Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance Round 16, Special Edition: TEXT
In March 2020 when we went on lockdown due to the pandemic, the Shoebox Arts team created “Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance” as a way to stay connected and to check in with and support each other. We are just finishing up Round 14 and have enjoyed the process, experiences and friendships that we have made. The project draws on the tradition of Jazz and Exquisite Corpse as a way for the artists to ping pong creatively off of each other.
Cover image by Jody Zellen
Pradnya Kapshikar and Shloka Shankar
Aishwarya Vedula and Nino Khundadze
Kristine Schomaker and Sheli Silverio
Joas Nebe and Karen Hochman Brown
Sue Jenkins and Monica Marks
Faina Kumpan and Vince Alanib
Reksi Muhammad Sidik and Julie O’Sullivan
Laura Henneforth and Ashley Hester
Rebecca Bennett Duke and Leo Francisco
Morgan Grimes and Kamelyta
Sergey Dobrynov and Pascha Goodwin
Ruby Vartan and Anne M Bray
Megan Geckler and Maddie Maser
April Bermudez and Adrienne Cole
Eva-Marie Amaya and Stacey Moore
Sue Cutler and Regina Morales
Stacy Prihoda and Sina Evans
Susan Karhroody and Beatrice Antonie Martino
June Stoddard and Genie Davis
2 Genie Davis
What are Words…
In the face of inchoate longing?
Salient advice to
laugh love sing.
I mean those are the
important things.
But I have the right
to remain silent and sad.
I have the right to feel bad.
I have the right to not
love you.
I have the right to demand
the truth.
But ask and you might
not receive.
Hope and you may
still grieve.
What are the words,
the ones I never got to say?
They fly on the wings
of distant doves
to the rumble of thunder
like aching drums,
and they beat away,
away.
3 June Stoddard
Hope is a muscle
And mine are slack
Unused moving along a tired track
The train of my brain
Easily moves to worries to fears
Rather than being here
Habits move along tired
Easier to travel the same route
The comfortable trail
Than dream beyond it
Though my wishes are there
Waiting for me to see them
When I close my eyes and
Breathe
4 Genie davis
Soon
You know the soul
stands at the crossroads
of hope and a quarter to moon…
waiting for the rights of passage
to this world,
from this room –
Looking out the window
to the past,
in my present state
I need to stretch the focus
Between endless time and too late.
The signs are waiting,
take a road, take a seat,
draw a number,
read a moment,
weave the day
upon your loom.
Take a chance –
just make it soon.
5 June Stoddard
Lying in bed
Need my head
Sun about to rise
My wide-open eyes
This is not my room
Did I get away too soon?
Am I up to this travel?
Or will I unravel?
Mind on fire
Or is it a liar
Train in the distance
With so much insistence
Honking alarm
Then a voice of charm
Different sounds
Aboud
Not my room
But same moon
I’ll be alright
If just for one night
Open the door
I want more!
6 Genie Davis
Blue Ice
I live on the corner of fire and flame,
waiting for the ashes to rise up again.
You’ll see where I’m standing,
no shadows, no shame,
if there’s something I’m missing,
please call it by name.
I am a dancer,
on a stage of blue ice,
step lightly tomorrow,
it pays to be nice.
Feel this rapture of cold?
Still it’s this burning within me
That makes me so bold.
I’ll ask, but will not wait,
for the answers to come.
then I’ll run.
I’ll run into night.
I will let you stay waiting –
you will miss my light.
There’s only one longing,
it’s always for more,
you once said you’d take me –
I once said I’d take you –
but we’ve closed that door.
Come open a window
to the place in my heart
where a small new beginning
could get a fresh start.
Remember the moment,
be happy, alive,
there’s no reason for waiting,
no pain left to hide.
7 June stoddard
The Calling Place
Fling open the window
And fly out
To the calling place
Where you can’t hide
Down the block
Up the street
In the sky
On the beach
A beaconing cry
Reaching inside
Turning and churning
To open your heart
Into a vastness
Your mind cannot see
Turn off the news
If just for a moment
Take a dip in the ocean
Dive deep and clear
Burdens washed off
You are still here.
8 Genie Davis
Pass
And the earth rested,
because we were gone,
and my words drifted away on pillows
of smoke
and time passed as it does,
when I speak to the candle I lit
to remember you –
and apologize
as we do for the past,
(we will be sending such fervent
hopes of forgiveness
to this earth but alas)
as it was your time to go
years ago,
baby inside me you never
got to know,
as we laughed together before
the facts I hate to remember
it was too late.
The fragrant wax melting by
this window etches
shadow scents across the glass.
I can write words with my
fingers that equally will not last.
All things pass.
Love you thought you’d keep
forever, death because you
die only to this life
smoke and embers
fire and ash
sky beyond this window
this world
our path.
See our shadows, drifting past?
And the earth rested.
Peace at last.
9 June Stoddard
“Take it out” you wrote
those last words weigh on me
I never got to apologize
For the hope doctors gave
That I latched onto
You were Superman
The one who would live on.
The costy last week of life
No one knows how to speak
Of death
How to let go
We will never die, right?
The love becomes part of you
You merge as one
Then half of you is gone
An earlier self surfaces
From before
Rootless.
10 Genie Davis
Journeys
Like the ocean with her waves,
the ache to be saved
the road well paved
with good intentions,
from the cradle to the grave
it’s the queen, the king,
the knave –
dusty fragments that is all,
and the bones.
But I choose to make a home,
let my feet weigh down
like stones,
we choose our journeys.
Once I drove so many miles of road,
loving every stop, every sight
every memory –
that no one remembers
except for me.
Does it matter anyway,
these tendril wisps of day,
it is all so fleeting.
If we pass each other hence,
leaving notes hung on a fence
what will we say as greeting?
On we go, travelers alone
every minute every word
every second that I heard –
onward onward onward
on we go.
Until we reach the end
when nothing can be said
road closed – no retreating.
Write it down you’ll forget,
no cheating.
That’s the test
memorize the map —
Your heart’s still beating
11 June Stoddard
A red ripe strawberry yesterday
Today is gone, a pothos leaf upon the ground
A breeze, wind chimes stir, bell whirs
Fountain bubbles next to me thinking of longevity
Decades within this home
We created together
Now I am alone
So much space I’ve filled
With memories and potential selves
Piles of desired unread books
Closet bursting with color
Spider webs swiffered away yesterday
Malaise weighing the brightness down
Years of masking, laws struck down
Would my IVF daughters exist?
If the righteous had their way?
My mind cannot go back to
White gloves at the women’s club
Poise class to learn to move with grace and subservience
Men’s eyes, words, and hands upon me
As if my body weren’t my own
This is not the world I
Voted, marched, protested, organized for and changed!
Does my voice no longer matter?
How will my daughters fare?
This world turned us-under.
Who ate the strawberry?
Always gone before I get it.
12 Genie Davis
For Someone Who Counted Stars
I’m giving you another sky.
If there is one thing you remember,
and one I won’t forget,
it will be the moon watch at night,
the sunset clouds,
the rainbows from sun
through a prism of glass
at the top of the stairs.
Until I see you,
in a later or another life,
I will give you
one more sky.
Because we never
really said goodbye.
I can imagine you take wing
and fly.
I hope you’ll try.
Adeola Davies-Aiyeloja and Yula Tregub Morris
Darren McManus and Jody Zellen
Pau Gold and Mary Ruffato
Glynnis Reed and Lybra Olbrantz
Day 1. Glynnis Reed- Body is Blooming Alive
Alive
My body is
blooming, alive
awake
at the whim of the tide
wide eyed glances at the power
of morning
and the deepest dive
to the dropped out
bottom of midnight
rushed black
to the surface
of our center
and the boiling rot
of the Earth
Day 4. Lybra Olbrantz – How does one come to know oneself
How does one come to know oneself?
Hidden veils of spectral beauty delight, tell a story of the souls true flight.
Cyclic transformation through a web of interpretation, a monolithic lens of internal alchemical transmutation, absorbs molecular energy into ethereal evaporation. Cellular celebration, a dance, a decadence, a delight to be new every seven years. A release, a filling of the cup. Every 28 days full again, like the moon, like the goddess, like the river flows, divine feminine will always shed her womb and begin anew.
The force that makes things happen, all life comes through she, from the we, true divinity, no boundaries, what lies within transforms constantly, a multilayered entity as sacred energies. The difference between ideologies and the rhythm of the soul pounding the heartbeat of the earth into eternal song and dance: I sing, I cry and most importantly I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive!
Day 8. Lybra Olbrantz – The wild cat graces my presence -amazing!
The wild cat graces my presence -amazing!
Ratatat, split splat, lined up with the 20 posh white kids from Connecticut. They won’t let me through, they won’t let me pass but I’ll be damned if I’m not front row for the last-
Song and it goes 17 years, 17 years? Yes, 17 years, I’ve been rapping for 17 years and the hook had me hooked from the beginning of the drop, the beginning of time and I’m just a step in line and I’m flashing back to a time when I was 17 years, 17 years? Yes, 17 years old and I wouldn’t take it back. When we stole the Hot Chip poster off the walls of Terminal 5 (I swear I’ll be back). It’s autumnal, it’s no lens glasses, long brown hair, free sweaters and stolen glances, Pink Berry on the steps of the New York City Library, college hipsters, flourishing in fluorescence, it’s 80’s babies parties in the Bronxville mansions, I heard they’re worth a million and the taxi driver tells us about the stories of the famous. So here I am 20 with my high top sneakers, 2 headbands to stay ahead of the trends and all I care about at this moment is can I get ahead of these damn posh white kids from Connecticut so I can be front row when the band plays Wildcat.
Elena V. Stromberger-Harnoune and Skye Amber Sweet
