¡Presente! is a live show featuring Leigh Herrick playing conga and reading her poetry as Branko Gulin creates a spontaneous painting. We present five of these paintings and three of these poems, along with video selections taken from the show's five-day run in May 2008, which took place in the Chapel at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, in Minneapolis. The video is a forty-three megabyte .mp4 file and will require a high-speed connection. If you have a high-speed connection and still cannot watch the video, try installing QuickTime.
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(After the 9th Amendment in our Bill of Rights)
You with your mapled groves your edenic prairies & forested lakes your black hills your superior shores your national monuments your statues & walls tall endings & shortened trails You with your hiking boots your beard & dreadlocks your pixie cut your crew & pony-tailed expressions You with your ankle boots & key You with nothing You without repose You with your air your lucky strikes your lap-topped amusements your underbelly & your sands your many hours in the hands of sergeants & general admit tickets to paradise presumed You with balloon payments & expectations You marooned in the island of language & attitude You with no face You with a thousand ways to kill You with the sheath You with the description You with the prescriptive reign You with the terror You with the stained & the soaked You with the mouthpiece You with the rack & pinioned polls You steering clear of politics You with the open-holed arguments You with the mourning You with the grief You with the stricken parents You who remember good days & You only what remains of the bad You with your butterfly net & effects You with your petri-dished discoveries You with your bowling-balled days You with your trophies & awards your grants & your lands your scholarships your meritocratic simpatico infernoed glare in the argument of hours and emptied stares into the evening's disregard You on the mower riding You in the classroom You with the cat on your lap dreaming of jaguars & showgirls You restoring each prairie You rebuilding community You at the voting-polled gymnasium where the soft tic of one outgoing fluorescent light illuminates forgetting You outside history You with mud in your hand You of the airborne division making winged Icarusian decisions about proximity You without question You who question everything You un-responsive You lacking answer You with your elbow at the windowsill thinking departure & the yellow finch's entire aptitude You who forgot to remember & You who remember all You sitting in the imperative You shifting in the anglican chaise You on your stomach now in the desert learning the difference between practice and real You with battle pamphlets in-hand You with pamphlets on tribal insurgency read between mortars & shells & the burning flesh you'd never smelled You at your desk You at the bank You with your back against the diplomatic wall sipping cooled café You picking apples You trading stocks You wiping the film of crop dust from your sleeve You inhaling systems & beliefs You breathing heavily waging everything on hope You in the tower You in the meadow You in the lands at the bureau the agency a cross in your throat a tongue for your stand You with the impediment of thought You trained to train You of the trained You who understand the skull&bones of secrecy You in the nightmare You waiting for the nudging shove You beating your hands at your head You who crow You with your guns and slapping shores You without children You of the pencil-sharpened days You of the signatory haze You who were fired oh You who are hired oh no one to Trump your insistent ways no one to pummel you no one to strip you corner you no one to make of you the very last wall the thicket the wood fox you're without snare You who dare You on the beach You with the bullet You with the peach You who sing the rocket-emboldened blazoned ring
You who are terrified noting nothing:
This is the end of the page.
Wake now. You're free.
the order and the silence what lies beneath
the peace and the bombing
the order and the silence
the silence and the peace
the order and the bombing
what lies beneath
the bombing and the bombing
the bombing of the peace
the bombing and the silence
and the peace-bombing piece
the bit about the silence and the
bombing of the peace and the
silence and the shelling
and the selling of the bombing
the bombing of the peace
and the silence
and the shifting
and the seeking
and the knowing
the paradigmatic bombing
the bomb bombing laws
the subatomic consciousness
the bomb atomic laws
the particles and the bombing
the science of concision
the physicists of solid states
the masses and the arguments
between between
the order and the silence
and the bombing
and the piece
of matter and the matters
of opinion run amok
primordial symmetry
run amok
the 2nd BigBang gravity of
the situational comi-tragedy
the here on earth
mechanics of
the drifting of the pieces
between the peace
the bomb between the silence
the bomb between the shelling
the bomb between the shifting
and the silence and the selling
the bomb between the drifting
of the particles of peace
a bomb between the silence
a bomb between the peace
between all sound
the knowing unknown
the unknown knowing
breaking in the end
breaking with the silence
breaking in the end
breaking that the bombing
breaking that the drifting
breaking that the peace
that the silence in the end
surround all sound
that in the beginning
the silent sound
the instrument the silence
the instrument the peace
the everything
everything
everything
done
the everything
everything
yet to come
the instrument the silence
the instrument beginning
what lies beneath
the instrument instrument coming to an end the silence in beginning
the instrument instrument the silence in the end
Every bird will look the same but you
will view birds differently the sky will still
look blue on blue days gray on gray and sunk
within the fires of setting suns that you
in another time saw as simply truth
truth itself will have suddenly changed
Bird is a bird here only as long as
bird is a bird there
Arguments will fly from the feeder feathers
settle in another country: The Middle East or
South America Feed itself will become
all manner of human integrity each 5 # bag
bought in concern for trade and fairness
each green urge sprung from all of earth now
in question a matter of life and death induced
in the labs of laboring scientists all
attention bought and sold like last week's
Valentine roses preserved by Equadoran hands
American Kum ba yah in Cayambe Valley
America Kum ba yah in American boats Kum ba yah
America landing Americamerica everywhere America
Birds of the world fly up
Roots of yin know yang
Middle mind sees feathers all around
No one said this would be easy
No one made such promises
And now you understand
Sun is sun
Bird is bird
You are lit
Heaven is your mouth
your hand
Leigh Herrick is a poet, writer and collaborator who attended the November 2007 protest of the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia. Her ensuing poetry show, ¡Presente! ran in Minneapolis and is available for performance elsewhere. The ¡Presente! Audio CD (Live) and Chapbook are available for purchase. For additional information please visit her site at www.mnartists.org/Leigh_Herrick.
Branko Gulin is a multimedia artist and recipient of various awards for photography, performance art and sculpture. Originally from Croatia, Gulin's one-man shows and collaborative performances have appeared throughout that country, as well as in Paris, Ravenna, Venice, Zurich, Boston, and Minneapolis. For additional information, and to view his artwork, please visit his site at www.mnartists.org/Gulin.
Comments (closed)
Alex Nodopaka
2008-09-01 06:29:14
Branko Gulin
Just enough realism
to make it understandable
and the fact that
the understandable is interesting
may be besides the point