PUBLISHED IN THE TORONTO QUARTERLY
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Friday, April 26, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
#84: PAINTED PIGEON PROJECT
for Candice Lin Find a photograph of a bird far from where you live. I received a photo of a beautiful, truly extraordinary pigeon who lives near the Rialto Bridge in Venice. She has turquoise, chartreuse, and other shades of green and blue, painted with food coloring by artists. Print the photo and flutter it above your head, hold it to trees, rocks, ledges, imagining, imagining, imagining!! I painted my hand colors of the Venetian beauty, cooing when hand snuggled inside a pocket. I took notes while eating seeds offered from my pigeon hand. Pigeon hand is not a condition any more than art is a condition.
Save hair from your brush and roll it into a nice soft ball, then wash it. Insert a few seeds of flax, pumpkin, and caraway, something delicious. Pour more seeds on the ground, hair tucked in the center. Wait and watch. Soon enough a bird will carry it off to cushion their nest. Try to be patient and watch for them, to see them. Write down EXACTLY what they looked like, where they flew off to, and keep that writing on you at all times. Take it out of your pocket and read it. Read it before going off to sleep at night. DREAM of the nest by thinking about these small, feathered creatures sleeping on your hair, and touch your hair while falling off to sleep, you and the birds, sleeping and dreaming together. WAKE and write as fast as you can without thinking about dreams or peeing or eating, WAKE and write, wake and WRITE!! The notes become the poem.
