One Dress
A Myth

When a girl is born,
layers of her soul are stripped off
and sent into the atmosphere.

The lady-shaped shadows
flutter out into tailors’ workshops
and textile factories, into

closets and shops
where garments dangle, bodiless
skins. Like dress patterns,

the cross-sections of soul
crinkle as they meet fabric, pressing
themselves into being.

There comes a time
in a girl’s life when a gown is needed.
She will be married,

or will attend a grand
dance or party. There is only one dress
for her, and it waits

for her to select it, to
occupy its fabric as muscles stretch flesh.
If she chooses the right

dress, that one dress
lined with her soul, she will know it
by her anatomy’s instant

and perfect alignment.
She will know that she has been formed
in order to fill it out.

Image Credit: Kimberly Brooks, “Janie Bryant,” Costume Designer for Mad Men, 24 x 32 in. Oil on Linen.
Kimberly Brooks is a painter and new media artist, and is represented by Taylor De Cordoba in Culver City. Her most recent exhibition, “The Stylist Project,” is a series of portraits depicting well-known stylists and trendsetters. In addition to creating visual art, Brooks is the Arts Editor for the Huffington Post, has published many essays and interviews, and gives lectures at universities and museums. To see more of her work, visit http://www.kimberlybrooks.com

Never was the land together,
cohesive, an uninterrupted mass
of soil, rock, sand, grass
all bound in a harmonious package, leather
spread-eagled in one faultless piece.
Always were places disparate.
Sky unbroken, but land split
and ponded, rivered. Water reached
out from every fissure, issuing
lacklessly. The ground’s appendages
multiplied, fresh edges
made into shores and ocean chewing
into them eagerly. In the beginning,
this wasn’t a big problem for
people. They swam well, explored
by boat. At length, the constant crossing
of distances somehow seeped
into their bodies, their cores. They’d say,
“It can’t have always been this way,”
and dream of land gathered up in a heap.

Image Credit: Luis Rendon, “Deconstruction 4.” 2″ x 1 Oil, acrylic, joint compound, MSA gel and wax on unstretched canvas.

Luis Rendon works and resides in L.A., and received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in May of 2010. His love for painting and experimentation has evolved over the years to include many different techniques and media. While at Claremont, Luis started working in the medium of plastics, and has created his own style of non-representational paintings. For more of his work, visit www.luisrendon.net.

My first time on a plane,
I look out the plexiglass
pane of the window, see
the grid of fields beneath.
The only sense I can make
of the latticed land: that here
are the United States, shaded
and flat as they are on a map.
Rosy brown, green, taupe
patches far below do resemble
cartoony illustrations of
countries, cities inserted
cleanly into regions
like toothpicks into bread.

To look at it more easily,
we strip pieces from the globe
as you would peel an orange,
press the shapes onto a table
until they are level, more
or less. To understand
a place, create a representation
of it, and then study that.
The key is repetition.
Arm wrestle your mind,
push into it the names
of oceans, of paired states
and their capitals. Land
belongs to itself, and at school,
we learn that the boundaries
are anything but arbitrary
for the ones who devise them.

Think of social studies class,
twenty students facing blank
maps, wiped clean of words
like sponged-off place mats.
How much of a mind
is set aside for learning
how to memorize, for building
shelves on which to stock
disassembled ographies and ologies.

Julika Lackner, “Air-port”, 2007, Oil on Canvas, 46″ x 46″

Julika Lackner is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. Much of her work focuses on sky, air, and
land, and explores playing with the viewer’s perspective of these elements. In her artist statement, she explains, “Painting the palpability of air is the core issue of my paintings….The night sky, the fog and clouds are the phenomena that give visual substance to the air we cannot see. For this reason, the Los Angeles landscape acts as the framework for my paintings as it is the foundation for these various phenomena.”

For more of Lackner’s work, visit her website: www.julikalackner.com

I wish
that someday
my head on her belly might be like home
like doubt to doubt resuscitation
because time is supposed to mean more than skin
She doesn’t know that I have taught my arms to close around her clocks
so they can withstand the fallout from her Autumn

She is so explosive,
volcanoes watch her and learn
terrorists want to strap her to their chests
because she is a cause worth dying for
Maybe someday
time will teach me to pick up her pieces
put her back together
and remind her to click her heels
but she doesn’t need a wizard to tell her that I was here all along

Lady
let us catch the next tornado home
let us plant cantaloupe trees in our backyard
then maybe together we will realize that we don’t like cantaloupe
and they don’t grow on trees
we can laugh about it
then we can plant things we’ve never heard of

I’ve never heard of a woman
who can make flawed look so beautiful
the way you do

The word smitten is to how I feel about you
what a kiss is to romance
so maybe my lips to yours could be the penance to this confession
because I am the only one preaching your defunct religion
sitting alone at your altar, praising you out of faith

I cannot do this hard-knock life alone
You are all the softness a rock dreams of being
the mistakes the rain makes at picnics
when Mother Nature bears witness in much better places

So yes
I will gladly take on your ocean
just to swim beneath you
so I can kiss the bends of your knees
in appreciation for the work they do
keeping your head above water

A place you can rent for cheap
about five miles out from town,
Game Land boundary
running along the ridge.

Morning or night,
something to conjure by,
like seeds after a burn:
good weed in a glass jar,
a stack of songs on the dusty floor,
a broken-in pair of boots.