THERE’S N0 TIME LEFT...
When we reflect on the prospect of a lack of time, we confront the limitations of our lives. What will happen after this encounter is unknown. We asked writers to respond to the prompt “There’s no time left.” The following is their confrontations.
Presented by MODUS
Joseph Rogers
01:00
Avi-Yona Israel
02:00
Em Jensen
04:00
Shinjini Bakshi
05:00
Michael Delgado
06:00
Morgan Nitz
08:00
Katie O’Neill
11:00
Sarah Grisham
12:00
Collin D Bryant
14:00
Kyla Irizarry
15:00
Josiah Harmar
16:00
Dennis Finocchiaro
17:00
It’s A Difficult Thing Everything is not okay And it’s alright As I walk out the door, Overheard from a group gathered On the block, the gist: A massive object will coincide with our planet shortly And under tears I ask I wonder if it’s that comet (the one I read about) Then, said by the older woman To my left What even is a comet? Mouth agape to answer I realize I’m not sure and Then what really shakes me? It’s how quiet we all are Here at the end of my block Eyeing the sky, As something shattered On the opposite end of the earth, A sentence ended. Joseph Rogers
01:00
Regular Appointment Eleven thirty-two. He isn’t here yet, but that’s probably good, because I haven’t decided which shoes to wear. I mean I’m already at the restaurant, sitting down, reading a book, napkin in lap, all the markers of someone trying too hard to look normal, but I have another pair of shoes in my bag and I still haven’t decided if I want to be tall enough to look him in the eye or not. It won’t seem evasive if I have trouble making eye contact and I’m in flats – it’s just geometry! Eleven thirty-three. Sometimes when I talk to myself I don’t realize my mouth is moving. When I was sixteen I fell asleep on my best friend’s couch and when I woke up she and her sister were laughing at me because I was crying in my sleep. Don’t even think I was having a nightmare. I can’t help but wonder if I said something crazy in my sleep and he overheard, something so crazy that even lack of consciousness couldn’t excuse. Jesus Christ, is that something everyone wonders? Eleven forty-one. I think I’m going to be sick. I’ll definitely faint. I think I’m going to have a heart attack. I think I’ll look terrible during it because my eyes are already very big and people apologize when I turn to face them so I have to explain that I just look startled all the time. I want to sit on the floor but my pants are too tight and I’ll look like a fat little curledup millipede and I assume that will make it harder to consider my points with due care. The doctors will waste time wondering about my thyroid and trying to date the scars on my wrist and when they ask me what happened during my heart attack they’ll keep me overnight because the answer is I thought I saw the person I’m here to meet. Eleven forty-seven. I can see my heart beat through my shirt in the bathroom mirror. The baby hairs on the side of my face and behind my ears are drenched with sweat and the underwire of my bra is stabbing into the soft skin under my armpits. The overhead lights are warping what was once familiar cellulite into just another glaring fault that probably somehow led us here today. More sweat drips from my brow into the corners of my eyes, where mascara and salt burn the edges of my contact lenses, as if encouraging a good ol’ ill-timed cry.
02:00
I stare blankly at my reflection for a while, smiling and frowning and looking shocked at myself with subtle differences, as I’ve done almost every day since the first time I learned that my weapon would be a mirror. A long time before I had it turned back on me. You’re a great looking girl, he shrugged. That was never the problem. Eleven fifty-three. My mouth is dry, but I don’t want to drink anything because my birth control makes me have to pee all the time. I want a cigarette but my mouth is dry. I want a joint actually. A joint and a cigarette. Two joints, a cigarette, and one Xanax, but only one. But if I go out, he might get here early and if I’m standing rather than sitting then there’s a whole new mess of problems that I just don’t have time to plan for. What will people think if we walk in together but leave separately? He used to hold the door for me, will he be insulted if I assume he won’t, will I be humiliated if I assume he will and he doesn’t? I’m still not sure I’m in the clear as far as a heart attack tonight and maybe, actually, I’ll just leave n Eleven fifty-eight. Oh. He’s here. He’s been talking since he walked in and I haven’t heard a thing he’s said because I miss the way his head smells under his hair and how his big tall body makes me feel like a little thing. I want so badly to record him, so I could listen to his voice and memorize his stories when I’m alone, when I can focus on him and I’m not trying so hard just to keep my cells from exploding. I don’t like having to choose between staring at his lips and hearing the words come out but it’s just too many exciting things at once and I never get to do either of them justice. Twelve-fifteen. Seventeen minutes of coffee and small talk. Five minutes shorter than last time. Will he sit the next time? Or will he just wave? Will I be waving back to two? Will I sit at this table as he walks by for the rest of my life, until there is no time left? If I get up from this table, where will I go? Avi-Yona Israel
03:00
Funnel Binge eating canned fish While binge watching Catfish My Comcast bill was overdue I have to wash my hair To blow out this candle To wash my pillow case A manmade concept and a child stating “I didn’t choose this candy life” We walked through the tunnel to the ocean and I yelled “Hello Down There” We almost lost my dog on the beach All my beach memories merge together to form a cloudy vacation $190.00 Overcast A smoke detector holding on by one wire I poured the oil through a funnel and yelled at my dad I poured the oil through a funnel and yelled at my dad I poured the oil through a funnel and yelled at my dad We walked through the tunnel to the ocean and I yelled “Hello Down There” Em Jensen
04:00
There’s no time left to stay alive. Shinjini Bakshi
05:00
For us, Earth didn’t shatter. Or maybe it did and we just can’t notice. But for us, and just me and you (and not the general you) There’s this understanding, I hope. But there’s a lot that’s unsaid. When I showed you anarchist feminism and “crisis pregnancy centers”, it’s because there’s so much in common. Yet, I know what you’ll face will be different. And I’m scared. But I remember these conversations. And being so proud.
06:00
March 2015 “Why do people put these up?” “Hm?” “How do they get away with this?” “On the poles.” “Yeah, they’re everywhere and it’s always the same side.” “I just want to tear them down. Or cover them up.” “Yeah.” “I thought the same thing, when I was your age.” “I decided that when we do something like that, it’s vandalism.” “Yeah.”
Michael Delgado
07:00
Inertia I liked what you said about how cartoon artists create their own physics, and I wanted to ask you if you liked video games for the same reason but I got distracted when you said you watched your mom vacuuming neurotically and I thought you said erotically. *** It was far too dark to buy more alcohol. The store owners who I bought three beers and a bottle of wine from already closed their doors tonight but I saw them see me outside. They live in this building too. The couple in front of me, they walk side by side swerving in and out of the crowd leaving behind the pattern that it makes when you hold two markers in your hand and scribble. But they always make it to the end *** I also liked the time when you used a metallic crayon as a wick and it worked until it put itself out. I liked what Eleanor said when she asked “who gets to go?” So I did ask her if she ever thought about the God Squad, and Mars, because I do want her to think I’m smart and not think of me as a drunk at a karaoke. *** I see you walking towards me at the end of the street, I think. you tried to take me a different way but we were going to the same building that we were leaving from when I fell to my knees and then to my head. I laid down right there and yelled at you for asking me to stand up. Everything is heavy and smells like iron, and the hair in my nose is so light that the air burns it. You’re a dull knife trying to cut through a ten-layer butter cake and the air around us burns slower near you, too. *** I remember holding you by the train station. It felt like you were awake but you told me you weren’t. Once you told me it was important to you that whenever you find someone they have another life besides yours.
08:00
A life besides yours. I wonder if you mean on a different wavelength or a different frequency. I wonder if you mean they would rotate around the same point opposite to you or if they would be slightly closer, passing you sometimes. *** When you die there’s nothing to tether or spring you, your back just breaks, So lady on the bus I wondered if you were dead but you just keep popping up— It was dark when I got off the bus, gray near the steps and bright yellow on them. (they looked like gold bars stacked to a pyramid leading straight up to a fountain that’s so old you could write with it like chalk.) *** The bumps on my back horrifying, red, purple, I’m pulling up my shirt and down my pants until my ankles swell and I choke, I want to choke, trim myself, my Belly fat with gas and sweat, I used to think that if I bit my cuticle off my nail would fall out. (I didn’t learn otherwise until Shane Nelson slammed the door on my finger Something snapped but it took so long for it to actually die after it turned black) I held you outside she cried quietly, I remember I would wake up, squeeze my hands into a fist, they were so weak those days. your head on my arm feels like a tourniquet so I’ll squeeze your hand make my blood circulate *** They want to see you on the side of the street They want you to puke and lay in it (Uncle Jim told me Scuttle means sink your own ship to save it from the hands of the enemy, you love it when I name drop right baby?) I’ll sit here a little longer though if that’s chill— If I could only linger in the rising action— I love exposition characters the most Everything in life comes just when you need it to I believe that, everything afterwards just takes too long
09:00
I said I liked to do it because its like when you have a backpack full of oranges and your back hurts- but you can just give some away sometimes, and that’s when you told me someone wrote about oranges something like how can you give an orange if you’ve never known one? object permanence, persistence, resistance, consistence. *** my feet look like yours while I’m sinking, my eyes open halfway and close again, echoing a claw machine after you lose. what’s left is the bottle of fizzy water I stole from the casino after I waited for you to play the slots when you asked me to but I won’t make my arm move to get it. in Russian they don’t say I couldn’t get out of bed they say my bed wouldn’t let me out. *** I dreamt about an orange with tiny slits in it that reminded me of if a bird had stepped on it with acidic feet. It still rolled like a perfect sphere just where it needed to go. you can take me to the hill and ill follow but I refuse to be humbled by heights. I’m smart enough to know i’m still the same size up here, and I know that if I wrap myself in plastic wrap the shape doesn’t change. I can do the steps by myself and I can drink this whole damn box of wine if you try to tell me not to with your eyes again. Everyone emits the same amount of energy, parabolas describe exactly what they need to describe, and so do my funny little drawings, and so do we when we want to— Show me show me show me how you do that trick I think I will dance for you if you’re mean to me (let me roll it, let me roll it to you) *** Morgan Nitz
