Three poems: Clear Weather, 2003, 1989 | Charles Theonia
Clear Weather
going outside doesn't
glisten I don't want
to be good nor love
he said careful we
don't like that here
and that on your block
losing control my hand
your pocket slipping follow
cloud coat upstreet via
my dream of Cedar outside
the Associated is that you!
it was and we hugged
algae in another season she
jumped were a lawn green
dog not mine to wash
living nine years at her size
how could you do it or
at most alternatively not
are raccoons growing rounder
infinitesimal tonight while
a lot in it you wait for me pondside
early magnolia fur
set in articulated snow
claw nor love control my hand
upstreet via cloud cover shifting
when I cover you kumquat
comes off leaving on foot for green
bloom algae in another
sky purples obscurely happy
for having nowhere to be
tap to hear space
inside its
indefinite vision
in our night is night forever
up to waking up
leaving on foot at one
2003
sweet and ordinary my orange
my experience of abstract war
smoke across the river
war in our name police
horse rearing everyone
into the streets
skin contact macerated
orange by morning
papers under
reported us
1989
leaflet said get out of your car
and join us what's a bridge for
get out of your car into your
will when hospitals overflow
into hallway gurneys wouldn't
it be really something if we
stop the bridge cars hold
by public force if all
the empty cars
if they release the
funds so small to ask
for really something
Elle Pérez: Water Body, 2016
Elle Pérez: Stone Bloom, 2018
Elle Pérez: gabriel, 2019
Notes on contributor
Charles Theonia is a poet from Brooklyn, where they're working to externalize interior femme landscapes. They are the author of art book Saw Palmettos, on hormones, community, and the brain-time continuum (Container, 2018), and chapbook Which One Is the Bridge (Topside Press, 2015). With ray ferreira and Abigail Lloyd, they coedit Femmescapes, a magazine of queer and trans affinities with femmeness.
Elle Pérez is an artist from the Bronx, NY who works primarily in photography. Pérez has held solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York and 47 Canal, New York. Their work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Bronx Documentary Center, among other venues. They are currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, a Critic at the Yale School of Art, and a Dean at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.