Barbo & Ponni VP — August 2026

Tamizh Ponni VP and Sarah Barbo traded art and words. Tamizh shared this image, titled “Demand,” with Sarah:

In response, Sarah wrote this poem:

Yes of course, pay your bills

Yes of course,
pay your bills.

But also: demand color,
seek out the light for your own
mystical purposes, revel in the feel
of oil pastels moving from fingertips to page,
warmed by the heartbeat inside your hand.

See how a woman in a dark apartment
sketches noodles atop a utility bill.
Oil pulls away from the broth and
floats in irregular globes across the surface,
resisting, carving its own space.

Yes, of course,
pay your bills.
But also: demand light;
keep a piece of the radiance
for yourself.

* * * * *

Sarah shared this poem with Tamizh:

Home Again

Tilt of a wing, dip of the body
And she swings under the eaves
Then up into her mud nest
In the corner of the shopping plaza
Where I take my daughter to gymnastics.

The many nights on the sky-road
started in another continent and
end here, under the eaves.
She is back.
She is home.

But what even is home to a barn swallow,
Who splits her life between breeding and feeding
And the many hours traveling between the two
Maybe she thinks I just got here, too
Maybe she thinks she never left.

Probably she doesn’t think of it at all
Busy in her tightly knit navy sweater,
Straightening the chicken feathers she found
And stitched into the nest floor last summer

In response, Tamizh made this image, titled “Parallel Mothers”: