Yellow Tomatoes is a spoken-word poem from Caballero's book mid-life, which explores the grueling intersection of birth and death that occurs when parents decline, children appear, and marriages settle.
___
I once thought I could know
anything.
The death knowledge of the Buddha,
the clarifying call of Gabriel—
former lives and myriad moons
that enthrall worlds braver than mine.
I, too, never doubted my time supply:
to be the daughter of a dying father
who buries without the blow
of love regret.
But my father is dying an excessive death
with a wounded body that aligns
rare moments of life
to the faint efforts of his mind.
I do.
I offer my happy baby’s dance,
ask about our mayor and the bad president,
so, together, we can wave our related heads
with a laugh.
I bring foods he likes to eat—
chocolate, sugar-free.
A bag of sweet yellow tomatoes that falls
when his good hand forgets
to grab.
And when he insists on phoning my mother,
makes a promise to not speak drink,
I dial.
I do. I dance.
Far from the Buddha knowledge of the giving death,
deaf to the recurring chant of Gabriel.
Books by my bed and worlds of grace
that I grasp,
but lack the good hand
with which to grab.
A conversation between the digital and the physical and 2023 Crypto Art Award Shortlist, The Lumen Prize.
“The poem-object is a composition that aims to combine resources from poetry and the visual arts, and to contemplate their capacity for mutual exaltation.”
— André Breton
Poème Objkt is a conversation between poetry and the visual arts brought to life through the liminal play of the physical and the digital. As contemporary expressions of Breton’s poem-object, the pieces in this exhibition present works of poetry, experimental writing and literature on the blockchain that enhance, reinvent and reimagine the relationship between the text and the image, the analog and the digital, ultimately opening up a space for dialogue that blurs and challenges the lines that divide.
This co-curation with L'Avant Galerie Vossen and theVERSEverse in Paris materializes in two parts:
Part 1 opened in October 2022. L’Avant Galerie Vossen and theVERSEverse curated the works of Sasha Stiles, Ross Goodwin, Ana María Caballero, aurèce vettier, Campbell McGrath, Robness, Kalen Iwamoto, Julien Silvano, Jason Sholl, and Saul Steinberg.
This first exhibition’s curatorial framework falls along the following lines:
GENERATIVE LITERATURE
POEM = WORK OF ART
CONCRETE POETRY
CONCEPTUAL
Part 2 takes place May 2023 at Librairie Métamorphoses in Paris, with a section of the exhibition taking place at L’Avant Galerie Vossen.
___
Image:
Exhibition view © Photo: Jean-Louis Losi