Born in 1939 in Maryland, John Fahey pioneered the use of traditional country and blues finger picking to showcase the acoustic steel string guitar as a solo instrument that could play a mix of traditional and non-traditional musical genres. He collaged ideas associated with Bartok, Charles Ives, Indian and Gamelan music, Tibetan chanting and western … Read more
The iron treadles rock and doven in the flatiron shadows, pressed air and piece work. Hungry hands move like birds. Every week the girl who makes the least gets fired. You march arm and arm with women from the factory, a banner draped across your chest and you sing. Farbende I used to call you—the … Read more
And then, hooked up to tubes and oxygen, She was screaming, catch me Joey, I’m falling! I picked her up, the heft and weight Of rabbit bones wrapped in silk, I’ve got you Rose I’ve got you. There were things I wanted to ask her, But she was calling me by her brother’s name. It … Read more
Dark Parlors Remind Me Of The Spanish Civil War Sometimes when late afternoon shadows puddle in the corners of my living room, my face whitens and black crosses appear on my eyes, and my white, gloved hands lightly finger invisible arpeggios. Dark rooms remind me of Lannie and Beauty Budd, the Spanish Civil War, and … Read more
Guelaguetza I At the stoplight of the Overland entrance To the Santa Monica Freeway going west, A woman is standing on the four-foot wide median That separates traffic, selling bags of oranges And peanuts from a shopping cart, Single stemmed crimson roses. She walks up and down, peering Over the flowers into the drivers’ windows. … Read more
History’s Middens “Fiction is history… or it is nothing. But it is also more than that; it stands on firmer ground… whereas history is based …on second hand impression.” ———Joseph Conrad * Deep in the catacombs, under the Vatican, beneath the pomp and velvet circumstance, the hearts of saints are preserved. Sybils suspended in … Read more
