Curlew Quarterly - Issue No. 6 - Winter 2018-19 by curlewquarterly

CURLEW QUARTERLY.

$19.95

A literary and photo journal of New York City neighborhoods. Issue No. 6 - Winter 2018-19. Alexandra Bildsoe . Reginald Eldridge Jr. . Emily Fishman Julia Knobloch . Adrian Moens . Isaac Myers III . Angela Sundstrom

â&#x20AC;&#x153;A restive excitement seized them and the Curlew pushed on harder.â&#x20AC;? Fred Bosworth - Last of the Curlews.

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CURLEW QUARTERLY. IS SUPPORTED BY OUR SUBSCRIBERS ALONG WITH CURLEW NEW YORK, NEW YORK CITYâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ONLY REAL ESTATE BROKERAGE THAT PUBLISHES A LITERARY & PHOTO JOURNAL, BASED IN PARK SLOPE & DUMBO, BROOKLYN.

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We believe storytelling can change our lives, and can change the way we live in New York City. We believe poetry, fiction, interviews, photography, reporting, and journalism have a place within residential real estate sales. We believe a residential real estate company can nurture a literary journal. We have named our literary journal Curlew Quarterly, a literary and photo journal of New York City neighborhoods. We believe a residential real estate company, together with a literary journal, can establish writersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; residencies within New York, New York. We believe these residencies can assist poets and writers with finding and keeping peace of mind, and as a result, writing their strongest work. 5

We believe these writing residencies can help New York, New York keep its literary history and tradition intact. Should you believe these things as well; and if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re interested in selling or renting your home; or if youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re interested learning more about Curlew New York, we would love to hear from you. For fifty dollars even, you can also subscribe to Curlew Quarterly today, and get four issues of distinguished prose, poetry, and fiction paired with intimate photographs and interviews. Above all, we believe that the written word is powerful; and that New York will always have a place for anyone bold enough to take on the City with a pen and paper in her hands, as well as a few ideas and a dream in her heart.

______________________________________ 68 JAY STREET, SUITE 904 - BROOKLYN, NY 11201 212-804-8655 - INFO@CURLEWNEWYORK.COM

Illustration by Alexandra Bildsoe.

CURLEW QUARTERLY. Issue No. 6 – Winter 2018-19.

Dumbo Market Report ............................................................................................................11. “Prospectus - Issue No. 6 - Winter 2018-19” - Isaac Myers III ...............................................20 “It’s Wednesday, May First, 2019, and I’m sitting at my desk and thinking of this past winter, 2018 into 2019. Look up in late September, and the leaves start changing and falling, and it’s beautiful and you pull out your favorite sweater; then the holidays arrive and the new year is rung in ––– that’s when the smack of winter hits you, January Second: it’s cold in New York and the streets are quiet.” Fiction – Reginald Eldridge Jr. - “The A-Lift”.........................................................................24. “I met Job Wilson at Tell Yo Truth, a storytelling event on the Southside, one Thursday evening last February. He walked up to me after the show was over and thanked me for my story about the time in college I thought I’d gotten my girlfriend pregnant (it turned out to be a false alarm; her period came a week later. We went to get checkups and at mine I found out I was impotent). “That made me feel something,” he said.” Poetry – Angela Sundstrom - “The Beginning before the Beginning” & “Requiem”.............68 Poetry – Julia Knobloch - “Industry City” & “Dispatch from Buenos Aires: Sur/South” .....96 Interviews. Reginald Eldridge Jr.................................................................................................................46. Angela Sundstrom ...................................................................................................................74. Julia Knobloch........................................................................................................................102. Photography. Emily Fishman .........................................................................................................Cover,22-63 Alexandra Bildsoe................................................................................................................-64-93 Adrian Moens............................................................................................................8-19,94-End

CURLEW QUARTERLY www.CurlewQuarterly.com Issue No. 6 - Winter 2018-19 Published 2019. Editor: Isaac Myers III, Esq. Contributors: Alexandra Bildsoe Reginald Eldridge Jr. Emily Fishman Julia Knobloch Adrian Moens Angela Sundstrom Cover Photograph: Emily Fishman Printed by: Instant Publisher P.O. Box 340 410 Highway 72 W Collerville, TN 38027 Curlew New York 68 Jay Street, Suite 904 Brooklyn, NY 11201 212 - 804 - 8655 www.CurlewNewYork.com Info@CurlewNewYork.com

Curlew Quarterly is available for purchase at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop, New York City’s only all poetry bookstore, located at 141 Front Street (take the F train to York Street). For a complete list of bookstores and venues where Curlew Quarterly can be purchased, please visit our website at www.CurlewQuarterly.com. Submissions and inquiries may be mailed to 68 Jay Street, Suite 904, Brooklyn, NY 11201, or e-mailed to Info@ CurlewQuarterly.com. All rights reserved.

DOWN UNDER THE MANHATTAN BRIDGE OVERPASS - SALES. Total Number of Apartments for Sale - Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, as of May Second, 2019*: 36 STUDIOS: 1. Average Price of Studio: $515,000 ONE BEDROOMS: 13. Average Price of One Bedroom: $988,154 TWO BEDROOMS: 14. Average Price of Two Bedrooms: $1,488,786 THREE BEDROOMS: 4. Average Price of Three Bedrooms: $3,381,000 FOUR BEDROOMS: 4. Average Price of Four Bedrooms: $4,573,750

*Brownstoner

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WEIDENBAUM & HARARI, LLP Attorneys for the real estate community

_________________________________________________________________ 708 Third Avenue, 22nd Fl., New York, NY 10017 - P: 212-832-7400 - www.whfirm.com We provide the best of both worlds: big firm experience with boutique firm service. To provide the right balance of experience and personal attention, each client is assigned a Partner, a Lead Associate, and a Paralegal. With this team approach, we communicate regularly and efficiently with clients. TOP RATED NYC REAL ESTATE LAWYERS Our residential real estate attorney team is experienced in guiding our clients – especially first-time buyers – through the purchase and sale process, offering clients the expertise required to see the transaction through to a successful closing. We represent purchasers and sellers in all New York metro counties including Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx as well as Westchester and Long Island.

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PROSPECTUS - ISSUE NO. 6 - WINTER 2018-19. Isaac Myers III

It’s Wednesday, May First, 2019, and I’m sitting at my desk and thinking of this past

winter, 2018 into 2019. Look up in late September, and the leaves start changing and falling, and it’s beautiful and you pull out your favorite sweater; then the holidays arrive and the new year is rung in ––– that’s when the smack of winter hits you, January Second: it’s cold in New York and the streets are quiet.

Some mornings the sun is bright ––– it streams in through the windows as though

it were a June afternoon, save the sound of the radiator, clinking, banging, and hissing as the heat delivers summer to your apartment. You open the window, just a bit, for a breath of fresh air. If you’re like Julia Knobloch, no matter the cold, or even, because of the cold, you’ll go for a walk. “There’s something about the cold, and how it gives you the opportunity to be inside of yourself, and focus on things.”

If you’re siding with Reginald Eldridge Jr., then you’ll stay home, and work and write,

and read, except home won’t be a specific place. “I’m learning that home for me is my work. That’s where home is. I can construct a home through the work that I’m making.”

And if you winter like Angela Sundstrom, on an impulse, though the season hasn’t

turned to summer, or even spring, you might make a trip. “I like going to Saugerties and Woodstock and exploring new towns, and going to local bookstores up there. All of those towns have great used bookstores.”

It was an honor to work with Reginald, Angela, and Julia. I offer my gratitude for

their time, their stories, and their hospitality in opening up their spaces and their worlds, even if only for an afternoon, for our journal.

And of course, a debt remains owed to our photographers, Adrian Moens, Emily

Fishman, and Alexandra Bildsoe. Thank you.

This time last year I was going on five hour walks and finishing Jane Jacob’s The

Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), and just starting Robert Caro’s biography of Robert Moses, The Power Broker (1974). Another quarter has passed. And my mind and 20

heart are stronger. Last week I finished The Power Broker, and am now beginning to line up my thoughts around the work, all 1,162 pages of the work, and understanding them within the framework of what it looks like, and feels like to live in New York City this afternoon, and within the ever-present present.

From my office window I can see the Manhattan Bridge, and just beyond the bridge,

the Lower Manhattan skyline. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cloudy today, and thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a fog so dense that the top of One World Trade Center remains hidden, and appears to have ascended into the heavens. Though closer, the Clock Tower that stands atop One Main Street not only remains in sight, but also reads just the right time: 5:50pm.

THE A-LIFT. Reginald Eldridge Jr. “What if the thing whose meaning or value has never been found finds things, founds things? What if the thing will have founded something against the very possibility of foundation and against all anti- or post-foundational impossibilities?”

-Fred Moten, from “The Case For Blackness”

I met Job Wilson at Tell Yo Truth, a storytelling event on the Southside, one Thursday evening last February. He walked up to me after the show was over and thanked me for my story about the time in college I thought I’d gotten my girlfriend pregnant (it turned out to be a false alarm; her period came a week later. We went to get checkups and at mine I found out I was impotent). “That made me feel something,” he said. It was one of those brutal winter nights where wind cuts through every layer you got on and snow sits hard on the sidewalk. There were only like twelve people there. Job had been sitting with his partner, Vera James, who’d invited him on a date night. Vera and Marisol Oliva, the host, were old high school friends. Marisol started Tell Yo Truth a few years back, in the wake of an ill-advised relationship with a man who’d once kicked in her door and threatened to kidnap her family. Of course, she didn’t know he was crazy when she met him. But then nobody listened to her when it was happening, and folks acted all surprised when he got arrested for tearing up a corner store. In her monologues, she says she started Tell Yo Truth because she wanted “a place to air all our grievances, strangenesses and struggles without fear or worry.” No censors, no judgment, just real folks telling the real facts of their lives to other real folks. Exorcizing their demons, as she sometimes puts it, and though she probably means it as a joke, she often refers to the days before she founded the show as possessed. “Welcome to Tell Yo Truth,” her spiel begins, “where we tell—” and the audience is supposed to respond: “The truth! The whole truth! And nothing but the truth!” She holds it in the back of this boutique called The Crawl Space, which happens to 24

be three blocks from where I stay. The first time I went was pure serendipity. I was on my way home from work when I saw that the lights in the boutique were still on, even though it closes at seven. When I peeked in, I saw people gathered in the back and heard a dude’s voice booming through the PA system. As I approached, I saw that they were gathered in a semicircle around a short man who paced back and forth, gripping a corded mic like a standup comedian. He had long hair, a sparse beard and sad, goat eyes. I’ll never forget it. He was talking about growing up in Logan Square, getting chased by some gang members. Just when they were about to get him, some cops showed up. It was strangely loose and sincere, his story, and that’s probably why it hooked me. “That made me feel something,” Job Wilson said to me at the end of the night. Dark skinned, bald with a few grays in his beard, a little taller than I am, Job looked at me with the bloodshot eyes of a man who’d worked a couple double shifts in a row. When he smiled, the corners of his eyes and mouth wrinkled. Still, I couldn’t tell how old he was. His skin was otherwise clear and smooth, like it had just been ironed. I was swimming in relief to have let something go; but I’d had half a fifth of Jameson earlier that night so I couldn’t be sure of exactly what that something was. “Thanks a lot,” I told him. “What’s your name?” He extended his hand. “I’m Job.” “Like in the bible?” I asked. He chuckled. “Yeah, man, like in the bible. I sure hope you plan to come back next month. Would love to hear another one of your stories.” I told him I’d think about it, that I mainly go to listen and that I only tell stories if I really feel like it. I’m not one of those folks who frequently attend these kinds of things; Marisol’s is the only one I’ve ever been to twice, and that’s mainly because we have history. I never plan to go there. It just seems to happen that every few months I end up there, in the back of The Crawl Space, listening with the others. Walking home that night, I was glad to have met Job, whose enthusiasm stuck with me for reasons I couldn’t at the time isolate. Thinking back on it now, it probably had something to do with how he looked at me when he said that made me feel something. Longing and kinship in his eyes reminded me of this time when as a favor to an old girlfriend I chaperoned her little

cousin’s prom party. It was exactly what it sounds like: a bunch of overdressed, over-fragrant teenagers giggling and dancing to catchy, incoherent music. I was standing on the wall by the DJ booth, counting down the hours till it was over, feeling old as hell, when I noticed two boys slick studying me from across the room. I couldn’t get a read on what they were looking at. I figured I’d go over and strike up a conversation. When I introduced myself, to my surprise, they lit up. We must have talked for ten or fifteen minutes before one of the boys (his name was Rodney or Robert or something) asked me out of nowhere how I dealt with “the pressures of being a teen.” I told him the thing I remember most about being a teenager is how fast it was over and how much life came after it. I said something like, “Don’t sweat it. Be present.” You would’ve thought I was a standup comedian the way both of these boys started cracking up. Goofy laughter. When they finally calmed down, we kept talking. I noticed as we did that something different showed up in their eyes. It’s hard to explain. It was like they were leaving the doors unlocked. Though in him it seemed warmer, sadder and older, warped, maybe, by that low-lit, sparse room, Job’s eyes displayed a similar penetrability that night. That made me feel something, he’d said—significant words. By the time I arrived at my front door, though, their spell was all but broken. What remained was a vague impression which the cold rendered untrustworthy and on which my exhaustion wouldn’t let me focus. That’s kinda how it went with Marisol and me. We’d met at a bar, messed around that night, dallied for a few weeks. Then one day, for no reason clear to me, we just stopped. I guess the flame just burned out. There were no hard feelings. We hadn’t talked in months when I discovered the show that first time. I was shocked to see her take the mic after that goat-eyed man. But if she was surprised to see me, she sure didn’t let on. She smiled in my general direction as she took the stage. Her hair had grown—she wore it in deep brown, cascading waves. Her skin glowed and her eyes were framed in bluebird-blue eyeshadow. She stood self-assured in a green dress with a dark, shiny trim and guided us through the night. After the show ended, I approached her. As she would any newcomer, she asked me what I thought of it. I told her I loved it, that I wished I’d known it was something she was putting together. She told me Tell Yo Truth was a project she held close to her heart, that she wanted to keep a separation between men she hooked up with and this, which she truly loved. So we 26

moved on, transposing ourselves in the matrix of relationships that structure our community. Black and brown creative professionals: we who once dreamed vaguely of art careers but because we were too early, too mentally dispersed, too unmotivated or better consumers than producers—and weren’t born rich and white—we stumbled slow-motion into adulthood, found tolerable salaries and called ourselves settling down. I, for instance, am a junior claims adjuster at a middle-grade health insurance agency. My job, basically, is to find ways for my corporate employer not to pay sick and injured people (or more accurately, their representatives) the money they erroneously believed they’d have access to when they signed a contract with us. I work long, tedious hours, in return for which I get to eat, pay rent in a nice neighborhood and spin my wheels a little bit longer. I’m not bad at it; my ratings currently stand at a strong three point eight out of five. My manager gives good feedback, and I’m on track for a raise by next summer. It’s not possible that this is anyone’s dream, but it is still somehow responsible, and that’s a fair enough compromise between some vague dream I misplaced years ago and the very real world, which, after all, is always threatening to misplace me. So when I got home that night, I left Job’s words in the ether where I’d found them. I prepped for bills and the responsible workdays that would get me through the winter.

