Ariel & Gard – Feb.14

Julie Gard and the collagist Ariel traded art and words. Ariel shared this collage, entitled “Marcel in Malibu,” with Julie:

In response, Julie wrote this prose poem:

Homophone Highway

She snapped her fingers when the joy came, even during the years of the back brace and especially then, when she rolled her shoulder in its socket, felt the smoothness of that movement, and knew her body would last decades if not forever. As an anonymous teenager with luminous eyes that crept the other kids out, she made plans to wander the earth once of legal age and felt French provinces in her biceps, Brazilian tree trunks in her thighs. She sparked the halls of Milktown High School with a light that made teachers nervous, for they knew she could set desks on fire.

He wore culottes that practically floated, that actually did float, and what a fine-featured face. Head in the clouds and how he wanted their eyes and adventures to meet, to transcend smattered tape, to thread his fine fingers into her shining hair. How they would blend in scarves of complementary colors on bold aeroplanes; how they would use old maps to find new joints; how they would laugh as they named the whole world. They were under the same sky almost, practically in the same movie, and the distance was more than half the fun, as much as he had fun. The kid was so careful he stored parts of his face in separate boxes at night.

What poetry on the beach long after high school. They sailed over quartz sand; he reached for her hair and she grabbed his soft mitt in her crab claw, drew blood, and the clouds tipped and topped, the whole sea-set crashing in swells of water and light. She let go, god returned to a crack in the sky, and the swing band commenced. Oh dahling, she said, always reach, never touch, and the blowsy palms swayed. He held out one white glove.

* * * *

Julie shared this prose poem with Ariel:

Make Your Own Fun

My love and I celebrated Valentine’s Day by bird-calling in an echoing underpass, counting origami peace cranes in snowy pines, using the men’s restroom at the co-op, rearranging furniture at Starbuck’s, winking at a child in a star-covered snowsuit, and joy-riding through Superior, Wisconsin past collapsing turreted beauties, a life-sized plastic Packers doll on a shiny green porch, a second-floor door opening into nowhere, intricate matchsticks of handicapped accessible ramps, and brownstones smattered with sheets of tin. We parked at Red Lobster but crossed the street for Thai, sucked down coconut milk, cruised to Wrenshall, lit a hundred-year-old woodstove, peed in the snow, crawled into a cold bed, crawled out of a warm bed when the cabin owners arrived, into bed, out of bed, no room at the motel, and performed psychoanalysis on ourselves and others.

In response, Ariel made this collage, entitled “Valentine’s Day”: