I have chirped endlessly of Val’s artistic genius, and believe me when I tell you this is not me being kind at all. With each drawing inception by Val, I am more and more convinced that I would love a little apartment in her imaginarium. What she produces, is beyond fantastical, Val has the capacity to go from bugs, to skulls, to elegance, to gore, in a heartbeat and I SO LOVE her for it. In honour of Val’s birthday, I thought I would share some of her work, including writing, that’s right — Val is also a poet. So much talent in one human, I am so grateful to be able to call her my friend.
And I An opal woman Diffraction and mutable light All and the nothingness Of my mother and The origins before her that Sped along her prints The heirloom of threads Sewn into my confession Of birth A swinging door In proud beds Wrapping thunder around me Streaming in uncontrolled breath A mess of obsessions To flatter undeserving wonderlands In preserving motion To redress the betrayal Ieft Embedded on the wombs That carried me
There is a crafted leak that I never bother to clean And pretend its too delicate to pick up I mouth the throw of my skin And pretend that I'm not afraid To hold my own hand I follow the path at the shore of wrists Laboring in the stretch of occasion Until I can no longer Smell the familiar idea of lines Until I can no longer Forgive the generosity of arms Hands are an unusual affection Shutting into luminous caves To mimic an intimate distance To swallow a guilty space To drive the rooted joint To publish a desperate reach I bend at the pause That is measured at the depth of rebirth Combing about an echo Gathering the travels of Wounded separation and edited arrivals Counting on both hands the swivel of visits One rotation at a time Knuckles are submissive or indifferent The anchors serve to fold In the victory of tenure In the severe fever of a stainless wish In the flowery streams of shallow complexion In breath of one more day, again I repeat in grape streaking A theme that springs from My thin bouquet of tongue And is the same title that Hauls along my forearms and Crawls through printed cues The repetition destroys my palms And I wonder who is still holding my hand When I become a more interesting eulogy
CCIQ Press 