On the Thursday before Memorial Day, I took a crazy call with an old man who got mad at me because the plan he’d signed up for didn’t cover the medicine he wanted to change over to. His cancer had progressed and his doctor wanted to try something new. He was coughing the whole time. I kept having to ask him to repeat himself, which of course only made him madder. He escalated the call to my manager, who talked him down for a few minutes before de-escalating the call back to me. I tried everything I could think of at the time to relieve him, but the rules were clear. Can’t you break the rules for a person? That’s what he said. Clearly, I couldn’t. We talked another hour—three hours in total—and nothing came of it except I ended up staying an extra two hours at work because I’d gotten so backed up. Then, because I was so flustered, I missed the 7:16 bus back south. The next bus was delayed. I stood in that suffocating humidity another thirty minutes before it came. I didn’t get back 27

to the Southside till after 8:30. I felt alone and anonymous. The density of the street sealed around me like superheated plastic. I saw, as I approached it, that the lights were on in TheCrawl Space, so I stopped in. It was hot and humid inside, the room already filling up with lovers, storytellers, and others loneliness had sent out into the street. I squeezed near the wall in the back. Marisol was on the mic, her voice like fine suede. She raised her eyebrows when she saw me, gesturing the sign-up list in my direction. I smiled but shook my head. She said, “I see Gary in here acting brand new!” People laughed, which was embarrassing. I just pretended there was something on the wall I wanted to see. Marisol let me be, if only to keep the show going. She called everybody to their seats, then went into her spiel. When it was our time to say, “The whole Truth! Nothing but the Truth!” we said it with such force and union my breath shortened. I don’t remember all the storytellers that night. I do recall a scruffy girl who’d lost her passport while touring Italy—that was a funny one—and a couple of teachers whose stories focused on their black students: one kid got shot a week before his college orientation; another had “family issues” so she spent the holiday with the teacher’s family. And then there was a story from this artsy-looking dude with gray locs and a five o’clock shadow, about the time he’d met Drake. It was while people were still laughing at the artsy dude’s story that Marisol called up Job Wilson. “Thank y’all for having me,” Job boomed when he got on the mic. “This my first time doing something like this.” “Take your time!” Somebody shouted. “Not too much time!” Marisol quipped, pointing to the clock on the wall. “I wanted to tell a story about something I found at my house when I first moved into it...” Job proceeded to recount how, upon Vera’s urging, he’d recently attended an estate sale, where he’d acquired a foreclosed house on the West Side that was last owned by a deceased jazz musician. Upon moving in, he’d found in his attic a box which contained a bunch of clippings of that jazz artists’ performances, a couple of bent trumpet mouthpieces, some sheet music for a song called “A-Lift,” and a notebook. In the notebook he’d found some intricate, beautiful pen-and-ink drawings and notes the man had taken for a performance. 28

Near the end of the notebook was a hand-drawn map that appeared to center on a spot in the house. The spot was labeled The A-Lift, and it was accompanied by a drawing of a circular maze.1 Fascinated, he’d followed that map to the spot in his house where this maze should have been located, but when he’d reached the spot, nothing was there but a wall. He’d knocked on the wall and it sounded empty. He’d figured, because nothing was there, that the drawing had something to do with the song, that the song was supposed to be played in a cycle, or a spiral. He then started talking about how he worked in a candy factory, and how it reminded him of this candy they’d made a couple years back to promote American Aliens II. A spiraling disc of a lollipop with no stick. Watching the candies come up the conveyor belt was almost hypnotic and for a moment he’d forgotten where he was. (Here Marisol interrupted to let him know he didn’t have much more time. He said he’d try to wrap it up.) He had this wary look in his eyes but he was smiling. He said he didn’t think nothing of the hollow wall but that night he’d dreamed he was at this jazz club. It was smoky and dusty and on stage that old trumpeter, whose name was Jimmy Blue, was playing a song in circles. His eyes were bright and between blows he was laughing and saying “The A-Lift’s got you! A-Lift’s got you!” and behind him there were these wild sweet spirals. His time was up. The crowd (which had grown even more by now) was quiet. For one whole breath, nobody seemed to know how to respond. It took Marisol getting back on the mic before people started clapping. “Give it up one more time for Job!” she said, tender suede in the shower of applause. I couldn’t focus on the stories that followed Job’s, I was so curious about how his was supposed to finish. I went over to him after the show (he was standing alone by the cash register; Vera stood on the other side of the store talking to her friends) to tell him that I appreciated what he’d said. To my surprise, he was stuck on the story I’d told that winter. He said he’d always wanted to be a father, too. I guess he was on a high from telling his own story because then he confessed to me that his number was low, and on account of that, he had little to no biological chance of ever fathering any children. “But it’s different, I guess, since Vera has the girls,” he said, referring to Vera’s daughters. “She’s been a godsend, you know, supporting me like she does. She’s the one who got me to come up here in the first place.”

1. I understood this, later, to be the description for a spiral labyrinth.

Vera, who’d been conversing in a cluster of her storytelling friends, including Marisol, at just that moment, looked over from across the room and smiled warmly. Job smiled back, then, as though something had just occurred to him, as though her look confirmed it, he said to me, “Hey, you free Monday?” I said I was. “We’re having a cookout over at the place. If you’re not busy, you’re welcome to come through. Feel free to bring a lady friend.” I thanked him and said I would try to make it out. I was, of course, free that day. Job was the only person who’d invited me to anything, which I took as a sign that I should go. Besides, I wanted to talk to him more about his story, which was weirder than I had words to frame. It was hot that day, over ninety degrees. By the time I’d walked to the drugstore to buy some plastic cups and ruffles chips, sweat had loosened my t-shirt. I felt suddenly that in my current condition that cups and chips wouldn’t be enough, so I walked to the grocery store in that same plaza and got a chocolate cake. I carried all this to the bus stop, where I took a crowded bus north to the Loop, then another from the Loop out west. I stood the whole way, in the cool AC with my bags, trying not to nudge anybody’s ribs or to let them nudge mine. Job stays several blocks from the bus stop. Walking over, I let my eye linger on the sidewalk, on its cracks, resilient weeds, on shadows the trees, my body and bags cast against it. When the breeze blew, the branches bent and the leaf-shadows shimmered like water. Speakered bass, melody and voice emanated from all directions—hip-hop, soul and house— and braided with the scents of charcoal, gas, and grilled meat, all this accented by the fading drone of cars through the grid. I remember, as I walked, thinking what a stately neighborhood. A lot of folks act like you can’t walk up a street in that hood without somebody trying to rob you, or finding yourself in some perpetual crossfire. Obviously that’s racist bullshit, but it bothered me to think of how many folks miss out on loving a place just because people talk shit about it. But when I thought about it some more I concluded that maybe somehow it’s for the best. Because as soon as certain folks start to like a black neighborhood, they go to work throwing away everything and everyone that made it so worthy of love in the first place. There was some trash in the street, but not much more than anywhere else in the city. 30

I saw some kids running after each other, shooting water guns, laughing and carrying on, and I passed some houses where old folks who sat on porches said nothing when our eyes met. As I turned onto Job’s block, I narrowly missed bumping into two little girls in braids. They were taking turns blowing bubbles from a yellow bottle. The bubbles floated over the block, reflecting sunlight back to their skin and forming little spheres in the shadows on the pavement. Their laughter echoed. My heart smiled at that. In white and blue chalk, a series of squares on the sidewalk led me right up to the brick porch steps of 1436 Mayfield2, a two-story house with a clean yard that was otherwise nondescript. On those steps, another little free-haired girl in a purple onesie was drawing bright flowers. I was looking at the flowers when I heard, in an airy voice with a Mississippi accent, someone say, “You Gary?” I looked up toward the sound. Just over the top of the steps, in the high, shadowed porch, a woman in a white t-shirt and jeans rocked in her chair. She had long, ringed fingers, which she used deftly to peel an orange into a styrofoam plate on her lap. She looked to be about sixty-five, but her manner carried a seriousness only the very advanced in age can manage. She felt about ninety. “That’s me,” I said. “They out back.” She waved a finger toward the wood fence on the side of the house, behind which I heard Chaka Khan’s ecstatic, joyful voice through speakers. I saw smoke and smelled chicken on the grill. “Go on, they expecting you.” Wishing I had a hat to tip in her direction, I thanked her with a smile and a nod, then headed around to the fence. As I shouldered through it, I saw Vera, in her Black Real Estate Association t-shirt, walking toward me. “Hey Gary!” she said, “Let me get those for you.” She took my bags and walked over to a table where some salad, macaroni and baked beans sat in casserole dishes. She took the slightly melted cake from of the bag and put it aside with an impressed look in her eyes that made me feel like I’d done something right. Just then, Job walked over from the grill, wiping his hands on the pale apron taut on his belly.

2. Address changed to protect the innocent.

“Gary!” He said. He dapped me up and embraced me. He smelled minty. “So glad you could make it. No lady friend?” I shrugged. His eyes still looked tired. Vera was looking at me, too. “Ha-haa, all good, brother. I’m just glad you could make it out. Let me show you around.” “Now hold on, Job,” Vera said. “Do you need anything, Gary? Something to drink? You look hot.” I told her I was alright. “You know you can tell him to leave you alone,” she said. “He’s just trying to get out of grill duty.” “Aw, let the man live!” Job said, patting me on the back. “You’re our guest, not just his,” Vera said. “We’ll be right out,” Job said, and planted his lips on her cheek with a smack. “I promise.” Job led me to the back of the house. We took the stairs up the porch to a side door, which he opened, telling me to go ahead.

“This is the kitchen,” he said, as I looked up at a domed ceiling at least twenty feet high. From its center hung a chandelier of apparently real crystals. Sunlight cascaded through the windows, reflecting off the crystals, so that the whole kitchen, which was huge, gleamed. It felt like how the high keys on a piano sound. He saw me gawking. My awe seemed to verify him. “Wow,” I finally said. “Man, you ain’t seen nothing yet.” Touching my shoulder again, Job guided me through the kitchen. The tiled floor squeaked under my sneakers, which suddenly felt inappropriate. I asked him if I should take them off. “Oh, naw man, don’t worry about that.” We passed through the kitchen to a den that felt at least twice as large as it should have been, furnished with things similar to what my aunties used to look at in catalogs. White 32

upholstery with cabriole legs that flowed like water and terminated in the carved, clawed feet of wild animals. A huge fireplace over which hung the heads of enormous savannah beasts (an elephant, a lion, an ibex) adorned the room’s northern wall, a soft fur rug in its wake. By now I was crowded with questions, but Job hurried me to the hallway with a nudge, saying “We don’t have a lot of time, Vera’s not gonna want us to hold up the cookout.” The hallway was wide, well-lit and well-populated, and as we passed through it, he directed me to the photos along the wall. “These are originals,” he said. “Parks. De Carava. Piper. That sculpture there”—he pointed to a banister on top of which a small sculpture, about thirteen inches high, depicting a composite figure of wood and screws, stood in its own reflection in an ornate oval mirror—“that’s a Whitten.” He looked at me expectantly. “You know who that is?” “Yeah,” I lied. “The mirror is fourteenth century Tehran. If you look closely—go on and look—the script on it quotes the Surah of the Bee from the Glorious Quran.” I walked up to it, close enough to see my own sweaty reflection. At the base of the gold frame, I saw what must have been Arabic calligraphy. Job recited, without pause or hesitation, “And Allah revealed to the bee, saying, Make hives in the mountains and in the trees and in what they build, then eat of all the fruits and walk in the way of your Lord submissively. There comes from within it a beverage of many colors, in which there is healing for men; most surely there is in this a sign for a people who reflect.” I looked at him with awe. He raised his eyebrow but his gaze stayed low. “That’s a loose translation.” “How did you say you got this house again?” I asked him. “Estate sale,” he said. “Was...was all this here when you got it?” He laughed. Clearly Job Wilson was not who I thought he was. I don’t know who I’d thought he was, but I didn’t think he was this. “What did you say you do for a living?” I asked him, trying not to sound like the feds. “I work at Brach’s.” “The candy store?”

“The factory. You see that one over there?” He pointed to a small drawing in crayon that hung unframed on the wall. “Original Basquiat.” “But how... did you get all this?” He smiled a glittery, red-eyed smile. Then he put his fist on my chest and said, “I’ve been blessed, brotha.” A lot of folks are blessed, I thought. This looks like something else. His eyes spun a weary joy. I said, “You’re a very cultured man.” I couldn’t figure out why a man of such means would choose to live here, instead of out by the lake; would choose to work at a factory instead of a foundation or a museum. Then I thought maybe it wasn’t a choice. Maybe, I speculated, he’s hiding in plain sight. Then I started thinking about how I was going to tell this story. “I know how it looks,” he said to me abruptly, but not without patience. “Trust me, everything we got came on the up and up, bro. Authentic.” I stared at the Basquiat’s erratic, almost electric lines. He pierced the silence with a question: “Do you remember the story I told that night at Tell Yo Truth?” I told him I did. “Well, you’ll have to forgive me. It wasn’t the whole truth.” He searched my eyes for a response but I gave him none. “Not only was there not enough time,” he continued, “There aren’t enough words. Also,” he said almost wistfully, “Nobody would believe me.” He ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek. “But you know something, Gary? When I saw you I said that man looks like a believer. I told Vera that. And she agreed with me. For some reason, I couldn’t get your story out of my mind.” I was flattered. “I felt, kin, you know what I mean?” I thought I knew exactly what he meant. He started walking again, and I followed him, down another, thinner hallway. “Aw, man, you probably think I’m crazy. But that’s why I wanted to show you these things. Everything I got I got because I used this.” He pressed a finger to his bald head. A vein popped in his temple, the brown mirror of the veins in his eyes. I waited for him to continue. 34

