten avocado

the avocados were not yet ripe when I bought them.
but I found them ensconced in their own avocado skin, black as printed words;

and I remember the faint smell of hunger I had when purchasing them,

thinking they would be ripe and plump to eat.

© 2010 Greig Roselli

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image credit: Wikimedia

Poem: Holy Water Font

when they come to the water on sunday it barely touches skin, smoothed over and onto the next thing,
honey, darling, sweetheart, dear, let’s park the car close, don’t forget the lights
    but when this child touched the water
        he slowly extended his arm and advanced
        toward the font as if time itself, punctuated by the deliberate movement of his hand, slowed down
    for him, so it

 was very important
    to dip into the water in this particular way, middle finger first,
        then the rest,
    a little playfully, but not too much so,
enough
to withdraw
his hand and cross himself
enough to convince that he saw something in the depths that I didn’t see, not before not since, only scant reflection: once after reading something from the 19th century did I ever feel similar
        but he did see something of

    the trinity

        and I suspect the whole revolving sphere of fluid stood still like in some mediaeval astronomy book
and he was able to stop time, for a bit,
because he was grinning,
        drops of holy water falling to the granite floor
and someone like his dad picking up his five-year-old body to the pew, replete with a jesus coloring book and an entrance hymn.

3.14.2010

The Iron Rail: Community Library, Art and Music Center in the Marigny Neighborhood of New Orleans

The Iron Rail is an out of the way community library, art center, music center, and volunteer bookstore in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans.

The Iron Rail hosts a community library in its building on Marigny Street

This out of the way community library, art center, music center, and volunteer bookstore in the Marigny is a really cool place. People come and go talking about music, and Michelangelo. In a studio in the back of this World II era warehouse, guys practice experimental music.

My buddy Airplane introduced it to me on Friday. For ten dollars or through volunteer hours, members have access to a nice collection of philosophy, literature, art, back issues of zines, anarchist tracts, and other good stuff.

If you have a paper to write for college in a humanities course, you have pretty much everything here. I found an Iris Murdoch book I've been wanting to read. Also, I lost my original Of Grammatology and they have that too. Items in the collection are organized by subject and author. The library is a browsing collection so don't expect a card catalog.

Hours are sporadic but the place seems to be mostly open after 1 until like 7.

Movie night is on Tuesday. Meetings are on Wednesdays.

The Iron Rail
511 Marigny Street
New Orleans LA
United States

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Caravaggio at the Quirinale in Rome

Caravaggio's The Annunciation (c. 1608)

The New York Times has a write up on a new Caravaggio art exhibit in Rome's Quirinale. Caravaggio may trump Michelangelo in popularity. It used to be people posted pics of the David's classic ass on their refrigerators, but it seems people are out with the classical, refined body and want their art rough, and out of the bed. I compared Michelangelo's Last Judgement with Caravaggio's "Boy with a Ram" along with Michael Kimmelman's quotes.

Detail of Michelangelo's Last Judgment (1536-1551) 

"[Michelangelo's] otherworldly muscle men, casting the damned into hell or straining to emerge from thick blocks of veined marble, aspired to an abstract and bygone ideal of the sublime, grounded in Renaissance rhetoric."

John the Baptist (Youth with a Ram), c. 1602

"Caravaggio, on the other hand, exemplifies the modern antihero, a hyperrealist whose art is instantly accessible. His doe-eyed, tousle-haired boys with puffy lips and bubble buttocks look as if they’ve just tumbled out of bed, not descended from heaven."

credits: wikimedia

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Poem: The Porter Cat

soft and malleable;

I stroke the porter cat

when he lingers near the patio,

spreads his body on my lap and I tell him that he’s home;

his leonine form stretched from end to end;

he purrs with content      

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