dearest friend, lovely stranger,
If Action Is Required / Please feel free / to ask for me because / I will gladly cut down / armies of the undead and / remove my pancreas - and -
- love is an action, not a feeling, according to bell hooks, and I would agree. But in this poem by Cavin Bryce Gonzalez, the narrator’s voice is so strong in their willingness to sacrifice, to be there for the other at all costs - those armies of the undead cut down, the pancreas removed. Maybe there’s another note here on boundaries, and how crossing them is a thrill to unlearn. I’d definitely want you to keep your pancreas - stay in service to yourself, too. At the same time, the presence of the body in this poem, the pancreas imagined as a potent space to give from - I want to return to that later. I like how close I am to the narrator by having received their pancreas. It has a special heat. They feel like a lovely stranger to me, maybe much like you are. These are the contradictions we all live with - pleasures both simple and complex.
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
I am writing to you from the midpoint of a field of dandelions, which I will be standing in again some day. Dandelions congregate here in the evening sun, glowing vaingloriously. I say congregate, because once there is one, there will be many. In this overgrowth, you cannot separate the water from the house from the healthcare from the war from the transit from the schools from the food from the job from the prisons from the rent from the earth. 15
15 Ryan Eckes: memo for labor
[Text]
If Action Is Required / Please feel free / to ask for me because / I will gladly cut down / armies of the undead and / remove my pancreas - and -
- love is an action, not a feeling, according to bell hooks, and I would agree. But in this poem by Cavin Bryce Gonzalez, the narrator’s voice is so strong in their willingness to sacrifice, to be there for the other at all costs - those armies of the undead cut down, the pancreas removed. Maybe there’s another note here on boundaries, and how crossing them is a thrill to unlearn. I’d definitely want you to keep your pancreas - stay in service to yourself, too. At the same time, the presence of the body in this poem, the pancreas imagined as a potent space to give from - I want to return to that later. I like how close I am to the narrator by having received their pancreas. It has a special heat. They feel like a lovely stranger to me, maybe much like you are. These are the contradictions we all live with - pleasures both simple and complex.
dearest friend, lovely stranger,
I am writing to you from the midpoint of a field of dandelions, which I will be standing in again some day. Dandelions congregate here in the evening sun, glowing vaingloriously. I say congregate, because once there is one, there will be many. In this overgrowth, you cannot separate the water from the house from the healthcare from the war from the transit from the schools from the food from the job from the prisons from the rent from the earth. 15
15 Ryan Eckes: memo for labor
[Text]