“The map in the story,” he said, his hand finally dropping from his head. “At first it led to a dead end. But then it didn’t. I mean, I found something I can’t really describe. But Jimmy Blue wrote about it in that notebook.” I couldn’t make any sense of what he was telling me. “Are you saying—” “The A-Lift is real, Gary,” he interrupted. “As real as you or me. Wasn’t no dream that happened afterward, neither. Not unless we still in it.” He smiled at the thought. “How much time until the cookout?” It was like I’d said nothing at all. A conspiratorial look leapt into his red eye. “Do you wanna see it, Gary? I can show it to you.” How could I know if I wanted to see it? All I knew was that I wanted to tell about it. And I couldn’t tell about it unless I saw it. We went further down the hallway. He led me around a turn and directed my gaze to a strange, bare extension of the hall where the ceiling angled downward like the decline of a prism. The light there was dimmer and yellower, the walls just planks of unfinished wood, which was more jarring than I would’ve expected. Things were starting to feel sketchy, in what I imagine must have been the original sense of the word: ornament dropping away. Job had to crouch (and I almost had to crouch) just to go down into this unfinished hallway. We walked almost to the end before we came to a door that looked like a slightly-larger version of a trash chute, if such doors were allowed to sit against the ground. It was metal and it had a handle in the center. “Okay,” Job said. “It’s in there.” He pulled it open. A rush of cool air, fresher than the air in the hallway had been, hit my face. I looked down into the opening and saw wooden stairs descending steeply into a humid dark. “As you can see, it’s not that big, so only one person can fit at a time.” His tone was matter-of-fact now, almost commandeering: “When you get to the bottom, you’ll need to open a trapdoor. It’ll seem like it’s bolted in, but you just gotta pull on it hard and it’ll open up. Then you’ll see what I’m talking about.” When I hesitated, he said, “Scared money don’t make money, potna. Go on.” For reasons I still can’t fathom (curiosity’s a bastard) I stepped foot-first into the opening, feeling for

the stair. When I got a foothold, I slid through the portal till my hands found the railing. “Remember, let me know when you make it to the bottom,” he said. “I’ll come down right after.” I did as I was ordered, never letting go of the railing as I went down the creaking steps into liquid dark. I took at least fifteen steps before I lost count, and kept descending, holding onto the rails. Light from the doorway faded. I couldn’t see my hands when I looked, which uneased me, but I kept going, thinking it couldn’t be much longer before I saw what Job was so excited and secret about. Then maybe I’d understand who this man really was and why I’d felt what I’d felt when we first crossed one another’s orbit. I was thinking that when a step gave out from under my foot. I fell, for a long, long time, into the hole. When I hit the concrete bottom, my landing felt softer than it should’ve, as though gravity had suddenly slackened. But I yelped like a dog anyway, and as soon as I heard my voice, I heard, above me, the door slam shut. I lay alone in the black hole black. “Hey!” I yelled out. “Hey!” The air was thin. It seemed my words were absorbed by the walls, that whatever echo they made was silenced. Impending death showered over me. I couldn’t believe this motherfucker got me like that. It didn’t make sense. For a moment I lay there trying to come to terms with my predicament. My heart boomed in my chest; I said a prayer: “Lord, if you let me out of here, I promise I’ll be thankful to you forever.” Nothing happened. I grew cold all over, so cold the only heat left was defiance. I decided then I didn’t have to accept death, that I could at least try to climb my way out. Though it felt like I’d fallen at least seven stories, it was all I could think of. So, gingerly, I stood—my legs were sore—and found there was a wall against my back. I started feeling around in the dark and almost immediately in front of me felt a curved concrete wall there, too. I concluded that I was submerged in a cylinder whose diameter was a little less than my outstretched arms. I turned around, feeling for a hold of some kind. I felt in front of me, to my sides, and behind me. It was when I was feeling behind that my hand brushed against a knob in the concrete. Keeping my hand on the knob, I turned toward it. And that’s when I saw it. Or felt it, because there was no light, just an expanse of 36

space, slowly coming into focus before my eyes. At first I thought I was hallucinating. But it persisted, this expanse, suspended in the center of which, like a hologram in a black box, I now saw clearly, was what appeared to be a glowing sphere about the size of a marble. Looking long at it, I suddenly realized that there was nothing but that marble, and in it, I saw —I don’t know how else to explain it—at first just the outlines, then in full plentiful attributes, then all at once, from every angle, all things. Galaxies, stars, planets, oceans, trees, buildings, birds, beasts. I saw the girls blowing bubbles outside Job’s house and countless more like them, in countless different places, at innumerably different times of day; without confusion, and in myriad angles, I saw waterfalls and monuments and cracked iPhone screens in thin hands. I saw guns on a conveyor belt, workers who tested them on the assembly line, bullets vacated of their shells in smoky rapid fire. I saw a spear sink into the neck of an antelope; I heard it sigh and in the bowels of a city a flowing congregation of rats. I saw horseflies making love over a mass grave and colonies of roaches hissing in the walls of countless houses. I saw a long-bearded old man on a pallet bed drinking honeyed tea, and soft fingers typing words into an interface to publish to the world; I saw the salacious joy of innumerable tired eyes witnessing those words on their feed. I saw a volleyball singing patriotic songs on a mega bus and a bacterium devoutly scaling the surface of a grain of sand. I saw prisoners shivering in icy rain, cell after cell of weeping, and well-attired families languid on divans and in immaculate courtyards. I saw the woman from the porch—her name was Letha—laughing a toothless laugh and a young man who looked like Job, running from a fire, tears in his eyes. I saw a face that looked just like mine reflected in a mirror. I saw you reading these words. I saw countless mouths from countless angles, contorted in every possible emotion, and my head started to hurt. I saw every hair poking through skin dry or wet, fresh or funky or rotting. I saw every writer who’d ever handwritten a book of poems, all in one numinous place, their instruments flowing one into the other and the tone of them altogether was like the frequency of all the swallows in all the worlds, and I felt dizzy. I saw a serpent sleeping in an aquarium and infinite childbirths by sunlight, fluorescent light, by candlelight and in the dark. I saw Vera’s steady hand reaching for a hot dog bun and an ashy fist on the gearshift of a tractor. I saw Marisol DM of course to a dude named Isaiah and a black congregation recite from the Second Book of Isaiah, verse eighteen through twenty- two. I saw a game show host wipe away a tear under

studio lamps and a naked boy leap, flipping, into a murky lake. I saw all this and so much more than I can say, all at once, all in the same place, which was all places, which was no place...... and then I saw a bright, bright light, brighter than anything I’d ever seen. It seemed to come from everywhere. I heard, as though from blocks away, Job and Vera and what sounded like a child yelling my name, saying “Wake up Gary! Wake up!” I felt concrete against my back. I opened my eyes and saw the bright sun. My face and shirt were wet. I heard Job laughing at me. “Damn, bro I thought you was gone!” His eyes betrayed apologetic amusement, like he was ashamed he couldn’t help it. I saw Vera look at him with anger. Then she struck him on the shoulder. “What?” Job said. “I was just playing with him!” Then to me: “Wasn’t it amazing?” Vera scowled at him, shook her head and said, “You okay Gary?” I tried to stand up on my wobbly legs. Vera told me to be careful, take my time. Job hooked his hands under my armpits to help me stand. Blinking, I felt sunshine on my neck. I told Vera I was fine, but at that point I wasn’t really sure where—or even what—I was. Some other folks had arrived by then, but I was too overwhelmed to want to see them. I told them I needed to go. They said they understood. They got me a ride share back home. I rode backseat in a kind of buzz. Everything felt rearranged. The way the sun shone on the surface of the lake seemed in conversation with the ways windshields glowed, orbs in which inhabitants rode, alien to the white pavement and the syntax of the wind. Back at my apartment, I was comforted by the familiarity of my own front door, my doormat, my careful photographs, my cool bed, my quiet, clean neighborhood. I took a shower, got my clothes together, pan-seared some chicken and microwaved some rice. The next day at work I had a headache, but it wasn’t too bad, nothing worse than a tequila hangover. I felt a lot calmer talking to the clients and providers. But that wore off by the end of the day. After that, everything more or less went back to normal. I wasn’t mad at Job for laughing at me. I figured it served me right for being nosy. And the experience of being there, in that A-Lift, if that’s what it was, was worth the trouble. It did strike me as odd that I was able to re-integrate so easily. You’d think after being in a place like that you couldn’t just go back to your normal life, but that’s not the case. I’m living 38

proof. This world, deviously resilient, carries on. We agreed not to talk about it, and so far we haven’t.

A couple of weeks later, I was up late and antsy on Tumblr, just scrolling around this woke blog I follow called “THE MYSTIC FILES,” when I came across a picture. A golden rectangle embedded in which was other golden rectangles, through the angles of which ran a spiral. The caption in the image read: “the mystic fibonnaci spiral.” When I clicked the For More Information link, it took me to a website whose name I forgot but whose tagline was home of conspiracies and hidden truths. Punctuated with rotating GIFs of pharaoh busts and shadow faces on the moon, every post I found employed copious bolded words and a liberal use of all caps. I didn’t know what I was looking for, so I grazed, hopping in and out of entries on everything from the Akashic records to radical zen meditation. At some point in all that scrolling I came across an entry that caught my eye. It was a reflection on what the author, one NeferHotep1369, called “the MYSTIKAL TRANCENDENT concept of the ALEPH.” It read in part as follows: “Aleph, or Alif, is the first letter of the Semitic abjads. Denoting primacy, beginnings and height, The Hebrew character has been used since the 18th century to notate levels of infinity. Throughout the ages, MYSTIKS have used the term to refer to a physical point in the universe from which all other points can be perceived. As time and space are interconnected, and as there are at least eleven dimensions, an ALEPH is an omnipresent, omniscient, and omnitemporal singularity. The purpose of an ALEPH is unclear, but MYSTIKS have frequently sought them out as sites of prophecy...” Of course, reading this made me think of what I’d gone through at Job’s place. Excited, I called him. No answer. I shot him a text telling him I wanted to talk to him and it said “Delivered,” so unless he changed his number or the line was acting up he definitely got that text. But that was at least two weeks ago and I haven’t heard back from him. I’ve been thinking maybe Vera got protective after what happened and now she’s keeping him from talking to me, or maybe he thinks I’m gonna come at him or something. I wouldn’t do anything like that. I really just wanted to talk. I thought maybe he could benefit 39

from knowing he’s not alone, that what he’d discovered in his house had a whole precedent, documents and research and all that, and that if he knew this then maybe we could talk about not just what it is but what it means. But what can you do. After a few minutes of waiting, I shut my laptop, sat in the dark, and started to think about what Job had said to me that night I met him, and how significant it is to feel anything at all. Back in high school, I was always in my feelings. Sometimes, in my father’s house, I’d spend a whole afternoon staring at my bedroom ceiling, a CD at max volume in my boombox. I remember my senior year I played the hell out of that Roots album, Phrenology. For weeks I vibed out to it, picking out obscure references, feeling like the lyrics were winking at me specifically, inviting me to consider that they might be maps to something. It started to skip after a little while from scratches and overuse, but I kept it in rotation, listening around the gaps, feeling that if I could somehow really get what was being said, everything would somehow change, and I’d become—I don’t know—somehow more complete. That night, I must’ve gotten caught up in that high school memory because the next thing I knew my headphones were in and I was streaming that album, getting free in my head in my bedroom. I got all the way to the track with that poem by Baraka where he says I know everything you know and nothing you don’t—‘cept I saw something in the way of things... and as soon as I heard those words, it was like I was baptized in chills. I paused the track to let it resonate. “What?!” I pushed PLAY again. Baraka’s voice, like fingers of tactile light, gripped the receptors in me, drawing me to attention. I told myself I just wanted to receive it. I reversed back to the start. This time, I got stuck on a smile that ain’t a smile, teeth flying against our necks. I stopped it again, feeling weightless, as though the very air was embracing me, lifting me. I floated all the way to the conclusion: You just can’t call it’s name, name, name... “That’s it,” I said to myself. “That’s it.” I put the track on repeat, and pressed PLAY again. Then, closing my eyes, I lay back and listened.

The first part of this interview took place in Brown Butter, a coffee shop and bakery

on Tompkins Avenue in Bed-Stuy. Reginald recommended that we meet there, as it’s not far from his place, and it feels like a home away from home.

The music and clatter of others, gathering over coffee, tea and biscuits in the back-

ground enhanced my ability to focus in on and try to capture the real essence of what he was saying. Particularly, as he described what it felt like to take Black History month seriously, as an artist, and as an African-American; and what it felt like to find a home within his work; and about the existential expansiveness that comes from being young and black, and raised in the United States, then taking a trip to Ghana while still in college, or just after college.

“It was the most present that I had ever been, anywhere. And it felt like a kind of

centering, of my spirit. To leave the country at nineteen, and to go to a black nation was important; and then to have three weeks away from all the things that I was experiencing on a regular basis; and to feel connected to the people that I traveled with, and to feel joyful to the experience; and to study the things that we were studying . . . it was just a beautiful place, in so many ways: the sunshine, and the heat, and the people. It changed my life.”

We couldn’t go to Ghana, but on an impulse, after we spoke for an about an hour,

we started walking through Bed-Stuy, along Halsey Street, east, toward Malcolm X Boulevard. Without hesitation, as we looked for a place to continue the interview, Reginald headed toward the Macon Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Quietly we walked in, and after drifting through the stacks for a few moments, we found seats in the branch’s African-American Heritage Center, and kept speaking. Given the circumstances; Reginald’s Master’s in Africana Studies; the month, February; and the photographs of and books about Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Nelson Mandela on display, we couldn’t have found a better spot. “I like it here. I like that it’s frequented by black people in the community. So it feels very normal. They keep it warm, for instance, because black folks are in here. It’s a place where you can come to where that’s the case. It’s also the closest library to me. It’s not the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, which is the huge building, but I like it.” - Isaac Myers III

PHOTOGRAPHY: EMILY FISHMAN

Isaac: You mentioned you moved around a lot. Where would you say you grew up? Reginald: I was born in Binghamton, New York, upstate, and lived there for about a year and a half before we moved to Tuskegee, Alabama. I lived there until I was in first grade. We then moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and I lived there until third grade. We lived in Brunswick, Georgia for half a year and then Macon, Georgia for five years. So I was entering eighth grade when we moved to Tampa, Florida. Then I went to middle school through college in Tampa. That was where I lived the longest, and then after grad school I moved to Chicago, and I lived there for five and a half years, until 2017, and then I moved here a year and a half ago.

That’s where home is. I can construct a home through the work that I’m making. And if I don’t, then I won’t have the home. And the only way to actually have it is to do it. Isaac: Did you have that thought recently? Reginald: I feel like I’ve had most of my thoughts for my entire life, but more recently, perhaps I’ve gained a new way of saying it, or have gained a more clear articulation around it. I don’t even know that it’s been recently; I just know that it’s been a long-standing process. I’m not at the end of the process, so if I’m saying it now, then I’m sure that a year, two years, or five years from now, it will be even more clear. Isaac: If you’re not useful to yourself, then how can you be useful to other people? Reginald: Right.

Isaac: So if you had a main location that felt like home, where would you say that would be? Reginald: Wherever my parents are, which would be Tampa right now. And I wouldn’t say “my home is Tampa,” but that’s just where my parents are right now. I don’t know if that’s my most honest truth, but more so that I grew up in a family that reinforced in me, almost as a kind of mantra, that the family is home; that wherever the family is, is home. But at the same time, wherever I am is home for me. It’s not about the city; so much as it’s about my own center of gravity. Though I don’t often feel at home.

