Turn About - Roger Raepple

photograph (double exposure)
21" x 33"
 
Every Image is a Mirror
By Mary Bast
 
As a child in the white man’s world,
my military father instructed me 
how I must pay attention to the rules: 
be an angel yet genuflect to masculinity, 
and always ascend, seek more, 
be the best, never good enough.
 
Such smoldering in my soul: 
the muted, muffled, hushed, 
but not quiescent rebel 
stepping through the mirror of my image
to the anarchist inside, who found
a world beyond the rules,
 
a universe expanding far beyond 
the black and white discriminations 
of the honchos still in charge,
toward whom our strength
can only be the majesty of tai chi:
Embrace Tiger, Return to Mountain.
 
 
Minority Weather, Part 2 
By Reinfred Dziedzorm Addo
 
Onward push of chalked feet and ours are there too. 
On a dry morning like this, sweep of wind 
makes your elbows ashed to match the shell wash of 
this plaza–the morning ushers on, making your 
feet move down the way where sunlight shafts struggle to peek 
through the avenue of trees to the floor. Live oak, Spanish moss...
they are reflected in one window while contemporary gallery 
visitors and their contemplations are reflected in another.
 
Out here I'm watching one person sitting on a bench and is joined 
by others, watching the benched one speak in etiquette greetings 
and lifting of eyes that show a familiarity with 
ivory society–how a person smiles to put 
violent creatures at ease, to humor them as they claim and occupy 
space they think their presence might turn from their idea of 
worthless to their idea of worth something. There's speech inflection 
to approximate amusement at almost every declaration coming 
from bloodthirsty lips, the playing of attentive audience at their
monologues, the oh-ing and ahh-ing to make 
them think even all these centuries later they still
hold command of the scene.
 
I feel a powdered fog and accept the temporary 
nature of its presence. The mist moves to reveal 
nonexistent shapes in the crowds, each 
mirage a meditation chant,
"This unfolding isn't what you think it's about, 
this unfolding isn't what you think it's about, 
this unfolding isn't what you think it's about, 
but then maybe it is."
The air warms up now, giving permission to homeostasis to ask 
for a balancing drink. A sip to treat my tongue to some 
nostalgia–did that sun-burned water massage the back of your 
throat and remind you of lunch break 
in the hilly tropics with Grandma? 
Eucalyptus, jacaranda...beauty was everything, beauty was sublime,
now it only rests on my shoulders when I'm struggling for a rhyme.
Sometimes, too, it rests on my shoulders when there's 
music. But lately I play dirges, I'm 26 thinking about mortality.
Lately when I play an instrument it's the posthumous soundtrack
to a childhood of refuse dump-scavenging for gourds, the kind that ballooned from plants that grew amongst garbage so I could sell
to the craftsman who used them for his xylophones.
 
The sun and breeze play their repetitive games on my skin and
this city plaza. Come, go, shade, shine. How many weathers had
to hold silent to allow for this dominant weather's 
presence? Once you said there're many particles of
dark matter that hide behind the scene 
but pave the way for the glory of matter seen. 
Still we relegate one lineage to the disclaimer 'dark’ and the
other is simply 'matter', canonized. A bird started chirping 
its morning call as I look at you and the shuffling people. It's 
not talking to me but my ears eavesdrop and warp its whistle to 
tell my brain, "It's here, it's here", over and over. Over and 
over in this season, when doing is having, when having is being.