Net Work

A new videopoem. I’m grateful to Marc Neys for composing the original soundtrack (in response to a draft form of the video).

The poem is presented as text-on-screen, in a kind of call-and-response fashion, and was inspired by the footage, which I shot on my aging iPhone this summer. So I hesitate to extract it from that context, but here it is nevertheless for the benefit of those with impaired vision:

Net Work

for Rachel

It is still light where I sit
reading the lines you are touch-
typing in the dark.

The planet’s curves
are always coming between us
her ceaseless spinning
her magnetic field
her core of molten rock.

But it’s the state that says stop
behind arbitrary lines
the border force that says stand still
for security screening
and if you’re poor, stay out.

The earth is always knitting
us together. Her forces
are centripetal and convergent.
Even now she works to mend
each fraying thread.