Call and Response: Collaboration at a Distance Round 17, Special Edition: TIME

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 17 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.

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April Bermudez and Shloka Shankar

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Ashley Hester and Rebecca Duke

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Beatrice Antonie Martino and Adeola Davies

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Dellis Frank and Megan Geckler

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Edith Darling and Austin Lubetkin

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A post shared by Austin Lubetkin (@bocaaust)

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Eva Montealegre and Kathryn Pitt

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Eva-Marie Amiya and April Bermudez

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Eva-Marie Amiya and Marquise Grace

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Genie Davis and Eva Montealagre

Wait

Time is mutable.
The sundial shifts between
the years in pages of old journals
I am stacking in a box.

Packed away, safely forgotten.
the great themes of my life,
children, writing, abundance.
Or lack. I see lack sifting in,

or loss, perhaps it’s loss,
long before it happened.
The possibility was there,
aching unrecognized,

floating stagnant on the air.
So many words I wrote
in so many places.
What do I see when I read them again?

I see time is inchoate,
inarticulate, as it transfers between
planets, moons, decades,
lightyears, wishes and stars.

It sifts between my fingers
like the sand on this beach,
under a grey sky, as
a sunset slips in, ever earlier.

Time is one story or the next,
the loss of a cat, a friend,
a being I loved, a feeling
so fraught that it is forgotten.

Time is loss.
Lost memories, lost pages,
lost moments, lost photographs.
Lost anger, lost joy.

I remember… you forget.
You thank me and hate me
in one breath.
Time is a spiral

circling back on itself.
It is a dazzling pinwheel
of precision and coincidence,
against a background

of green and gold light,
of pools reflecting pearly moon,
of rain ribbed by lightning,
of the red glow from

digital numbers on a
clock reminding me I’m late,
and the first glow of sunrise,
singing out, it’s too early,

you must wait!

• Genie Davis

Enter

Enter and walk through

the door, down the passage,

into the next place

time will take you.

Uranus retrograde says change.

Sorting through the old cards

you gave me, it’s clear

I meant a great deal to you.

Time moves on,

just like footsteps down a very

long hall

(you’re in it for the long haul.)

I think I was supposed to be

more grateful.

I would miss my friends,

there are people and paths

not easily replaceable.

But loss comes and goes

ebbs and flows,

doors open, doors close.

All that times teaches us

is to march on.

Standing still we are

already gone.

I’m not sure yet

where I would rather be

but we… irrevocably are free.

Enter and see.

• Genie Davis

Gone

I am most excellent

at compartmentalizing,

putting unhappiness away

like a hoarded object

to be examined later

(but I don’t),

tucked away in a drawer

I never empty,

just another forgotten

astrology reading or letter,

just another remembrance

I chose to forget.

Time does it’s best

to forget, tarnish, polish, shine,

change the vibration,

lift heaviness in any room.

Who do I keep?

What dreams to speak?

Where are the ones

I do not say? (are they gone)

I imagine things one way

and then the other,

feel trapped and then abandoned,

remember a child,

a chance, a word.

No, I haven’t heard

the next song before,

so I can’t yet sing along.

There are so many things

right,

still too many things

wrong. (escape)

Catch the luminescence

of the moon

dash the soft light

through the tomb,

carry on, carry on.

You know

(I say I don’t)

nothing is gone.

• Genie Davis

Possible

It is the impossible magic

of moon rise in a color stained sky,

that leaves me breathless

with longing –

to preserve this egg-shell-fragile

vestige of time.

Morning like a resolute

soldier stands, always at attention,

ready to hand off and

away the night,

with its whisper of stars,

and fragrance of jasmine,

and the ache of memories

repressed but not reviled.

Yes, some surely make me

smile…

The fierce blue sky,

the dance of flowers,

the unspooling heat

of highest noon –

but if it was possible

to stay the spin of the earth,

and it’s moving, moving minutes,

it would be for that wisp of moon.

