re-sampler_08
did i already
say magmic || even
the empty alive
with the charged
oxygen || a creased
cloud || the space
electric || friction
making all the
sky's lightning
that jealous
green || leafed
queendom || all
i want now || small
wonderfield just
glitzed to ignit-
ion || but beyond
the there of it
there's the you
and your who || a
matted film incan-
descent into
dark || i didn't
tell you how i
felt when i saw
the under cut
of that bridge you
built that hug
from || an embrace
a sun a solstice
in the warmth
of shared now
and here and blue
above || and i'm
thinking of up and
how your scrapped
rungs cling steady
hold firm || i feel
an insectual whir
when i let my
eyes go || could you
hold my hands
any better than
this || what a
question
re-sampler_04
empty it to the
brim in other
words filled-full
the way it makes
me feel the way you
found feeling
your mindeye casting
a vision a shadow
the tracing paper's
back-lit outline
something within some-
thing well can it ever
be anything opener than
when we catch
a glimpse through
the doorframe can't
ever knowknow but
sure do like those
hinted burrs being
with in the motion
how to flex a lip
to show teeth in
the best way unimagined
how you skim and
loom the mish a pressure
system moving through
bits mashed tight
but room for chest
to rise rise then
return bodybellows
bellowing hear this
breath in the ear of
all those that came
and still might from
a clouded place we
know we need and
ask to enter leave
our shoes piled
to feel the room's
warp beneath our
socksoles ... a
whisper whispered
enfleshed and
yearning yes
yearning out out
now out at whatever
pace you can muster
re-sampler_06
shimmered slap of
hues and highlights
against then through
the frame unpausing
the it becoming after
a hazed filter caught
in the space between
eye and imprint
all the trees in
us their leaves al-
most touching swift
pollen plus petaldew
misting thus meaning
in other words
before i'm done
seeing i'm seeing
again and then
well again again
the fibered edges
the pull of one edge
to the next
i find the slivers
sharp and binding
doesn't take much
to give depth
to the blank
behind something
right about
the waste of waste
filling with waste
to hold mirrored visions
up to the light
for tender living
glow now ablaze
cool heatwave
re-sampler_02
how does the water
feel in the root
the sky in the lung
an inner boulder
in the boulder
do you paint your
own nails a tangent
line the point
of meeting the hands
held you know where
each bit began
and i wonder if scale
can transfer look there
how the edge bleeds
the memory and reference
held off the page
somewhere in you what's
small somehow even
louder the dimpled
paint recalling sponge
i want to say view-
master and for it
to be magmic to
return you to early
hues if you press there
your fingers you can
feel what can't be
seen not touched and
your vision invitation
the wonder what new
orientation the scraps
of the scraps bloom
every glitch a gift
re-see cut as multiply
as open as sunhug
sampler + re-sampler is a co-dive into ecstatic ekphrasis, less interested in description or captioning, instead edging toward collaged text written in celebration of image, memory, and deep friendship. it is the [ongoing] result of a collaboration that began [unknowingly] with the re-publication of maryhope|whitehead|lee’s book Nuclear Waste [F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS, 2019] as a zine in the early months of 2021. given the dimensions we used for the re-formatted zine version, we needed to trim a slim bit of blank space at the bottom of the folded pages. the result: a 5.5”x1.5” booklet that we began to think of as the “waste” of Nuclear Waste.
later, maryhope filled one of these [non-]waste booklets with collages using scraps found on the counter in her apartment. she came to call this her “collage sampler.” ryan, wanting to see the collages in motion, then scanned the 26 spreads [can you say alphabet?!] and created a gif. hoping to further unsteady the edges of the individual pages/images, he created two more gifs with different frame rates. these he stacked, letting the kaleidoscopic flux serve as an optic bath. over the next several months, he began writing slim vertical poems while letting his vision blur into the gifs, his mind on maryhope. these texts were an experiment in perpendicular conversation, letting the stacked and shifting images of maryhope’s sampler inform the generation of ryan’s series of re-samplers. in the continued sprawl of the pandemic, these cross-media translations and transcreations were another small way to “be” together.
at the heart of sampler + re-sampler is an interest in proximity and association. the ways collage can hold [and create!] space for disparate elements to rub up against each other. something about friction, tectonics, dialog. how this act of accretion is both a curation and an artifact of our curiosity. the question, then: when this physical, hand-cut, gathering is digitized and set whirring, what new edges emerge? to write within and toward that blur is to inhabit a space of bent mirrorings, caught between meaning and memory. to see an ecstasy in motion and then to reflect it, refracting the warmth of recognition. i see you and know that i, too, am seen. in the flux of this ongoing iteration, sampler + re-sampler aims to document a prismatic interaction between two friends and their chosen media. a small glimmer in the midst of our turbulence.
maryhope|whitehead|lee lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Her work has appeared in Kolaj Magazine, Harpy Hybrid Review #3, Superstition Review Issue 26, and on the cover of decomp journal #4. Work she completed with Kolaj Institute during a virtual artist residency on Politics in Collage was exhibited at Raíz Gallery in Phoenix, AZ. She is a collagist, poet, zinester, bookmaker, and an active member of the Cardboard House Press Cartonera Collective.
Ryan Greene is a translator, book-farmer, and poet from Phoenix, Arizona. He's a co-conspirator at F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS and a housemate at no.good.home. Like Collier, the ground he stands on is not his ground.