Isaac: And useful is a funny word. Reginald. Exactly. I think that perspective comes from a lot of unresolved wounds ––– they’re inherited wounds. If the idea is that being used is a kind of objectification, which we inherit as a part of our socio-cultural and racial identity, then that’s something that has to be worked out and work through. It’s not just something to take for granted, and it’s subtle, and it shows up all over the place, culturally ––– where people talk about being a commodity, for instance. It means something different when you are actually the descendant of actual commodities that were exchanged in the marketplace.

Isaac: Why not? Reginald: For the longest I used to believe that my purpose on the Earth was to be useful to others. I don’t disbelieve that now, but I think that that way of seeing things often led me to overlook the responsibility that I have to be of use to myself. I’m learning that home for me is my work.

There’s some stuff that has to be worked through with that, and so I think that for myself, that’s kind of what it means ––– who am I, what am I supposed to be focused on ––– and I think that by doing that, and by asking those questions, that can make me, not just of use, but it also allows me to produce work that the people who are most ready to

receive it can approach, and something good can happen, and something valuable can take place. But again, these are terms that are problematic in their own ways. Isaac: Language has its limits. Reginald: It does. And that’s why I paint too. I want to find a way to not be so limited by language. Isaac: How do you think that’s done, by leaning further into it? Reginald: I have a theory that there are no bad writers, just bad readers. So really what it’s about is learning to read, and as I learn to read, helping to teach others to read. So much of what is denotative, or what’s called denotative in language is connotative epistemologically. It’s really about insinuation, and black artists ––––– despite being locked in a particular kind of language that doesn’t come from the places from which they come, and a language that can’t really speak to the experiences that they’ve experienced, totally ––– have always found ways, through inflection, through reversal of order, and through various means, to basically tweak the language, to use it in such a way that people really start to get what’s being said. Also, it’s been dangerous to speak truthfully as a black person in this country, and also to be literate. So in the context of those dangers that have been inherited, and that we carry along with us all the time, we have still found ways to get across what we need to get across. One of the most obvious examples would be Harriet Tubman. Everybody knows Harriet Tubman. And one of the songs that she would sing, in order to alert folks, was “Go Down Moses,” which is a negro spiritual. One of the reasons that she did it was because black African slaves were not allowed to practice traditional African religious prac48

tices, they had to convert to Christianity. And so within the model of Christianity there is a story which is ready-made for their experience, which is why it was so easily adaptable to the experiences of the blacks in the south who were being enslaved and seeking freedom, and the only way to get to that freedom was through God, so it ended up being the perfect model to encourage folks, and to put spirit into folks, and to let them know that we’re going to get out of this, and that we’re going to get through it. You can use the model you’ve been given; you’re given the language, and then you can use the tonalities that precede the language, and that are from the place that you come from. Another example would be “Amazing Grace.” The tones and the music it to it come from one place, whereas the words come from a different place. You can keep in mind that the sound is a form of language; the actual musical notes that are involved, and the sounds that you make with your body when you’re singing, or when you’re saying the words. You can be using the same words, but it’s through how you’re saying them that people start to understand what it is that you’re saying. I still think that we’re not yet at time where all of the black expression that we have has been adequately read; where our readings of the things that we’ve produced are equal to the things that we’re producing, in terms of interpretations. I don’t know if it ever needs to be interpreted, as we say, “What’s understood don’t need to be said,” but at the same time . . . learning to read would be a very important step in this long story that we’re involved in. Coming to that has also helped me figure out and decide that I would take this year to take very seriously what this month.

February, Black History Month, could be. Because the story isn’t finished, and we’re not out of the woods. Isaac: There’s a comfort in that, in knowing that it’s not really about the words that are said, but how they’re said. Reginald: It could even be the same notes. Basquiat has a quote about Miles’ trumpet; people asking him how to describe his painting is like people asking Miles to describe how his horn sounds. It’s ineffable. And it’s because this language isn’t prepared to wrap itself around what’s going on in Basquiat’s head and hand when he’s making those marks. It’s not prepared to talk about what Miles is doing. It’s struck by what Miles is doing. It’s stunned by it. It may be a language that always wants to conquer, and to name, and to delineate, but it lacks the ability to delineate that which precedes and supersedes it. Isaac: So we’ll always be one step behind; we’ll always be trying to catch up. Reginald: That’s one way to think about it, but even what time is isn’t what the language thinks time is, so in terms of ahead and behind, it doesn’t work. Isaac: This makes me think about the typical post-game interview, “Take us through that last play . . .” Reginald: Exactly. Isaac: “I don’t know. I got the ball, I made a play.” How do you put something like that into words? Reginald: Right. And then you have a situation where –––– and it’s a famous clip, where Lebron is talking about a play

that happened, and he basically, verbatim, describes two minutes worth of basketball, where he just goes through the details of everything. And what it made people realize is that, during the whole time that he’s playing, he’s keeping a record of everything that occurs. So his experience of what we see is at such a higher level that people can’t even begin to imagine, or enter into. Isaac: And even that didn’t answer the question. Reginald: It didn’t. But that’s a kind of genius, to be able to work in multiple languages, and engage in that type of code switching. What LeBron James’ body does is its own language, and then he finds a way to try to explain it to us: “Well, let me just tell you what happened, There was this, then that, then this, then that.” Isaac: It’s a start. Reginald: I also think it’s kind of a flex. From his perspective, you’re asking him the question as a journalist, and you have this positionality which is coming from a point of legitimacy. Your job is to say what really happened, and to give the final word on something. And Lebron is saying, I can do your job with my eyes closed; I can give all of the details, and explain all of that, and I can do what I did, that you cannot even begin to get anywhere near approach doing.

And it reminds me of the whole “Shut up and dribble” situation. LeBron criticizes the Trump presidency, then Laura Ingraham said that he should just “shut up and dribble,” and then Lebron just took it and ran with it, and then became even more outspoken, politically. It was a way of saying just because he’s highly skilled at this particular game, it doesn’t mean

that he lacks a legitimate political perspective. We’ve always been using our bodies in ways that others were afraid of or couldn’t, or couldn’t afford to given their health, or whatever was challenging to them at the time. We’ve always used our bodies in that way, or for four hundred years we’ve used our bodies in that way. Meanwhile, while we were doing that we were still also learning the culture and learning to understand certain situations, and having to put that work in from the standard parlance of having to always be one step ahead and ten times better. So, to then try to put him in his place by saying, Your job is to play basketball not to comment on social reality . . . I think that’s a product of capitalism and consumer society, which fundamentally says, this is what the world is, and just because you get to play basketball doesn’t mean that you get to be a philosopher about your experience. You don’t get to inquire in any real way about what’s happening here. That job is for other people to do. But part of what it means to be a subject includes the capacity to inquire about these things. And part of what it means to be a person is to be able to inquire, and also to consider and to question. Isaac: Doesn’t the etymology of the word “essay” have something to do with inquire? Reginald: It relates to an attempt ––– to step out onto something, and engage; which I think questioning definitely relates, as it’s an endeavor into something. In that respect, the word essay deals with questions in the way that I think of questions. Isaac: How so? Reginald: I think the whole point of a question is to go into territory that may not already have the most solid footing, and also 50

to invite something in. The idea of “the attempt” feels a bit like the end of s Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, where Milkman is on the cliff and he steps out and it mirrors the first scene where the man is jumping off the hospital building with the wings. And the way that that story ends, the last line, is that if you surrender to the air, then you can ride it. That’s what I think about, in terms of “an attempt.” That’s what a question does. A question involves a type of risk, in that same way; because you don’t know what the answer to your question is going to be. You don’t know what the fallout to the question is going to be. But you have to go out there, and you have to put yourself out there. Isaac: That makes sense. You mentioned that you did grad school in Florida, what did you study? Reginald: For undergrad I was a double major. I did English and I did Africana Studies. My Master’s is in Africana Studies and I focused on literature and critical theory. Isaac: How did you know that you wanted to study those areas, coming out of high school? Reginald: I didn’t know. I started off in journalism. And then I took three classes in journalism, and I just wasn’t feeling it, ethically. Isaac: Why not? Reginald: It just felt like people were being trained to think smaller and not bigger, and that was hard for me. I wanted to be expansive, and consider expansive things, and I felt that what I was experiencing, as far as mass media training, was not that interesting.

I felt like all of the wrong questions were being asked, and actually there weren’t very many questions that were being allowed. And it was more like this is how it is, and then this is what you can do to be kind of investigative about it, but even in how you have to present the information that you acquire, still felt constricting to me. I wanted to be creative. I didn’t want there to already be a skeleton in place for me to put some stuff on. I wanted to see what it meant to actually work through and make it myself.

and Macon, Georgia. These places are extremely important in the conversation about what it means to be black in America.

Isaac: That makes sense.

Isaac: This was while you were studying at the University of South Florida?

Reginald: So I changed to English, because I was good at it, and also because I was interested in writing. So for a time I had creative writing as a minor, which I liked. But then I picked up Africana studies and I dropped the creative writing minor. Isaac: How did you decide on Africana studies? Reginald: My parents deeply respected cultural work. There were multiple artists in my family. My father’s brother and sister were artists. My father’s sister and her husband were deeply involved in research around the Gullah peoples of South Carolina, which included them making tapes of stories, of spirituals and folk songs. My uncle (my aunt’s husband) wrote a book that was pretty major in the late Eighties about Sea Island people. He worked on Daughters of the Dust.

My father was deeply interested in making sure we were exposed to Black Culture, in the early Nineties, and Mid-Nineties. All over the South we would go to these festivals, and we kept African art in our home. And we lived in real black places, like Tuskegee, Alabama; Montgomery, Alabama;

And so by the time I got to college I was deeply interested in those studies and ideas anyway, and I already had a good background in it. And then I went to Ghana in 2004. At that time I was taking a second African-American history class, and one of my classmates was talking about an Africana Studies Club.

Reginald: Yes. My friend was talking about the Africana Studies Club, and how they take a yearly trip to Ghana. And that sounded amazing to me. I was eighteen or nineteen at the time, so I did what I needed to do in order to go. And I was there for three weeks and it changed my life. And I came back, and I picked up the Africana Studies major. Isaac: How did it change your life? Reginald: It was the most present that I had ever been, anywhere. And it felt like a kind of . . . centering, of my spirit. To live in Tampa, Florida when I lived there, and where I lived, and to be where I was and to feel the kind of effort and energy and cultural silencing there –––– which is what it felt like to me ––––– in that I couldn’t really express myself as fully as I wanted to in Tampa. So to leave the country at nineteen, and to go to a black nation was important; and then to have three weeks away from all the things that I was experiencing on a regular basis; and to feel connected to the people that I traveled with, and to feel joyful to the experience; and to study the things that we were studying . . . and also, it was just a beautiful place, in so many ways: the sunshine, and the heat, and the people. 51

And then, again, to think about having lived my life as an African-American person, and a descendant of people who were once enslaved in this country . . . to visit the slaves castles and slave dungeons in Elmina . . .

to live there. I definitely felt: I’m going to move to Ghana, and I’m going to live here. That’s how it changed my life, in short.

Elmina is right on the ocean. And so to be able to go and be on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the starting point of this story, in a fortress that was built before the European discovery of the Americas, in the 1480s, as a Black American subject, was an existentially expansive experience. It felt like something was resolved.

Reginald: I know. Believe me, I know. If not Ghana, then Senegal. I remember it was the rainy season, and we were in a marketplace, and I remember walking outside as it started raining and how startling it was to just see everyone walking, despite the raindrops. It just felt like, it’s raining, okay, no big deal.

But also, many new questions started to frame themselves. To visit the slave dungeons underground, and to know that on top of those slave dungeons there was a chapel, where the slave owners would worship while underneath there were people who were packed in like sardines in their own bodily fluids for weeks at a time.

So even that was startling to me. And then when I came back I was a part of the Africana Studies club, and then I was president of the Africana Studies club, and then I was co-editor-in-chief of the literary magazine there. It really changed me.

And so many died on their way . . . and then to be able to stand on the ocean, and do whatever humans do when they engage things that are spiritually jarring in that way, but to specifically be able to look out over the Atlantic ocean, and to know that I had ancestors who saw it from that end. If not there then Senegal or Mali, or wherever it was that they had to get on a ship, and head over and across the ocean--I can’t really put into words all that it felt like to be over there, but there was also the idea of a return.

Isaac: It’s still an option.

I actually moved to New York right after I graduated from college, I thought I was going to pursue creative writing right away. And so I stayed with my sister for a few weeks. And that summer was the first time that I went to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. I remember being overwhelmed by that experience as well, especially after Africa. It was just very magical. I remember Harry Belafonte came on stage that night. And then I went across the street to Tribes and met Steve Cannon. My favorite writer at the time was Ishmael Reed, and I remember he happened to be in town reading, and I got to meet him. It was just a very stirring experience.

Edouard Glissant talks about that: when the African, who is in the diaspora, returns to Africa, but having gained something on the rest of humanity, but specifically, the rest of the west, and that is: multiplicity –––– coming back as the multiple.

And then I went back to Tampa, but those few weeks in New York set a fire under me. Then my department invited me to pursue a graduate degree, in Africana Studies. Then after that I moved to Chicago.

I think there is a rooting of the multiplicity inside of me, and at the same time, I wanted

So at the same time, I was writing poetry and spoken word and slam, and was part of that wave of folks. We were all growing

up together, as a generation of poets, or people who use poetry as means of considering and translating the world. That’s how people in Chicago knew who I was.

Reginald: Hyde Park, Barack Obama’s neighborhood.

Isaac: Is this where you had some experiences that appear in “The A-Lift”? I’m thinking specifically of Tell Yo Truth.

Reginald: I moved there in 2011 and live there until 2017. So I was there for the re-election. I do remember the 2008 election, which has its own beauty, but that was when I was in grad school. It was really great.

Reginald: Yes, in some regard, but there is a place that I had in mind, that is specifically about storytelling, in Chicago. There are a few places, rather than just one. But they all have to do with storytelling, and the fact that people can come into a place and just tell their stories. Which, to me, is different from a poetry slam. _________________________________ At the Macon Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. _________________________________ Isaac: Do you work here often? Reginald: I can’t say often. But often enough. I like it. I like that I can generally predict what will happen around me. That’s nice. Isaac: So what happens? Reginald: Nothing. That’s the point. I can release myself to whatever I need to release myself to in a place like this. I also like that it’s frequented by black people in the community. So it feels very normal. They keep it warm, for instance, because black folks are in here. It’s a place where you can come to where that’s the case. It’s also the closest library to me. It’s not the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, which is the huge building, but I like it. I like the tables. Isaac: So you mentioned that you lived in Chicago, where in Chicago?

Isaac: Around when?

We stood in line. And a lot of my friends at the time were foreign exchange students from francophone black nations, so they all spoke French. It was good for me because it helped me keep up with my French. Isaac: Which nations? Reginald: Martinique, Congo, Senegal . . . And I think there was one person who is half-Haitian, but they were all through France. They were exchange students from places that France once dominated by colonialism, but then they lived in the mother country ––– the so-called mother country; it’s just a really terrible name for a colonial power, “the mother country.” It’s not very mothering. It’s the absolute opposite relationship. “The child” would be better. It’s more the child than the mother. It’s suckling its colonies; taking from its colonies, and being fed by the colonies, and growing stronger because of the colonies. It’s not the other way around. It doesn’t mother anything and it didn’t give birth to the colonies; the colonies are giving birth to it, and new life. But we stood in line forever, at this place called the Hip-Hop Soda Shop, in Tampa, and I remember calling people in New Mexico and making sure they voted. And I remember, there was a very large man who I knew, and when the election results came in he was just weeping ––– he had to be six foot four and two hundred and fifty pounds. Just weeping, and he was saying, “Is it alright? Is it alright?”

It was an epistemic shift, which is what I was preoccupied with in grad school, which is this idea that fundamental codes of a culture can shift ––– and that night was a moment of that, a shift, having all those people in that place. And having to encounter the unreality of a possibility being realized, one which they may have hoped for, but didn’t believe could actually happen –––– until it happened. And then when it happened it was just felt like, what? Isaac: Do you think he was asking, “Is it alright to cry?” Reginald: I think it was more of a question of “Is what just occurred, alright?” He was grappling with the unreality of it. Because who could expect it? Until it happened, I don’t know anyone who expected it to happen. Even up until the point in which it happened. The same could be said for Trump, for a lot of people, except I think a lot of black folks expected it, when it came to Trump.

Again, to return to the idea of it being the sound of a voice, and not just the words . . . comparing connotative and denotative meanings, but then also considering however you would describe the spiritual efficacy of what they’re doing in these speeches, and the intent that you can feel within them, without having to say it –––– what you can do to rile people up, and the kind of freedom you have to do that, and they way that you can feel when a person is speaking –––– if they’re a preacher, for instance, that the Holy Ghost is with them, Michelle has that.

We feared it and knew America enough to know that they would do that; that after Obama was elected twice, that they would be too mad, that after eight years, the backlash was coming. That was clear. Because before then, we had just had Bush. So to go from Bush, to Obama . . .

But that’s too powerful. It’s too dangerous. Which is why I hope she never runs for president. We were all scared for Barack too . . .

And you have to remember at the time, that was unheard of, a young black man being President of the United States, right? And he had all of the qualifications and he deserved it, but it didn’t make sense, after Bush especially, but Bush didn’t make sense.

Reginald: Because it’s real. Say what you will about the post-structuralist scholars, but they understood something about culture, specifically the European late capitalist culture. For instance, someone like Jean Baudrillard who understands the unreality and the reality principle that was kind of upended by being in a postmodernist culture, and the ways in which we live in a culture of simulation and simulacra: the simulation of a simulation.

But it’s not just that he was elected, because he is who he is, but it’s also having Michelle Obama in the White House. Because she’s the stronger speaker of the two. Isaac: How so?

Reginald: She’s more in tune with the black prophetic tradition than he is. He’s in tune with it in his own way, but her ancestors gifted her with something; not that he wasn’t gifted, but part of his gift was her. If you go back to their speeches and listen to her, and also listen to Dr. King’s speeches, or Fannie Lou Hamer’s, or Malcolm X’s . . . there’s something that they’re doing that sets them apart.

Isaac: Why is it too powerful, too dangerous?

Just something further and further away; signs being detached from their referents, so to speak. So there’s a distance –––– and

this is across the board, not just in terms of the things that we encounter, culturally, but even when it comes to money. For instance, it’s becoming less and less material and physical, and based less and less on the gold principle, and more on credit, which is nonmaterial. So that unreality principle is the fundamental reality principle of the world in which we live, but people like Dr. King, for instance, cut through that, and got to something that feels real ––– that’s the prophetic tradition. That’s why you can stand in front of a group of people, and if you have the power to move them, then something is happening there that can’t quite be accessed by the so-called powers that be; mainly the political system that we live in, which is always trying to hone that power into something else, for its own purposes, or to eliminate it.

The last time we had a huge outpouring of that kind of energy was the 1960s, and how they quelled that energy was by ceremoniously killing, in public, many of the people who had that kind of power. So that the public would then recoil from that, and/or certain radical groups might formulate, and then those radical groups could be undermined in various ways.

But Obama represented the memory of that; he was the memory of that. He looks like Malcolm X, in a way, and that made it possible for us to connect with that power, and that possibility, even though it seemed impossible to go to that place. But when it comes to the spirit of what those people had –––– especially after hearing Michelle Obama’s post-presidency speeches, it was clear that she has that. And if she were to let it go . . .

People should just listen to Dr. King’s last four or five speeches. Not just the last “On the Mountaintop” speech, which is extremely important –––– but for instance, the one where he talks about midnight; which is about the split between good and evil in the human psyche. And he, like Lebron James, for instance, demonstrates this exhaustive knowledge of the subject matter that he’s drawing from, and he demonstrates his exhaustive knowledge of European philosophy and Western philosophy –––– whether it’s Christian all the way to the Greeks. And in the speech he’s defining it, but then he’s also describing how it translates into a question of psychotherapy. It’s just a super exhaustive demonstration of his knowledge, and he does it in a speech that carries people along; and then he brings it back to himself. And he talks about the split between good and evil, which is even inside him, which he always has to fight. And he’s embodying the platonic vision, what Plato describes in The Republic, which is the soul of the city, or the nation being comparable to, or parallel to the soul of a person. And that’s exactly what’s happening in the 1960’s; Where Dr. King is struggling with whether the efforts that he’s making, or that he wants to make, will be enough. But why is it too powerful? Because if someone does that, in this world, where people are yearning for prophecy, then it will open the floodgates. Isaac: You were talking a bit earlier, about TuPac, in this same sense, or in a similar sense. Reginald: The thing about Tupac, which I remember him saying is “I’m not saying I’m gonna change the world, but I guarantee I will spark the brain that will change the world.” And that’s also a perfect description for the black prophetic tradition. Bob Marley is another example.

But this goes back to reading. Because when people think about Bob Marley, they think about very particular things, mostly. Why he’s acceptable in the worldwide level is that he’s able to convey a kind of freeness and joy. But if you really are attentive to what Bob Marley was saying and doing, then you understand why even he had to die, at a somewhat early age. Because he was very focused on the black prophetic tradition. It’s almost as though it’s too real for us, to actually take them seriously. There’s been this uninterrupted line of folks known and unknown who carry on black prophetic tradition, from the start. I’ll give another example. I’m reading Olaudah Equiano. And he’s writing in the Eighteenth Century, and what was necessary for him in making his argument was not just that the politics of a certain things are happening. It’s that there’s an existential struggle that’s taking place. And that existential struggle can be mapped through the spiritual tradition in which we find ourselves in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And that line is uninterrupted through to Nat Turner, who believed in prophecy and direct prophecy and was inspired to his rebellion through that lens; through Toussaint L’ouverture, who understood the necessity for certain spiritual practices that differed from the Judeo-Christian tradition, but were definitely spiritual practices, which had to be initiated in order to start the Haitian Revolution; through Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, who everybody called Moses, and Marcus Garvey who said that God is black. That’s a kind of ontology that’s being articulated. Maybe not Booker T. Washington, but that’s part of why he was acceptable in a particular way. But what Booker T. Washington was doing was talking about claiming something for your own. And even though it 56

was super conservative in some ways; I think there’s a way of reading him where you can understand why Marcus Garvey saw in him a certain kind of hero. Isaac: Would you place James Baldwin within that tradition? Reginald: Definitely. Baldwin grew up a preacher, and you know that he’s a preacher; because if you read his work, you can sense that in the work. It’s a spiritual struggle. It’s like reading Soren Kierkegaard, in many ways. They’re connected in what they’re doing. Baldwin understands the soul and the spirit of humanity. We live in a world now where people are afraid to touch that, and where the folks who are most open about touching that ––––– and not to be critical of them –––– but they don’t appear to be interested in radical change. When you think about the church folk of contemporary society: we still have the gospel of prosperity, and the Steve Harvey’s of the world. You have the people who are less interested in trying to tear the world down and more interested in trying to take things a little slower, and maybe try to integrate and be palatable. Which is not to say that those other kinds of religious inclinations aren’t present in the world. Obviously, they’re all over the place. It’s just not the same. And the people who are most radical today aren’t using the Judeo-Christian language to advocate for their radical approach to the world. The authority by which they demand the change is not God, but some sort of universal right. And an ethical right. Isaac: So when you sit down to write, do you feel the weight of that? Reginald: I feel the weight of that when I

live. So when I write what I’m doing is conversing with it. I’m engaging with a conversation that precedes me, and supersedes me, infinitely. And if I do it right, then the ancestors will let me tell the story. Writing is a way to release that weight. It’s not heavy though. It’s like Donny Hathaway sang, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s my Brother.” It’s important to make that distinction. It’s not heavy at all. This world is heavy. But that tradition is the strength to carry it. And understanding that is what gives me the strength to keep going, to carry on, in the face of the world. And also to know, not just in whom whatever powers in me comes from, and from whom it comes, but also knowing who I’m fighting for. Because we live in a very complex world and not everybody is in tune with the same story. Even though I can’t avoid that story because I’ve studied it, and I’ve done all of this work to engage it, and it’s been my whole life that I’ve been engaging within it. It’s almost like I’m here for the purpose of engaging with this story. There’s no way that I can look and not see it. Especially when I think about where I’ve lived; what I’ve encountered, and what I’ve read. And even before I’ve had choices to do this sort of work on my own, I’m here on my own, almost for that purpose. So that I can follow what I’m drawn to. But not everybody has that. And part of what it means to find liberation in the world we’re in is to liberate ourselves narratively and epistemologically; which means sometimes you’re going to encounter situations where people are not always privy to that, and your job is to do the work regardless. And it may not perceived, while you’re

doing it, that that’s the work you’re doing, but you can’t let it get in the way of doing the work that you have to do. It also means being open and listening. And finding a way to evolve with the world, to whatever extent possible, without letting it annihilate you before your work is done. And understanding that all of us ––– and by all of us I mean black folks, and specifically New World black folks ––– are carrying an almost infinite weight, and wounds that have not been healed. There hasn’t been enough time to heal them, but also, there’s been a constant work at reopening these wounds. We’re in a process of consistently reopening these wounds. What it means to be in America, and to be in this world, as a black person, is to be always susceptible to these wounds being open. And these wounds precede us. We’re living in them. And we’re trying to find our way through. And every time every generation comes around and tries to do something, and the black prophetic tradition resurfaces, the world shifts under our feet. That’s good and bad. That bad of it is that people will be lost, in some regard. They’re not going to understand what’s going on. The good of it is that, if you ever need proof that God exists, for instance, that’s your proof. Because the most powerful nations in the world will do whatever they can to keep you from accessing that power, and yet somehow, with every generation, we adapt, and we find our way through, and it opens up new veins. And I feel like for the rest of my years, most likely, that will be the focus: staying true to that source. And there is something beyond that; which is just the role that consciousness is playing in this experience, while embodied in a history that’s a very particular thing. So one question, in the back of my mind, that

I ask when I sit down to write is always: “Why would the universe create consciousness? What would be the purpose of embodying consciousness?” And that’s an underlying question, if I were to write stories for the rest of my life, I could get at. Or with an essay, it would just be an attempt to answer that question. And all of the paintings are another way to answer the question, as well as my photographs, and the other work that I’m doing, they are all ways to begin to consider: why is the universe doing this? One tool that I have to address this question is the black history that I’m a part of; which I’ve been born into. And then there’s the question of, “What is God?” “What is the source of consciousness, and energy, and the things that we’re dealing with now?” “What is the source of it?” “What is it’s intention?” “And how do we get in tune with it?” By releasing ourselves to it. It’s like what I mentioned before, regarding what Toni Morrison said in Song of Solomon, “Surrendering to the air.” We’re not going to understand everything, but we have to make the attempt. And we have to ask the question. And I feel like that’s my job, and that’s why I’m here. Whatever that means.

The Beginning before the Beginning Angela Sundstrom In the niche of a movie theater desire moves like a volt. It begins in the pelvic floor, its hot kernel stoked into extremities. Desire hunts in the woods, climbs the radio tower, propels forward, gives no choice. A priori; it resides within itself. Desire is needy, demands a lack in order to operate, requires the possibility of not being fulfilled. It walks alone along the shore at night, swells with both proximity and distance, worships at the altar of the forbidden, plays in a tableau of the taboo. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s robinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s egg blue, strung through. Desire darkens and expands, unravels and reforms of its own accord. Desire is a still life, translucent green grapes, a solitary, pale orange, the curvature of a peach, absence. Desire is a venomous muse, resplendent in not-knowing, what is almost revealed, but cannot yet be seen. The image at its conception, the moment before creation begins. It is the color of milk, the forestâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s green after storm, slash of birch bark against an expansively skeletal sky, a structure begging for collapse.

Requiem Angela Sundstrom There’s a solitary sparrow in the church’s spires. Still, you’re not here. The traffic on Rogers Ave insists with a hush. Still, it rains. The earth filling itself over and over. What is it to be you? All that is light and all that goes dark. The red flower expanding at dusk.

What happens if you call yourself a writer, and then go three years without writing

anything? What becomes of the weight, the strain, and the guilt that comes with not living up to your own ideas about who you are, and what it is that you do?

This question, like most questions worth asking, requires an ever-evolving answer. Or,

as Angela Sundstrom put it, on the Saturday afternoon in early March when Alex and I talked with her and her partner, Donny, in their two bedroom walk-up in Crown Heights; with the light from the skylight and bedroom falling into the place all afternoon: “I talked about it in therapy a lot!”

Talking about it helped. And Sundstrom started writing again. “I was fighting that

failure voice in my head; I had failed and I was not doing what I said I would do. It was very constricting. I’ve let go of that a lot more. It’s kind of ironic, because now I’m writing more than I have in many years.” She earned her MFA in poetry from the New School in 2013, and has recently finished a chapbook, Where the Water Stills, which features “The Beginning before the Beginning,” as well as “La Llorona,” which she read for us that afternoon.

When I asked about her favorite color, the idea of placing one’s self in a box arose

again. “I like blue. But I think for many years I told people my favorite color was black. I went along with my identity at the time, the box I put myself in. But I think I’ve always liked blue. I write a lot about water.”

At one point in the afternoon, when I asked her to describe “goth dancing,” by way

of a brief demonstration, she started stepping over an imaginary coffin: from left, to right, from right, to left. It’s intuitive. You go with it.

Sundstrom grew up in Detroit, Michigan, specifically, in West Bloomfield. “Metro

Detroit is a sprawling mass. It’s huge. So you can drive through the suburbs for hours.” She played saxophone in high school and fell in love with the work of Charles Baudelaire at an early age. “Since I was young I remember being fascinated with exploring mortality. Baudelaire is quire dark, and I remember learning about romanticism around death in the Symbolists’ poetry. I remember really loving The Flowers of Evil.”

I asked her what drew her to poetry. “I think it might have been the form itself, and

how it’s conducive to an emotional gothy teenager living in the suburbs who loved listening to Nine Inch Nails and needed to find a way to express herself.”

She told us about Saturday afternoons while she was in high school, the outings to

Royal Oaks, and the hours spent hanging out in Noir Leather, which per the store’s website, 74

has been feeding and expanding the Detroit punk and fetish scene since 1983. And as we ven-

tured back into time, circa 2002, Sundstrom filled us in on a few of the rumors about her back then. “Someone said they saw me hailing Satan, or performing witchcraft on my roof.” Of course, she set the record straight. “I’ve never been on my roof. It was in the suburbs. I grew up in the suburbs.”

We talked about second chances, and finding one’s place in New York in the mid

Aughts. And we dove into the subconscious, and she shared a tip for generating new lines and ideas for poems. “I’ve had this experience, when I’m in that state of falling asleep, or after a nap coming out of sleep, where I start writing poems. I’ve thought of lines, and then have jumped up and started writing them down right away. I’ve found clarity in poems that way. I wish I could use that as a regular method!” - Isaac Myers III

PHOTOGRAPHY: ALEXANDRA BILDSOE.

Isaac: You just moved into this apartment. What made you decide on this one? Angela: One of the reasons we moved here is because the landlord lives in the building. He owns a local hardware store and he and his wife live on the first floor. He has slowly been renovating the apartments in here. He’s super friendly and really nice; we like the idea of living in a building owned by a person who lives in it. Isaac: That makes a huge difference, having a good landlord in New York. Where’s the most interesting place that you traveled to in the last five years? Angela: The only major trip I’ve had was two summers ago when I went to Rotterdam and Belgium. I went to Ghent and to Brussels briefly, which I enjoyed. I visited my friend in Rotterdam. I had been to Amsterdam, but I had never been to Rotterdam. It was fun going in the context of hanging out with the locals and not as a tourist. I really like going to upstate New York, as well. Isaac: Where have you been to Upstate? Angela: Various places in the Catskills. I go hiking in the spring and summer; sometimes I use Airbnb to rent a house for the weekend. I do that at least a few times a year. There’s also a sculpture park, Opus 40, in Saugerties, New York that I like visiting. There was a sculptor who spent most of his life building it. He had a house that he lived in and behind it there’s all this natural rock, a bluestone quarry, from which he created a huge land sculpture. You can go out and walk around on it. It’s really cool. I would say that stands out in my mind as an interest76

ing, slightly quirky thing that’s not far from the city. I like going to Saugerties and Woodstock and exploring new towns, and going to local bookstores up there. All of those towns have great used bookstores. Isaac: Do you ever write about those experiences? Angela: I have not written about my travel, really. Isaac: What do you find yourself drifting toward, in your writing? Angela: There’s something ephemeral, even to me, about how I approach what I’m writing. I think I can answer this question by going in a linear fashion. My chapbook has a lot of older material, so it’s been interesting to write new material and to try and synthesize them. A lot of my older writing has to do with myth. I have a few poems that are very image-based, but more so I’ve researched myths - Cantabrian mythology or Greek mythology - I love the language, imagery and symbolism of myths. I’ve used the research as a jumping off point in a lot of my poetry. Some was drawn from my personal and internal world, but I think it’s been much more so catalyzed by the external. Whereas now, I think I’m more personal, but the tone is similar. A few people that I knew died in close proximity to each other in 2018 and that affected my poetry. There’s a lot of death in my writing in general, but in particular, a lot of the chapbook has myth poems that deal with death.

I have a poem called “What is Grief ?” and I also wrote poems while specifically thinking about the individuals who had died. I have poems in the book that specifically deal with desire, including “The Beginning before the Beginning.” I think I went into it wanting to write poems about the people I knew who had passed away, but then other things came out. Sometimes I don’t even know what the poem will be about before it happens. Sometimes, I just write notes and something pops into my head and I’ll say, I could have a poem about this. Then other times ––– and this is true with “The Beginning before the Beginning” ––– it will be more conscious.

Angela: That’s funny. I did not hang out in the graveyard, but I wanted to. I went to an all-girls prep school and I was definitely the only really gothy person. Some of my friends . . . we liked the same music and they would sometimes dress in goth fashion, but it was definitely a part of my overall persona for a lot of high school. There were all kinds of weird rumors about me. Someone said they saw me hailing Satan or performing witchcraft on my roof. Isaac: Was that true? Angela: No. I’ve never been on my roof. It was in the suburbs. I grew up in the suburbs. Isaac: The suburbs of ?

With that one I was reading Anne Carson’s new translation of Euripides’ “The Bacchae” and it triggered a thought or a line. It just came to me. It was one of those much more muse-like writing experiences ––– you feel really excited and alive with the language and the content. So, since you had asked what I have been drifting towards in my writing. One part of the answer would be death. Since I was young I remember being fascinated with exploring mortality. I remember discovering Baudelaire when I was in high school. He’s quite dark, and I remember learning about the romanticism around death in the Symbolists’ poetry. I loved that when I was young. I remember really loving The Flowers of Evil. Isaac: Were you reading these poems in the graveyard?

Angela: Detroit. Specifically, West Bloomfield. Metro Detroit is a sprawling mass. It’s huge. So you can drive through the suburbs for hours. Of course, there were some cooler towns in the suburbs, places that were more funky and artsy. There were used record shops. There was a goth fetish store called Noir Leather that I was obsessed with when I was in high school. I used to hang out there all the time. Isaac: What does that entail, hanging out there, rather than shopping there? Angela: I’m trying to conjure a nineties mall movie. My mom would drop us off in a town called Royal Oak. In the late nineties Royal Oak was pretty funky. It had cool cafes and vintage stores, and it had Noir Leather, which also had gothy things as well as BDSM attire. Where my parents lived, it was much more homogenized; it didn’t have any quirky small busi-

nesses. So we would go to Royal Oak. I used to wear rhinestone dog collars and pieces like that. Isaac: Do you still have that attire, back home anywhere? Angela: My mom does have an odd assortment of some of my clothing, which is kind of weird. I don’t think she has any of that stuff, but who knows. I think she has my prom dress. I remember seeing a dress I wore to a formal dance when I was fifteen. I know that I got it from one of the stores in Royal Oak. Red and black velvet, floor length. It looked really good with my braces. I just remember a photo . . . it’s so bad. I’m sure there’s a subReddit about outfits like that.

eyeliner and was smiling with my braces . . . it’s great. Isaac: Do you remember having a good night? Angela: I don’t really remember. But Royal Oak, it was a cool and funky place, but no longer. I have friends still in Michigan, and when I go back I always say, “Let’s go to Royal Oak!” because Noir Leather is still open. But Royal Oak has become much more bougie, and it’s become a place where a lot of young, wealthy people move to, which is funny because that’s pretty antithetical to how I thought of it when I was young. There are a lot more high-rise apartments and upscale places. I’m really surprised that this goth fetish store is still in business. It’s been open since 1983.

Donny: The Blunder Years. Angela: Exactly. This would be perfect for that. I remember the photo my mom took. I was also in band, I played saxophone, and I was goth. I was not cool.

Isaac: So you’ve made it back there recently? Angela: I haven’t. Every time I go back to Michigan I say I’m going to go, and then I don’t. I don’t have a license, so I would really have to ask my mom to drive me.

Isaac: But, you were you? Angela: I was me. I went to a dance with a boy in band who also played saxophone. He went to the all-boys school which was next to the all-girls school. Band practice was in the allboys school, which was another level of terrifying for an adolescent girl. But for the dance, I had this really goth dress on. I remember the photo my mom took because my face was white like a ghost because I didn’t really know how to put makeup on. I basically just put on white powder and had thick

Isaac: That could be a nice mother-daughter moment? Angela: It would! It would be like, Mom, drive me to Royal Oak, like she did when I was thirteen. Isaac: Were you writing back then, when you were in high school? Angela: Yes. I actually remember that I wrote a vignette about Noir Leather, something like, “The smell of the incense wafting when you entered the space.” God, I wish I could get my hands on that.

Isaac: Were you writing poetry? Angela: I did, but I wrote pieces that were more like flash fiction at first. I did start writing poetry in high school. I had a few really excellent English teachers who I really connected with and liked. One of them was tough and she taught a writing class. It wasn’t officially called a creative writing class, but it was essentially on writing creative non-fiction essays. I wrote poetry back then. Some it was in the high school lit mag. It was very melodramatic. Isaac: Do you have those somewhere? Angela: My mom actually found that lit mag, recently, so I could get ahold of it. Isaac: What do you remember liking about poetry back then? Angela: I don’t know what specifically drew me to start writing poetry. I think it might have been the form itself and how it’s conducive to an emotional gothy teenager living in the suburbs who loved listening to Nine Inch Nails and needed to find a way to express herself. I had a lot of anger and a lot of misanthropy. Alex: It’s an emotional outlet. Angela: Exactly. It’s very conducive to that adolescent angst. I just remember having notebooks and writing. I didn’t really get along very well with my father when I was young. We fought a lot and I was grounded a lot. I tried to funnel those emotions into writing. It’s hard for me to define a moment when I said to myself that I wanted to start writing poetry. I remember discovering Baudelaire and loving his work, so per80

haps it was just through reading poetry that I discovered that I wanted to write poetry. My mom still has this poem I wrote that my grandmother got framed when I was seven. I’m very impressed by it still! It was an art project in first or second grade. There’s a line in it about autumn and the changing of the leaves as a metaphor. Essentially, I think it was about the joy of the natural world. One of the lines is “look at the glorious leaves,” and I spelled glorious correctly. I was on top of it at age seven. In middle school I wrote short stories. I remember talking to my eighth-grade teacher and telling her I wanted to be a writer, and how she encouraged me to send my stuff to writing contests. So, it’s certainly something I had already started to identify with in middle school. Although, identifying with anything so strongly can be problematic. Isaac: Why? Angela: It can set people up for disappointment. You put yourself in such a box ––– “I am a writer,” or “I am an artist,” –––– then, what if you stop doing those things or you’re not as successful as you would have liked to be? We put ourselves in these boxes and we develop these narratives about ourselves that I think can be really hindering creatively. Isaac: There’s a lot of truth in that. Angela: I talked about it in therapy a lot!

Isaac: That’s the first time I’ve come across that idea, exactly. Thank you. Alex: That’s very freeing! I feel freedom from what you just said. Angela: I think I struggled for years with my identity. I used to tell myself, I’m going to be a writer. I’m going to move to New York and be a writer and I’m going to be sitting in these cafes writing. Everything’s going to be great. Then, I didn’t write for many years. It has always been a struggle for me to sit down and do the writing. I was never someone who is easily prolific and just constantly writing. I was fighting that failure voice in my head; I had failed and I was not doing what I said I would do and what does this mean? It’s very constricting. I’ve let go of that a lot more. It’s kind of ironic, because now I’m writing more than I have in many years. Maybe I’ve let go of a little bit of that voice. Isaac: So, at some point you decided to do your MFA. Angela: Correct. My decision to do an MFA is multifaceted. One part of it is that I like structure and having a program. I had a very difficult time working toward internal goals. Anything external, great, I’ll hit that deadline. I’ll get it done. I’m super organized and good at my job. But, if I give myself a deadline? I would never would do the work. Part of it was a very functional need to have someone say, You have to write poems every week. Which, paying forty thousand dollars for that; we could argue that it is very silly.

Alex: It’s also a community that you’re a part of. Angela: Yeah, there’s a lot more to it. But that was one reason to go back to school. I wanted to write more. It was something in the back of my mind that I always thought I would do. Isaac: Where was college for you? Angela: I went to Michigan State for my undergrad. Isaac: And then did you go to the New School right after? Angela: No. I graduated from undergrad in 2004. I briefly lived in France. I taught English to high school and middle school students for nine months. Then I went back to Michigan for six months to save up the five hundred dollars that I moved to New York with at the end of 2005. As you know, because we went to school together, we went to grad school in 2011, so I had quite a span in between. Alex: It’s a nice thing to leave undergrad and have some time and then go back to school. That’s what I did as well. When you go back, you appreciate school so much. Angela: I’m sure it’s a very different experience for people who go straight away. They have no life experience. I felt uniquely different from other people in our MFA program and I felt older. There were a few students who were quite older, but a lot of them were twenty-four. I was at a very different stage in my

life. I had already worked and lived in New York since 2005. I worked fulltime and went to school at night. A lot of my fellow students didn’t work and they were having this New York master’s degree experience. Whereas, I had my friends and my life and went to school at night and still worked every day. I probably would have done it differently, in retrospect. Isaac: How so? Angela: I don’t know if I would have worked full time. Maybe I would have worked part time. I was afraid to do that because I didn’t want to have to take out loans to pay rent. I probably would have worked harder and taken things more seriously. I’m sure a lot of us say that about grad school; it’s a classic way to look back on the experience. I was still drinking in grad school, which was not great; it was before I quit drinking. We would have class till 10:30pm and then everyone would go to the bar, including the professors. We’d get to the bar at 11 and I worked a 9-5. That’s a recipe for not sleeping, being hungover, and not spending nearly enough time writing. Isaac: What did you do during those five years before grad school? Angela: I started temping. I was twenty-three and didn’t know what to do so I went to a temp agency. I actually had some really interesting jobs. My first temp job was at Newsweek in the circulation department. It was my first job in New York and I felt so nervous. I was afraid I looked too goth. I’m sure

I didn’t. I had short black hair and had my lip pierced. I felt very ‘other.’ Then, I temped at BBC worldwide, and then I worked for a small production company in children’s television and book production. The stuff I was doing at these jobs was assisting, coordinating, bullshit paperwork and research for the boss kind of things. A lot of my friends from Michigan had moved to New York at that time. We spent a lot of our time on the weekends going dancing at the goth clubs. Isaac: What is goth dancing? Angela: Oh my God. I don’t know how to describe it. I would just go out to places like the Bat Cave. I don’t think it’s open any more. In the East Village there was Pyramid Club, which is still there. They have some 80’s New Wave, goth and industrial nights. I had a lot of friends I knew from undergrad and we all lived very close to each other on the Bushwick, East Williamsburg border. It was a very different time. We went to brunch a lot. Isaac: Are they still here, or have they moved back? Angela: They have dispersed, mostly. A few have gone to the West Coast. My friend Arielle went to Rotterdam. A few are here. We rarely hang out all together. Isaac: Do you remember the last night you went goth dancing? Angela: I don’t remember. When I quit drinking, I didn’t go out dancing until after I had three years of sobriety. I was terrified of dancing sober because so many of those dancing nights relied on

alcohol. But now, I have gone dancing a bit. Not to goth nights, but to synthwave shows. It’s kind of like if you imagine the soundtrack to an 80’s movie and then the DJ amps it up and mixes it. Retro-sounding. Isaac: So, what’s the title of the chapbook? Angela: Where the Waters Still. Isaac: How’d you come up with that? Angela: It’s a line from one of the poems. I struggled with the title for a while. I had a short list and some of them were just way too melodramatic or intense. Then, it came to me. I was just looking through my manuscript desperately seeking a title and I saw that. It seemed perfect. There’s something cautious about it. Why is the water suddenly still? What’s causing this? Isaac: It seems peaceful to me. Angela: Oh, that’s good. I can appreciate that. I think because I know the poem where that line is from; it’s much darker: “Where the waters still / where mandrake borders bone.” Isaac: Do you have it somewhere? Do you want to read it? Angela: Sure.

