April 27, 2023 - “Just one of those favorite sounds you mentioned” by Jordan Myers
Bonus rotations for an afternoon sorting greeting cards & drinking P.G. Tips in City Hall Park. Before the rain starts you’d arrive and sit down, adding sentence cadences to words about the way spring always finds June afternoons and July nights that we’d swim through across Brooklyn Bridge, east to west and west to east. Just one of those favorite sounds you’d mentioned: the way the 4 train sounds pulling into the station after those three a.m parties at their place before their last place not far from the library still close to Grand Army Plaza, around the corner from that coffee shop we’d always go to just before dinner at that Indian place where you’d drink two Singhas before the saag paneer and we’d always get the check before the entree, it creates better momentum, you kept saying, we can just eat, then go
April 26, 2023 - Christina Geoghegan’s Nightscapes: “Fragment”
“Fragment”
Nightscape. A portrait is revealed in the light from the street lamps through the windows. A glimpse in the dark. Confronting, one experiences the intimate moment although the shadows cast the expression and it's not directed at the viewer.
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Christina is an Irish artist based in Dublin. Her main influence is the transposing mood of time in Irish landscapes and portraits in introspective moments. She graduated with a BA from Minerva Academy, the Netherlands in 2018, completed a MA Erasmus with NCAD in 2016, and has exhibited nationally and internationally with her work sold in the US and across Europe.
April 25, 2023 - “In Farsi” by Rahil Najafabadi
IN FARSI
We say, Delam Baraye To Tang Shodeh
when we want to say we miss someone.
Meaning my heart has tightened for you.
But the word Del is a metaphor
For heart––it actually means stomach.
Maybe that is why my stomach aches,
even when I am parasite free.
I’ve been to the doctor many times
until he told me to see the therapist.
But neither of them told me to see you.
I just want a piece of this world,
to be mine, untraveled, untouched.
So I can bring you here and keep you
close to my sick heart. I curl up
like a nervous fetus in the womb.
In Farsi, I can threaten you with my blocked
arteries failing for you not being
Here with me.
In English, all I am is dramatic.
In Farsi, there is no word for dramatic.
We just say deramatic.
April 21, 2023 - “Your windshield became the rain” by Jordan Myers
In your hometown that winter we went driving at night and the headlights looked like half ovals dancing in circles against the trees that were always just around the next corner. We tried holding our breath all the way up the hill before the High-Smith bridge, but the ocean reach was too long. We could breathe all the way in, but there wasn’t enough time to breathe all the way out before the night’s swirl would descend into the highway once more. The clouds become the fog; the fog became your windshield; your windshield became the rain; the rain became the sound of the car’s tires stopping almost too late. Then the pavement became years later: then years later became a man in his sixties with his greyhound walking alongside the road at dawn, whistling the chorus from one of those songs, from one of those decades that was always on one of those radio stations that you always liked listening to, while driving at night.
April 19, 2023 - Christina Geoghegan’s Nightscapes: “In this world of ours the sparrow must live like a hawk if he is to fly”
“In this world of ours the sparrow must live like a hawk if he is to fly”
Nightscape. A portrait is revealed in the light from the street lamps through the windows. A glimpse in the dark. Confronting, one experiences the intimate moment although the shadows cast the expression and it's not directed at the viewer.
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Christina is an Irish artist based in Dublin. Her main influence is the transposing mood of time in Irish landscapes and portraits in introspective moments. She graduated with a BA from Minerva Academy, the Netherlands in 2018, completed a MA Erasmus with NCAD in 2016, and has exhibited nationally and internationally with her work sold in the US and across Europe.
April 18, 2023 - “Of Writing” by Rahil Najafabadi
OF WRITING
Of finding the color of air––It is a new place.
I see the room between everyone, not themselves,
except for when we meet. I write of you, of writing,
of knowing nature by looking, not by memory.
Maybe you are a man immortalizing me with clay,
wearing a smile that is familiar, yet new. Maybe,
you are the feeling equivalent to the waters
holding hands on the Piedmont. When I pen,
I write of many people, but mainly you. Mainly me––
as I live through the smile I give you momentarily.
I write of you, the desert, and the shade of nonexistence,
just to read myself.
April 13, 2023 - “For the first time since last September” by Jordan Myers
Fourteen minutes ago the air conditioner in the window below switched on for the first time since last September. Almost like a hiccup, the machine cleared its throat then caught its breath. Almost at once, its first roar descended into a slow and steady hum. And we at the back of the building, above the courtyard, clinging to the last few evenings of the night’s spring air blown gently into our windows, move from “what is that sound,” to “oh yeah . . . that time a year again,” just as fast.
April 12, 2023 - Christina Geoghegan’s Nightscapes: “Blind Pursuit”
“Blind Pursuit”
Nightscape. A portrait is revealed in the light from the street lamps through the windows. A glimpse in the dark. Confronting, one experiences the intimate moment although the shadows cast the expression and it's not directed at the viewer.
__________________________________________________________________________________
Christina is an Irish artist based in Dublin. Her main influence is the transposing mood of time in Irish landscapes and portraits in introspective moments. She graduated with a BA from Minerva Academy, the Netherlands in 2018, completed a MA Erasmus with NCAD in 2016, and has exhibited nationally and internationally with her work sold in the US and across Europe.
April 11, 2023 - “Rise” by Rahil Najafabadi
RISE
To V
The way the broken light spaces us––there is air
in my thoughts. Between us, only both of us keep
the tail of a love that trails back to a river.
I want to hold the hem of water as I swim to you.
Breathe this instance, the moment of us changes
day into night, not the sun or the emergence
of moonlight. Is the walk back home only temporary
goodbye, or is this now where we go? I must dream
of you, to know me, shared with you. The wave
of dance lives in layers of the river, but the truth
is in this glass of wine. Drink and drown with me,
we can leave this pool of intimate Earth and get lost
in another. The mountains that moved wanted a new home.
I came to you because I no longer needed mine.
April 7, 2023 - “I was supposed to meet you on York Street.” by Jordan Myers
I was supposed to meet you on York Street. “Get off at the Canal Street stop,” you said, “you can’t miss it.” I missed it. You said you just wanted to get a coffee and go over the details before we met with Charles and Melissa about the proposal, but all I felt was the city spinning inside of me and the feeling of June getting closer and closer still. I remember how bright the sun felt those first few spring mornings all the way back then. You had this green hoodie that you liked to bounce around in and it made me laugh because it was neon green and you wore it with dress slacks. “Casual / ” pointing to your hoodie, “/ business,” you’d say, pointing to your slacks.
April 5, 2023 - “The water waves at us and we see where all the rain went” by Elizabeth Lerman
If the ground’s wet, there’s a gator, she says, when I ask about the beach. She sits in the driver’s seat smelling like something you could eat. She likes warm, baked scents, ones with vanilla so she has sweetness seeping out of her pores. I can’t remember the last time I smelled of anything other than myself, of skin, really, of saltwater and sweat. Sweet home Alabama, she says, pointing to the state’s sign. After Daphne the land opens up, the water waves at us and we see where all the rain went, watch Mobile Bay bend and bellow with the road, calm by the time we reach the other side, but the fog is thicker than ever and we pass the battleship next to the bridge without noticing. Welcome to Mississippi. Distance is doing us good.