Pigeon & Moss – February 2013

Heather Moss and Pigeon exchanged art and words. Pigeon shared this photo of his wheatpaste collage, “Romance is Back in the Venice of the North”:

In response, Heather wrote this poem:

Gliding at the Behest of Eros

Oar at the steady, you crook your little finger in a green
wool glove and think, “Never before have these

three bones belonged.” Don’t we imagine we’re born
ready? You spent years wistful for pink felt hearts

with white paper lace, for the kid who kissed you
in a rank gym closet amid kick-balls and yellow

team pinnies, the color of caution, of cowards.
All morning your vessel cracks through the corridor

of ice. Under the first bridge, a pine siskin chirrs
and jolts you from a gelid haze. You see him watching

you and try to tug the earflaps of your hat across
your frozen face, where you know rosacea blooms.

But there is nothing to hide, and all the canals
in the world have filled with lion-hearted love,

with the lovely scrollwork of gondolas delivering
the valentines you have always been due.

* * * *

Heather shared this poem with Pigeon:

Tale

A famous collector of poor elderly women, the grandfather had married no one but his own money. Pending spring, he threw his seeds and waited while a pitiable woman grew and crouched on his doormat. Even crackers pained her feeble mouth, so he fed her soft-boiled eggs dressed with mustard. He grew foxtail millet in the yard and let the young woman, Yuliya, who had never gone to school, water it in the morning while he played songs for her on his livenka. (Such desirable, lengthy bellows!) As she watered and he played, a demoiselle crane swooped in to peck the garden. The grandfather ordered Yuliya to catch the crane and demand back his stolen millet, but the delicate woman refused. When the old man began to throw last year’s dried, worthless beans at the elegant bird, Yuliya ran to the crane and suffered the stoning herself.

In response, Pigeon created this three-dimensional piece, “Rocks to Oranges”:

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