La Llorona Surrounded by cypress and willow that no longer speak, a mother hunts the river. They slid so easily into this bed,eyes rolling like trout. She circles the banks of Hecate for delicate skulls dropped like scales. She searches the crossroads where mandrake borders bone, where the waters still. She whistles and they come. -- -The myth of La Llorona is popular in the southwestern United States and Mexico, and also Central America. She is the ghost of a woman who drowned her children in the river and is still looking for them. I was told by my friend, who’s from New Mexico, that parents will tell their children the story to keep them away from the river at night, so they don’t accidentally drown. I wrote this poem when I was talking to people about this. So, “Where the waters still” is infused with a bit more darkness than it resonates as a line on its own. I have another poem in the book that talks about mothers warning their children away from the river at night. It picks back up with this theme. Another reason why I liked having the world water in the title was because a lot of these poems have recurring fish and water imagery. I thought it was representative of the book. Isaac: Do you ever paint or draw? Angela: I’m not very good at the visual arts in terms of doing them. I’ve never

been good at drawing. I make collages sometimes; I find it very soothing and fun.

Living and The Dead she has a section of poems based on photographs. I would like to explore this method more. I liked analyzing art in essays in undergrad.

Isaac: What are those like? Angela: More color-based and abstract . . . a little weird and dark, thematically. I find it very soothing. I have a friend who’s a poet and a writer and we also had a book club together. Sometimes at book club we would have a collage night. She got me into it. In undergrad I studied art history and English. I was a humanities major, so I picked art history and English to primarily focus on. I’ve always thought about getting my masters in art history. I used to think about maybe getting my PhD, and sometimes I still think about it. I do love writing and reading about art and thinking about art as a lens to look at culture and historical movements through. It’s truly multidisciplinary. I try to keep up with what’s happening at museums and if I like a show, I definitely make a point to go see it. Isaac: It’s fascinating, how to write intelligently and interestingly about art. Angela: I actually don’t have a ton of ekphrastic poems about specific pieces. It’s something I do want to do more. I reference art and some pieces are about being in a gallery. Right now I’m reading the collected works of Natasha Trethewey. She has a section based on photographs of Biloxi Mississippi in 1911. Then there’s Sharon Olds, who is one of my favorite poets, who I discovered when I was younger. In her book The

In grad school, I took a class on art and collaboration. We studied the New York school of poets and their collaborations with the New York school painters from the 1950s. I got to research artists’ books where poets collaborated with visual artists. I researched the painter Pierre Bonnard who is one of my favorite Post-Impressionist painters. He collaborated with Paul Valéry, a French Symbolist. I got to see that actual book that they made. Then I looked at another one by Kiki Smith, who is a contemporary artist. I really enjoyed that because it was a way for me to still study art history, combined with writing. Isaac: Do you believe in second chances third chances or fourth chances? Angela: Do I believe in them, as in believe in granting them to another human being? Or do I believe in them for myself ? Or for other people to grant me? It’s interesting because I’m thinking about it immediately in the context of people giving them to me. It could be interpreted as a second chance at doing something with your life, like, a second chance at writing a book or a third chance at being a father. My gut answer is yes, but that comes primarily from a place of looking at myself. People gave me a chance. When I quit drinking I made a lot of amends to people about my behavior. They gave our relationship a second chance. I’m open to the belief that people are capable of

evolving, and in many ways, not just in the context of relationships. I think people can evolve their actions and their perceptions. Isaac: What would you say is the best part and the worst part about Brooklyn? Angela: The best part is it’s not Manhattan. It has more of a neighborhood, nature-y, and residential feel. I think Prospect Park is one of the best things about Brooklyn. It has the botanical garden and the Brooklyn Museum right there. I like the architecture. You can travel neighborhood to neighborhood and get different food and a different feel. It’s not nearly as high octane as Manhattan. Worst thing . . . sometimes traveling within Brooklyn can be very frustrating. Isaac: The G train doesn’t quite get it done? Angela: The G train does not quite get it done. Going to Williamsburg from pretty much anywhere is annoying. I find myself just taking Ubers or Lyfts in those kinds of situations. Going to deep Bushwick for example. Bushwick is so large. When I first lived in Brooklyn so many people moved to the Montrose and the Morgan stops; they were the cool stops. Now, so many people live seven stops past that. When I reference deep Bushwick, I mean the J train, way out. Another thing is, it’s expensive. You’re getting less space for your money. The rents in Brooklyn are always rapidly evolving.

Isaac: Did you ever live in Manhattan? Angela: I lived in Manhattan for six months when I first moved to New York. I lived in the East Village. It was quite a setup. I lived with my boyfriend, who was also from Michigan, in a two bedroom. Our room was approximately the size of a full-size mattress. No window. We built a loft over the bed. The other bedroom had a bunk bed and was shared by two guys who were both getting their PhDs in philosophy. They had a window. The summer was excruciating in that windowless room. We didn’t have a living room. We had a small kitchen and an oddly luxurious bathroom. It was large. Isaac: Best room in the house! Angela: It really was the best room. It was on Ninth Street, such a great location. I think we each paid five hundred dollars for rent. It was between two thousand and two thousand and twenty-five for a tiny two bedroom, and that was in 2005. So, I can’t even imagine what the rent is there now. It was kind of a shit hole, but a great location. I lived there six months and then I moved to Brooklyn. Isaac: Do you ever find yourself writing in your sleep, or when you’re coming out of sleep? Angela: Rarely in my nightly sleep, just during naps. I’ve had this experience where I’m in that state of falling asleep, or after a nap coming out of sleep, where I start writing poems. I’ve thought of lines and then jumped up and started writing them down right away. You will

forget it if you don’t write it down. I think our subconscious is working those things out, especially if you’re very actively thinking about them right before you fall asleep. I’ve found clarity in poems that way. I wish I could use it as a regular method! Isaac: I’ve got a silly question. What’s your favorite color? Angela: Is there a reason anyone has a favorite color? I don’t think it comes from a place of logic or choice. I think it certainly is an emotional response. I like blue. I think for many years I told people my favorite color was black. I went along with my identity at the time, the box I put myself in. I think I’ve always liked blue. I write a lot about water. Psychologists and neurobiologists say blue is a calming color.

interesting. That’s what we’re craving as humans; we all want meaning. We want to be told why things in our lives are happening. Alex: On that same note, what would you say about the power that words have in terms of divination? Can they be portals into another state of mind? I feel like poetry can sometimes touch the realm of spells. Angela: I don’t think I’ve ever thought of my writing in that sense. I know in some religions, you can’t even write out the full word that means God, it’s too powerful. That tradition in language - the magical qualities - that’s a very alluring concept. Also, I think it makes sense. Language is one of the most basic foundations for human communication, so it makes sense that a very long time ago it adopted mystical qualities.

Alex: When’s your birthday? Alex: Poetry is very sharp and precise. Angela: July 12th, I’m a Cancer, which is a water sign. When I was young I was very into the occult and astrology. I remember reading Helter Skelter in the seventh grade and just hanging out in that section the library. I was very much into being a water sign and reading about what that meant. Isaac: Do you still think about that? Angela: Yes and no. The symbology lends itself to poetry, and to creativity and the imagination. I don’t necessarily think of it in a spiritual way, but in a secular way it’s very valuable for the imagination. I love Tarot. Tarot is also a means of self-examination and self-analysis that can be used in a pragmatic way, not necessarily as a divinatory tool. I find horoscopes 88

Angela: I think every word holds a lot more weight to it. The musicality is important, how it sounds when you read it. I used to often read poems aloud to myself over and over again, almost as a mantra, just to hear how they sound.

Industry City. Julia Knobloch I took my bike to die in Industry City today. It was the first bike I bought in New York, I bought it used in the East Village, an overpriced vintage Peugeot frame. Over the years I spent more than 1000 dollars to maintain it because soon after I bought it, it needed repairs and kept needing them. Now I had let it sit in the yard for too long, the tires first flat then porous, the rubber grips viscous, the saddle fissured, the chain rusted, snow falling and melting on it, a nuisance in disrepair to my neighbors and landlords. The bike took me all over Manhattan in those first years, to Inwood along the river, through giddy summer nights on the Lower East Side, winter storms on Columbus Circle, up 1st Avenue, where I was doored twice, once by a police officer who begged me not to report him but then didn’t call in the evening to hear how I was doing. The job on 1st Avenue was the first of three jobs where I was bullied, my old pre-immigration self is still confused why this kept happening. The bike took me from Manhattan to Brooklyn when I moved there for more space and less rent before everyone, including you, was moving back in the other direction. I loved the bike like other people love their pets, like I had loved my car -- a Renault, come to think of it -- my companion who waited for me at whatever lamppost I left it. In the picture I took of it in the middle of the Manhattan Bridge I can almost see it smile. There is something about bike rides, these moments out of time, a common theme in movies, you know, you studied these things, narrative. Sometimes I imagined how we would ride together along the bay down to Coney Island, I owned two functioning bikes for a while, and when you said you didn’t know how to ride a bike, I thought how fun it would be to show you how, I imagined how you would laugh like I imagined what you would look like when you swim. I don’t know if you know how to swim but there are several reasons why I think you know, one being that parents are commanded to teach their children how to swim, and even though you said that your dad thanked G-d for no longer being responsible for you when you turned thirteen, I’m sure your parents made sure that you wouldn’t drown. We never rode together along the bay down to Coney Island, and the bike started rusting away, everything, the basket, the bell, the frame, not just the chain, and I was unable to do anything against it or with it or about it. I was incapable of leaving it at a random corner or putting it out on a Monday or Thursday night and waking up hearing the garbage truck, but finally today, a few days before the summer solstice and just hours before flying to Europe for my father’s birthday, I took it to Industry City, after all it is a Peugeot bike, and maybe Industry City is where hipster bikes, even in a state of despair, want to go when they die. Frankly I also chose Industry City because it reminds me of you, it reminds me of the 1970s movie we saw together, the one with the car chase through quite different looking blocks between 3rd Avenue, and 2nd Avenue, and the piers. I forget the name of the movie but it was one of our better movie nights, not as good as the one when we saw the preview of that Victorian horror drama, I don’t think it ever made it to the real screen, an abandoned work of unsuccessful narrative, but the memory of the complicity of that night still brings me pleasure, and I wish it does to you, too, although I don’t know if you remember; then again, knowing you, I believe you remem96

ber everything, definitely the names of movies. Industry City is also the place where we had one of our first bad nights, in that gallery I assume you’re still frequenting because you always seemed more into art than into poetry. You had begun dragging me to readings in art galleries but ignored me once we got there, flirting with women whom you called friends, potential clients, saying that if I couldn’t bear to watch you network why did I come with you in the first place and in fact, why didn’t I just leave, I clearly wasn’t enjoying myself, you wouldn’t be too long, and I walked the few blocks back home, convincing myself I was giving you space. You came hours later, your hair smelling of bonfire and alien fragrances, your breath of liquor. It was time to let you go but I think I mentioned that I was doored twice and bullied three times; I think there is a connection between these things, and then you left, and I watched the snow fall and melt on the bike for almost two years until today. At first, I imagined leaving the bike at the entrance to that gallery, but then I didn’t remember what side street and what warehouse entrance, and I didn’t want to look up the address for a piece of performance art that only I would see. I left the bike leaning against a scaffolding on 2nd Avenue and 35th Street, I padded the saddle and said thank you for your kindness in the extraction of this, wishing you well, happy strong sun strawberry moon solstice and walked away past the coffee lab, the wine store, and the pickle shack, in the ever-increasing June light.

Dispatch from Buenos Aires: Sur/South Julia Knobloch Barracas. Santa María de los Buenos Ayres, the winds are not fair! They hiss and creep around your blocks and squares, blow dirt into your apartments, tear your hair, lift your skirt, unveil, expose you! Posters clatter in the cold sun of May, splendor of the southern hemisphere. Don’t trust a place where north is west and the moon has no face. The winds, the airline, the light, the pizza, the meat — austral! The currency — austral, sailing, swirling, scintillating at demonstrations, pickets, sit-ins, Argentina, Argentina! Freedom, freedom! Scream, Santa María de los Buenos Ayres, on Brandsen, on San Juan, scream — against these southern winds, against this vermouth frenzy, at the buzzer, scream! On Belgrano, scream, on Rivadavia, on Entre Ríos, scream, the intercom may be broken! Hello, hello, it’s me, Mary, it’s me! The holy trinity has long cashed in! It’s May Day! May Day! It’s every man now for himself!

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In early February, when the sun was still setting early, Adrian and I went to visit Julia

Knobloch, in Sunset Park, which isn’t to be confused with Greenwood Heights. “That’s how the neighborhood was advertised when I first saw it on Craigslist, ‘Greenwood Heights.’ I think it sounds more appealing to certain clientele, rather than ‘Sunset Park.’ Personally, I love Sunset Park; I think it sounds so much better.”

Although Knobloch’s place is filled with warm colors: crimsons, golds, maroons, and

the like, it felt fitting that we’d drop by during the winter; when things slow down, and the days are short. “There’s something about the cold, and how it gives you the opportunity to be inside of yourself, and focus on things.”

What’s a poem beyond a meditation, a contemplation of circumstances and emotions

explored through language, forms, and sounds. And for Knobloch, there’s no better time, for thinking. “Because everything is standing still, it gives me more time to contemplate things. Time is just longer when it’s cold.”

That afternoon she touched on her time and work as a TV documentary filmmaker in

Berlin; as a reporter for a German radio station while living in Buenos Aires; her frequent visits to Lisbon, walking around and allowing herself to drift into as many haphazard situations as possible; and the ski trips that her family would take to the Alps when she was younger, several memories from which appear within the poems that make up her debut forthcoming collection, Do Not Return (Broadstone Books 2019). “I write a lot about the Alps. I have a few poems where I write about how much I love them, and how I miss them.”

And before we left, she told us about an afternoon not that long ago, when she was

walking through Soho, and didn’t just realize, but actually felt the loss of a BP gas station, which had been replaced by 300 Lafayette, an eighty thousand square foot office and retail space in Soho, which is set to open later this year. She told us how the change reminded her of a poem that she’s in the process of writing, the working title of which is “Almost”: “There’s an intense feeling of loss that I have, and there’s quite some sadness, and I’m trying to replace it, or to at least replace the feeling with good friendships; with writing; and with trying to be kind and connecting to people.”

When I asked whether poetry made a difference, in dealing with the sense of loss that

she described, she spoke honestly, and was forthright. “In a lot of my poems, I’m creating feelings or views; landscapes that were lost. A lot of the poetry that I’ve been writing recently is geared toward recreating memories and feelings and thoughts of people who were important to me.” - Isaac Myers III

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PHOTOGRAPHY - ADRIAN MOENS.

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Isaac: How long have you lived in this place?

felt like a movie scene.

Julia: Since October 2012, so about six and a half years.

Isaac: You mentioned that you first visited New York in 2009; did the city feel any different to you back then than it does now?

Isaac: That’s a while! Julia: It’s definitely the biggest chunk of my time in New York. I came here in April 2010. Then, I lived in Manhattan, and in different places. In the East Village, Chelsea, Washington Heights. And I moved to Park Slope for a year. And then ever since then, I’ve been here. Isaac: And you’d call this Sunset Park? Julia: Yes. It’s technically Sunset Park. But real estate people call it Greenwood Heights. Isaac: Greenwood Heights! I’ve never heard of that. Julia: You haven’t heard of that?! Isaac: When did you start hearing that? Julia: That’s how it was advertised when I first saw it on Craigslist, Greenwood Heights. I think it sounds more appealing to a certain clientele, rather than “Sunset Park.” Personally, I love Sunset Park; I think it sounds so much better. Isaac: I would agree with that. Adrian: Where do you go in the neighborhood? Julia: I like going to Sunset Park; the view of the water and the city from there is beautiful. You can see all across the bay: Governor’s Island, the Statue of Liberty, the end of Manhattan, you see everything. I remember, a few summers ago, I went for a walk in Sunset Park, when it was around dusk, and there were people waltzing and dancing, and children were playing, and there was just a twilight beauty sort of moment. It 104

Julia: I could say the obvious; the cafes and buildings and other establishments that were there, which sort of belong to old New York are gone now. That’s one thing. But I also think it feels different because my life has become different, I mostly work from nine to five, and I don’t really see a lot of the actual life of New York. I still seek it out, but I’m not immersed in it anymore. So the city has come to feel a bit more generic. For example, I went to the Angelika movie theater On Houston Street earlier this month. And I hadn’t been there in a few months. And as I was walking from the Broadway-Lafayette station toward the theater, I remembered that there used to be a gas station there. Isaac: I remember that. Julia: Right. And there’s this huge glass stone building now. Isaac: Is it open? Julia: No, it’s not open, but it’s about to be finished. And I just realized that the last time I walked there, the gas station was still there. Isaac: It really doesn’t feel like that long ago. I think it was still a gas station in 2012, or 2013. Julia: I have walked there more recent than that but hadn’t maybe noticed the construction site. Then when I walked down the next block, it was pretty much the same thing. There was a very similar building, also glass and very fancy-looking, but in a very boring way. And I remember feeling sad, because I thought, It’s the

same thing. It looks the same, and it’s like that all over the world or in a lot of places.

that belongs to an older era one day, at then the next day, it’s gone.

It doesn’t feel interesting. It’s definitely possible that people could say, “Oh, but this is an amazing development.” But I just don’t see it.

So what I mean by “Almost” is that I feel as though I was almost a part of older world, earlier times; which I would have loved to be a more integral part of, before all of the changes.

Isaac: There’s something nice about having a gas station in the middle of Manhattan. Julia: Right? I loved it! There’s one poem that I’m working on, and the working title is “Almost” Isaac: Why “Almost”? Julia: I think there’s something to this group of people, say, born between ‘68 and ‘75. We were born into a world that was basically not that much different from the 1950s or earlier. Even though there had been progress with human rights and women’s rights, and the summer of love, the mainstream society was still very much old world. Our parents had these old-time rotary phones. But at the same time, as we were growing up, we were also already part of all these new technological developments. I feel like I was always had one leg into both worlds: old enough to be familiar with the old world, but also young enough to be familiar with the new technological and societal advances as well. Isaac: That makes sense. Julia: But more specifically, I remember walking through Lisbon in the Nineties, and there were these wooden planks over the railroad tracks, for people to cross. When I went back a year later, they had been replaced by modern overpasses. I’ve had similar experiences when I stayed in Buenos Aires, and of course, having lived here in New York, where I see something

Isaac: What do you think when you see the glass buildings? Julia: That I live in a different world than I actually would like to live in. Or that so much of the inspiration that I draw from is going away. For instance, recently, I’ve been going to all these concerts of aging rock stars. Isaac: Like who? Julia: Well, I had never been to a Bob Dylan concern; so I went to his show at the Beacon Theater last fall. Last September I saw Paul Simon’s last concert in Queens –––– I grew up listening to Leonard Cohen, and I’ve been to his concerts only when he was an old man, because I was too young when he was playing cool concerts. Isaac: If we’re losing things, buildings, people, rock stars, then what are we replacing them with? Or what creates that same sort of feeling? Julia: I don’t know. I’m still looking. There’s an intense feeling of loss that I have, and there’s quite some sadness, and I’m trying to replace it, or to at least replace the feeling with good friendships; with writing; and with trying to be kind and connecting to people. But I haven’t really found anything specific; but instead, have more so been thinking: How can I not feel discouraged in the face of loss? Isaac: Does poetry make a difference? Julia: I would say so. In a lot of my poems,

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I’m recreating feelings or views; landscapes that were lost. A lot of the poetry that I’ve been writing recently is geared toward recreating memories and feelings and thoughts of people who were important to me. I hope that the work speaks to some people and helps with how they deal with the human condition: that we are here, and then we’re gone, and it just fades away and gets replaced. Isaac: By what? Julia: I don’t know! Isaac: You were talking earlier about a workshop that you’re taking with Brooklyn Poets, with Laura Eve Engel, “The Personal is Political.” At a basic level, what would you say is “political”? Or, if I was a five-year-old and I said, “Julia, what are politics? What is political?,” you would say . . . Julia: Everything that affects the way the human society is structured and governed. It’s very broad. I don’t necessarily write about women’s rights in an explicit way, but I have poems about domestic violence and I have poems about the #metoo movement and immigration. And ultimately, in-line with the workshop’s title, they are very personal. _____________________ Isaac: How has skiing influenced or affected your poetry, if at all? Julia: It comes up a lot. Skiing per se doesn’t come up, but actually, in my debut poetry collection that’s coming out in the summer, Do Not Return, there are a lot of poems that contain images from skiing, especially in the Alps. I write a lot about the Alps. I have a few poems where I write about how much I love them, and how I miss them.

Or, I have some poems about my childhood and about my family history, which are often set in snowy conditions and/or during ski vacations. I love humidity and the heat and the tropics, but I also love snow, and there’s a lot of snow in a lot of my poems. Isaac: What do you love about the snow? Julia: It softens things. It makes things quieter. It makes emotions quieter. It makes sounds quieter. And there’s certain stillness to it. A few times I’ve been to polar areas; not the arctic Arctic, but very up high in Alaska. I’ve also been to Northern Sweden, beyond the Polar Circle, and I just find a certain peace when it’s really, really cold. Isaac: What’s the coldest weather you’ve ever been in? Julia: When I was in Montreal in December 2017, and it was minus twenty-seven Fahrenheit. Isaac: My God. Julia: I was pretty cold. Isaac: What were you doing? Julia: I was walking! Getting to know Montreal. I had been wanting to go to Montreal for a long time. And also, I’m a big Leonard Cohen fan, and he’s from Montreal. So I thought, I’ll just walk through the city where he wrote some of the songs that I’ve been listening to since I was twelve. For instance, “Suzanne” I always liked the song but it was never my favorite Leonard Cohen song. Nevertheless I wanted to go see all the places mentioned in it, because I had wondered about them for many years: The river, the place “near the river,” and the “Lady of the Harbor.”

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I also really wanted to take pictures of the Saint Lawrence River, so I went there when I first arrived, although it was minus twenty-seven degrees. The sun was shining, and everything just clicked, and I felt super connected to the place and the song. Isaac: Perfect. Julia: I know. And it could have been fun if it were ninety degrees out, and I would have enjoyed it, but there’s something about the cold, and how it gives you the opportunity to be inside of yourself, and focus on things. It just feels like time slows down. And because it feels like everything is standing still, it gives me more time to contemplate things. Time is just longer when it’s cold. Isaac: There’s definitely a lot of truth to that. You hear people say all the time, Man, that was a long winter. Julia: True! Summer is way too short. Always. Isaac: Right! People always say, I can’t believe that summer is over already. Julia: It’s true. Isaac: So you’ve lived in Buenos Aires? Julia: Yes. Isaac: Germany? Julia: Yes. Isaac: New York. Where else? Julia: In Suresnes, which is a suburb of Paris. Isaac: Okay. Julia: And . . . well, I’ve never really lived in Lisbon, in the sense that I had moved there. But I have visited there many, many times for several months in a row. So I would add Lisbon to the list as well. I’ve been there well 108

over twenty times in my life. Isaac: How do you spend your time in Lisbon, when you visit? Julia: Similar to what I always do in new places that gradually become my home: I walk around; I let myself drift into as many haphazard situations as possible. While I don’t shun touristic sites, I don’t go directly to them. I hope the city eventually leads me to them organically. I like to immerse myself in the everyday. In Lisbon specifically, I became friends with someone who now has been my friend for almost twenty-five years. We are like sisters. Through her I met a lot of locals and became friends with them, too. And I made other friends independently. I didn’t do anything specific while I was there. I just lived there and soaked up the atmosphere, and the light. I also went to the beach a lot. Isaac: What do you think about when you think of Argentina? Julia: Utter chaos. But also nostalgia. Failures, maybe. And adventures, but also, just warmth, as well as a certain melancholy. Isaac: What were you doing while you were there? Julia: I was mostly working as a freelance radio reporter for German radio. I also wrote for one of the Buenos Aires-based newspapers for a while, mostly about travel. Overall, the decision to move to Buenos

Aires was based on way more research and knowledge than I had when I decided to move to New York. I had visited and worked in Buenos Aires several times before I moved there. So I already had friends there. However, I didn’t have any friends in New York when I moved here.

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Isaac: Where were you born in Germany? Julia: In a place called Mainz. It’s on the river Rhine. It’s a small city, and the capital city of Rheinland Pfalz. Isaac: Do your parents still live there? Julia: No, they are not from there, they just happened to live there for a couple years, and I just happened to be born there. I was only there the first two years of my life, and then my father got another job in a place near the Dutch border when my brother was born. After that we moved to Worms, which is an hour away for a Mainz. So we moved back to the Rhineland, and there I spent my childhood from four to twelve. And then we moved to a place in Westphalia. Then I moved to Heidelberg, where I did my masters degree. And then I moved to Berlin. Isaac: What was your masters in? Julia: Romance Languages and Philosophy. Isaac: What did you do in Berlin? Julia: I worked as a TV documentary filmmaker. I started out doing small news pieces for Reuters. Then eventually I started working for this other production company who was focusing on documentaries; expeditions . . . a lot of deep sea excursions, for instance, at one point we were filming a team that was looking for sunken ships. Isaac: Wow! Julia: Exactly. That was pretty interesting. So for all of my professional life in Germany, I always lived in Berlin. And if I ever were to go back to Germany –––– which I don’t plan on doing right now, but who knows –––– I would go to Berlin. 110

Isaac: Then from there, you started going to Buenos Aires? Julia: Right. So when I went to Buenos Aires, I left from Berlin. Also, in between high school and starting college, I lived in Paris for a year as an au pair, as I mentioned earlier. And Lisbon, all throughout, I was always visiting Lisbon. _____________________ Isaac: How did you decide that you wanted to write poetry? Julia: I don’t think I really decided it. I used to fancy myself to be a short story writer. I wrote a few short stories or flash fiction, but I didn’t really like them, but I ended up with pieces that felt like poems. Eventually I thought, Well, I’ve always been more interested in describing a particular moment than in telling a story. Also, when I was working as a documentary filmmaker, I was always very interested in lingering on certain feelings, in order to convey the feeling of a certain moment. These were usually the things and the moments that the editors at the big broadcasting companies would cut out. Isaac: That’s the best part! Julia: That’s the best part! Exactly! That’s one of the reasons why I’m no longer working in that field. I wasn’t very good at delivering to them what they wanted, mostly because my heart wasn’t in it. Eventually I started writing poems here and there, and sometimes I would think that I had something, but I never thought that I would write seriously, or publish a book of poems. Then, at some point, there was just too much going on in my life, and I felt like I needed a creative outlet. And I didn’t have one anymore, because I was no longer

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working as a filmmaker. So I just kept writing poems, but I didn’t really think about it. Then at one point I had a stack of maybe ten poems, and I signed up for a poetry workshop at the Taos summer writers conference in New Mexico, in 2014, and it just opened up something for me, and I’ve been writing poetry ever since. Then in 2016, someone whom I had once been very much in love with ––– the brother of my Lisbon sister ––– died in a motorcycle accident. Then a couple months later, someone here in New York broke my heart in the most callous way. Later I had a fallout with a friend, and then Leonard Cohen died. There were just so many devastating things that happened in 2016. So I wrote, a lot. A lot, a lot, a lot. Isaac: What does it mean to you for poet to find her voice? Julia: I think it’s when you you’re not inhibited anymore. When you don’t really think about, what will other people think or say about this. It’s when what you’re writing feels true, and you have a deep knowledge about yourself. And even if you’re not fully aware of it, once you write it, and you see it, you can say, Wait, this comes from something very deep, and it’s very true to what I feel.

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“I’m learning that home for me is my work. That’s where home is. I can construct a home through the work that I’m making. And if I don’t, then I won’t have the home. And the only way to actually have it is to do it.” - Reginald Eldridge Jr.

“Symbology lends itself to poetry, and to creativity and the imagination. Tarot is also a means of self-examination and self-analysis that can be used in a pragmatic way, not necessarily as a divinatory tool. That’s what we’re craving as humans; we all want meaning. We want to be told why things in our lives are happening.”

- Angela Sundstrom

“Winter softens things. It makes things quieter. It makes emotions quieter. It makes sounds quieter. And there’s certain stillness to it. Also, there’s something about the cold, and how it gives you the opportunity to be inside of yourself, and focus on things.”

- Julia Knobloch

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