Remembered, forgotten,

alone, besotted,

denied, accepted, loved, and rejected –

the weave of life’s loom.

• Genie Davis

The Sky Beyond

There is that moment,

and the sky beyond it,

when everything is right,

aligned, an image,

a feeling, emotion, motion.

Captured for always as a fragment

of what could be,

what can be. What is.

I take thousands of photographs.

But I do not need one

to remember that snapshot

flash of perfect.

Mexico – full moon, warm night

black sky, sea shimmery

and flat below,

talking for hours, that recognition

of the soul.

South Carolina

bioluminesce blue,

fireworks along the bay,

running just for the joy

of the wind and the sparks my feet made.

Holding the baby against my skin

the first time.

A candle shaped like a shell,

silver light, gold shadows, vanilla rose.

Early morning in Paris,

hot chocolate in a flowered cup,

a carousel.

Holding the hand of my child.

Stars above red rock arches,

first book published and all

those glowing reviews.

Night at the lighthouse,

writing at midnight in the desert,

alone except for the ghost

singing in my room.

The Pleiades through a telescope,

Christmas carols in the back

of a flatbed truck.

Hiking to the waterfall,

climbing down the cliff

to jade rock, car skeleton,

abalone fragments –

the triumph of it. Sunrise

a brief bright before the storm.

Halloween haunted house

happy screaming madly,

a stadium alive with

sweaty anthemic rock n’ roll,

violinist serenading in the

garden. The love I feel.

Boardwalk carnival Ferris Wheel,

and the kiss you’d steal.

Taking the kids to Las Vegas,

letting them marvel at the lights.

All those stars in Kau…

Oh, all the memories

can’t make everything right.

But for that one moment

when time held her breath,

the sky beyond

trembled, liquid,

and even life with

its inequities, vicissitudes, desires –

held its breath.

• Genie Davis

A Casting

The fragile web of time,
connects the dots and draws the lines,
weaving through the mind
precipitously.

The heat of day won’t dissipate,
melts the Sunday summer shade,
burns the past to ash,
away.

Follow the wind lifting
the ash, shaking the dust from skin,
wheat from chaff,
bake me a cloud cake

of sweetness and filling,
bitterness stirred away like some
scam you were shilling –
come clean

and brush the cobwebs away,
but weave on with the circles
that ring each of our days.
Interlocking,

concentric, desires expanding
pond ripples, sea eddies,
the splash of understanding –
certain things now

I can speak of again,
at least with love,
at least among friends.
Hold onto my heart,

and remember me well,
the webbed veil of time
drapes us each in her
spell.

• Genie Davis

These are the Stories

We will remember,

rejoice, reject.

The gift we wanted to offer

becomes regret.

Does your heart ache with longing?

To go to the arc of the moon?

To sing with the band,

like you did, like you did –

owning, for a moment, the room.

So there is light and matter,

the magic of

wave, song, shore.

Eighty-one degrees at midnight.

Antares glimmers,

a boat passes,

the anchor of our stories

keeps us safe at harbor.

But is there more?

These are the stories

I wanted

which are not the stories

I tell.

These are the reasons

I offer,

listen, hurt,

heal, heed,

devour, feed.

Just do it all well.

• Genie Davis

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Ilke Ilter and Lidia Kaku

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Jody Zellen and Kal L Cloonan

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Leo Francisco and Stacy Prihoda

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Lina Kogan and Aishwarya Vedula

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Mary Ruffatto and Pau Gold

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Monica Marks and Julie OSullivan

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Morgan Grimes and Beth Blake

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Nino Khundadze and Rita Kay

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Odarley Morton Palomes and Bea Wolert

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Pascha Goodwin and Jeannine Penn

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Rani Arora and Danai Gkougia

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Regina Morales and Madeline Maser

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Rowena Roberts and Sebastian Sinterhauf

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Sergey Dobrynov and Laura Henneforth

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Sean Michael Gettys and Victoria Martino