*Ed.’s Note: click on image to view larger size.
The Image Devours Itself 1
Adam Thorman
If only my mouth it is that I will
turn, seaward. Glow the apple in your phone we stand cliffside. Click pictures : Blue lace borders what isn’t. Cyclone, chain, center beach caving. Unseen I in the dream you were two clenched in the street. Asleep. One body talks to your other. Cell in your hand clutches a cell you sew in me. Your shroud in the road my tidal figure hovers. From the drop-off, we watch Poseidon enter her bathing at the mouth. Foam overexposed shoulders. Cut rocks’ meaning. Cyanide twins we cord backlit rumors. Future. Future rips fabric you divide time tells us we live in our phones. Screen upside-down scene : Text need. Zoom boxed wine, Insta bleeding. Platelets speckle my wrists. Cove breathes There are many forms you argue but the problem is blame everything is real. Naked, now flower algaeic. Who isn’t dependent on what they can’t undream. I read each barnacle. Breathturn, reefburn. Bedrock, belly-up. Water freckles. Water tables, water clocks double every image forms to devour itself.
Alexandra Mattraw
Alexandra Mattraw is the author of two full length books and four chapbooks. Her recent collection, We fell into weather, emerged through Brooklyn’s Cultural Society in the first 2020 quarantine. A queer, neurodivergent curator and critic, her essays and poems have also appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as Denver Quarterly, Jacket2, The Poetry Project, Volt, and Lana Turner. Her third book, Dear Thought Climate, will be published in spring 2022 through Cultural Society, and her fourth book is in contract with Salmon Poetry for 2023: alexandramattraw.com.
Adam Thorman is an Oakland, CA-based artist, photographer, and educator. His work has been written about in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and KQED Arts, among other places. His work has been exhibited locally, including at Royal Nonesuch Gallery and Root Division; nationally, including at the Sam Lee Gallery in Los Angeles, Pictura Gallery in Bloomington, IN and the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ; and internationally with Galería 54 in Mexico City. His work is in the permanent collection of SFMOMA. He has been an artist-in residence at Baer Art Center in Iceland and Casa Lü in Mexico City: adamthorman.com.
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