10:00
a note, originally written in blue ink 6 / 11 / 16 .. to prepare us - to grapple at its transience. to accept that before the first day you experienced consciousness, life had already happened, and suddenly we were introduced to the subject of history as children to bare witness the lives of people who left evidence of themselves behind. there is no finite – only you. time is present in you. the last time you close your eyes will be the day your eyes will never again open. the nothingness of sleeping is death – interpreted as both inconceivable yet comforting because you have experienced it every night of your living life. know that life will keep on. your body will not. leave a piece of your soul behind in your photographs. in your writing, your work, your collection. time is a concept with no contest yet with moments of compromise. Katie O’Neill
11:00
Lovestory: I poured a gallon pitcher of water out into zero gravity. I’m glad the pitcher’s empty but thewater’s just floating up there, a rogue force now: nothing’s benign when you’re bored. It’s justliquid mass: If I could measure its weight, it would disappear. But if I could imagine it as having weight in the absence of gravity, it would be limitless, heavy. Rain is collecting in tiny holes splintering a solid concrete1 slab the space between the aggregate is what makes the pieces into Whole a foundation: equivalent to a tower: equivalent to a long hard fall from a tall place, usually out of a window, off the roof I thought once of writing our names in the smooth wet mud before it became like a rock, a sponge rock (me too) tiny open spaces bearing the weight of ancient and modern civilization without saying a word or carving a name all puzzle pieces for constructing something to hide beneath or to admire, desire: “i”, “am”, vowel, consonant, antecedent—stone! It’s okay to spit on the floor down here, the gray foundation just sucks it up and holds it til it’s ready to evaporate right back into your pores. All that I feel when you kiss me is my teeth in my tongue. If I don’t say anything, it will be fine It’s like this: you wipe the water off the mirror so I can see our reflection. You look at my flat surface face and I look at yours. I was sobbing in the shower and you said “I don’t want you to be upset.” Nothing holds water except drains and concrete 1 you may think its malleability ends once its stuck in place, but the truth is: all change is about absorbing things, and you gotta be wet so you can be dry so then you’ve got room to be wet again. I would rather feel empty than saturated because possibility is more important than actualization when it comes to how much rain you can collect in your palms.
12:00
You pantomime drinking from the cup beneath the pitcher. It’s empty but your performance says it all and we’re faceless red but cloaked up in words, pictures. You become the cloak and i fall for your shadow, all the things I can invent with it to imagine myself grand or not alone I try this: a soft reveal, the smallest twig, all the little roots that shoot out from the ends and not the thick ones that rise and twist the ground into lumps, like the tree you always park your car next to and I can’t open the passenger side door because the roots grow over the curb, cracking the sidewalk all into slanted pieces that tip, sink, rise, as you walk over them. Like a wave or a wooden board, rotating in 2 directions about a fixed point, imaginary
it’s a lightbulb. for the glow, look once for 3.5 seconds, until you can see its dust. Then look away to see the glow again. 2.2 seconds: An after image that holds all the sweet things you said to me when I thought I could … once you see the dust it’s always gonna be there. take off your glasses, then it’s all glow nothing up close, nothing too clear, nothing looks back at you Sarah Grisham
13:00
THE END!!! My hopes and dreams shattered like glass, a million pieces all at my feet. I am tired ! out of one storm and into another, life is kicking my ass! pushing my face in the dirt, then wiping it in the grass! i am trying my hardest,but it’s just not enough. I’ve decided to take my own life mamma ! cause the pain is just to much! Maybe in the next life i will win. CHEERS! here’s to the end.
Collin D Bryant
14:00
segmented worms. the trees and leaves share a loving bond. branches fall on the ground, broken and forgotten, but the pines are tall and sturdy living amongst the creatures who live inside of them. a distant place called home. the birds move swiftly between and around, throughout their brown and green habitat, one engulfs a worm. swallows it whole. eating the bare minimum. just enough to survive. a mother fly’s back to her chicks, segments of worm thrown up in to their mouths. a nutritious meal, while a nest is being built. sticks and twigs poke out, but mother bird keeps building. proceeding without caution. the chicks grow up in a home, only mother has contributed to. unobservant trees fail to notice the colors of their feathers. red, brown, yellow, and white. a ravenous chick falls out of it’s frozen nest, dies while attempting flight. mother bird wails in despair. Kyla Irizarry
15:00
Identity Crisis I had not a dollar to my name, no job, no hope for anything at all, I was a college dropout too scared to live and too scared to die. My phone died. I walked jagged patterns around city hall searching for an answer I didn’t believe I’d find. Behind me I felt the driving force of 19 years’ pain, distilled and bottled. In front of me, I believed, was nothing. I walked through crowds of people. Every conversation I overheard was about me. Every street sign, statue, flag, and building down the Benjamin Franklin parkway whispered into my ear. They said “make a choice”. I heard “kill yourself”. I walked into the art museum with a friend, my hair overgrown and wild, body unwashed, eyes rimmed with purple. I felt the infinite connectedness of existence. The eyes of a child in a black and white photograph whose father was off fighting in the Second World War urged me forward. Saturated with guilt and haunted by the truth around me, I realized there was no time left. I had a choice. Death, the psych ward, or home. Josiah Harmar
16:00
The Final Sunset The government, scientists, specialists, news programs, everyone agreed the time had come. The end was here. Many people prepared, stockpiling everything they could in their basements: batteries, flash lights, canned goods, generators, but a select few knew it was only a matter of time. Without the sun, plants would stop growing, and slowly all life would discontinue. Those few decided to honor their light giver, the life essence of their world, one last time. In this small town, a collection of people, rather than uselessly bunkering down in a basement, wanted to say goodbye to someone they never thought would abandon them, someone they took for granted, the one who gave them life every day up until this point without ever asking anything in return. Many forgot all about the importance of it, or simply complained when the weather was too hot or they forgot their sunglasses. So few really relished in how much it did for every living being on the planet. And now it would abandon them. Today the sun would set for the last time on their world. And so they gathered to worship their long-time friend, or say goodbye, or mourn its death. They met at the old soccer pitch and sat in the bleachers as if watching a match, but this time nobody would cheer. There was no time left. The sun slowly reached the horizon, and the colors were more beautiful than any spectator had ever witnessed. A cloud cluster came in from the East, but it would not ruin the absolute perfection of the very last sunset in the history of man. The sun touched the horizon, and crawled beyond their sight. A few oos and ahs rang up from the crowd as if they were witnessing fireworks. The last orange sliver peeked for one more moment, and then was gone forever. Dennis Finocchiaro
17:00
Joseph Rogers is an artist from New York who lives in occasional fear of the end of the world. He currently attends the University of the Arts as an illustration major. Avi-Yona Israel is a Penn Law alum and Ph.D. Candidate at American University in Washington, D.C. She is an avid traveler and has drunkenly cried on the phone to her mom in more than a dozen countries. Em Jensen is a video/performance artist and poet living and working in Philadelphia. Shinjini Bakshi is a 2014 graduate of Penn State Schreyer Honors College. Michael Delgado is a Philadelphia based artist who received a BFA in Sculpture from the Tyler School of Art in 2017. Using video and performance he works with the ideas of American Exceptionalism and Individualism in his works, often to challenge the ways that success is tied to them in American culture. Morgan Nitz is a Philadelphia based sculptor who will earn her BFA in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art in the spring of 2018. Working primarily with combinations of performance, installation, and writing, her stories draw inspiration from writers like Victor Pelevin, Tom Stoppard and B.J. Novak, as she experiments with humor, sensation, and abnormal narrative structure.
Katie L. O’Neill is a painter, writer, and performance artist living in Philadelphia. See more of her work at www.katieloneill.com! Sarah Grisham is a Philadelphia based artist who works with printmaking techniques and text to create multimedia installations. She has been involved in community arts projects and group exhibitions in Philadelphia and is interested in collaborative practices and alternative systems of creative organizing. Kyla Irizarry is a 19 year old illustration major from north New Jersey surbubia where there is little to do besides trying to find solice in the natural art around her. When she is not creating visual works of the people in her life and the beautifully mediocre things she loves, she enjoys writing short stories and poems about them. Dennis Finocchiaro is from the Philadelphia Area and loves to write in a multitude of genres. His website is www.denwrites.com. Josiah Harmar is a Philadelphia native currently living in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He writes, sings, and is fundamentally preoccupied with all things philosophical and spiritual.
Special Thanks To: All the writers Logan Cryer Carlye Kalmes Angelica Hue Icebox Project Space Joseph Rogers Julia Staples Li Sumpter William Wolf Vox Populi
THERE’S NO TIME LEFT JUN 09 2017 MODUS & VOX POPULI