Lovejoy & Ouslander – August 2018

Erin Ouslander and Cameron Lovejoy traded art and words. Erin shared this untitled painting with Cameron:

In response, Cameron wrote this poem:

Plane Insignificance

As engines spew fumes
over building blocks & pools
I see over the wing

a stillness.

Varicose veins & the ribs of earth,
its blotches, patches, its ten thousand spines
have made way for something more silver:

cities & the cells they contain.

My macro eye watches
but senses No human in the suburbs today.
No mark, No Shadow, No mention of them.

I notice No weight

of old diaries, No cries over spilt milk,
No blood drying in the lattice of gauze,
No unmade beds, No unread books,

No candles left

to harden on carpet. I do not see
the apron of dust clinging to the blades
of a ceiling fan, Nor chips in the paint,

Nor art

hung askew on the walls. I see No
salad forks inaptly placed, No toys leftover
underfoot by a child.

I do not smell

the sewers, Nor the toast, Nor the nail polish
tang. Nor do I taste the waste
of rolled cigarettes.

All I see

is a sketch of soft
insignificance…
this view erasing every

worry they hold.

* * * * *

Cameron shared this poem with Erin:

Goodbye Boat

What looms: a deeply thoughtful somber sky,
pregnant with the final breath of dusk. Man-
atee-belly blue and the sallow tinge
of scars leftover by the pinwheel. A
blot of blood sinks in the west: fugitive
sternlight, hit and run. The death of cow — its
eyelid closing on this piece of planet.

In response, Erin made this painting, titled “Dusk Tide”: