(Photo accompanying Bridget Brennan's article "America is facing a 'double pandemic,'" ABC News, Australia)
“First, let’s get one thing straight. I’ve never set foot in a war zone.” Those were the words that began my last post on this site, on May 23rd, two days before the cold-blooded killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police. At that time, I wanted to be explicit about the real limits of my knowledge in the area I have spent most...
As a girl I pictured death the way
I pictured sex, transporting and light
on details. Except he should be
mounted. Mustachioed and dashing.
Now, I hear about a woman—
an acquaintance, my age—
on a shaded path I also walk, whose heart
quit just before the lime-kiln turnoff,
—from “Footpad,” Volume 61, Issue 1 (Spring 2020)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I was in the fifth grade when I wrote a description of a gathering snowstorm. I don't know if it was any good, though I enjoyed writing it. My teacher made me read it out loud to our class, usually a mortifying experience, but somehow I found myself paying attention to the sound of the words, how they fit...
My wife said it took only one week for hydroxychloroquine to turn me into an old man. I'd been diagnosed with lupus, and it's the drug of choice used to combat that disease. But for many people it's difficult to tolerate, curiously causing problems that mirror the disorder.
On the medication, my fatigue became so great I sometimes slept fifteen to twenty hours per day; I was no longer able to walk to the corner and back, and climbing stairs became next to impossible. I worried about my eyesight (I've had two corneal transplants), because hydroxychloroquine can attack the retina and lead to blindness, unless carefully monitored. Yet no matter how much I complained, my doctor urged me to continue with the drug, because it was my only protection from lupus. Finally,...
(Demonstration in Rochester, New York, on May 30, 2020. Democrat and Chronicle.)
I sat in front of the television set three nights ago, watching replays of a video of the choking death of a hand-cuffed and pinned-down African American by a white policeman in Minneapolis earlier in the week. These were alternated with live pictures of a whole section of the city...
What did you want to be when you were young?
A writer and artist.
What inspired you to create these pieces?
Unfriend Me Now is a single-piece video installation, but there are lots of individual clowns in it. MR 's Summer 2019 issue includes stills from that piece. It’s about the fighting on Facebook around the election of Trump, specifically about people declaring that others unfriend them. I was thinking...
Front Cover by Barkley L. Hendricks
Lawdy Mama, 1969. OIL AND GOLD LEAF ON CANVAS.
Courtesy of the artist's estate, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and American Federation of Arts.
Order a copy now
