busy about you

but i don’t have time to paint you with letters. i am busy about you.
frantic in bathrooms i am stopping the drip. sealing leaky faucets
with the monkey wrench that is my jaw. i am stopping the drip.
you are an observation. more than fortune you are a hologram of a
hologram of the edge of one drop of water. i am close to the inside
of you. i am stopping the drip. the water i am putting to rescue will
be stored in a reservoir called your name is my body. you are my
favorite human woman. you live on the nocturnal side of the water.
your fingers walk across a multi-colored globe & i am stopping the
drip.

_________________________________________________________

Stephanie Slate is a photographer living and working in Philadelphia PA. Her B.F.A in photography was received from Pratt Institute in 2008. Slate uses alternative processes such as Platinum/Palladium printing and also Wet Plate Collodion. Her work mainly consists of images that explore the delicate boundaries between the repulsive and beautiful, while her newer work focuses on the wonders of boredom.  {www.lynslatephotography.com}

M.G. Martin is the author of One For None (Ink) & the chapbook Fall Out Of Your Skin (Pangur Ban Party). His work has appeared in Word Riot, ZYZZYVA, Explosion Proof, PANK & >kill author, among others. A Pushcart Nominee, M.G. lives & writes in Brooklyn. Find him: here & here.

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. The first week, a writer is given a photograph to inspire the creation of a new piece of writing. The following week the photographer is given a piece of writing and responds with a new photographic piece. This series is curated by Conveyor Magazine Editor Dominica Paige.

Ossi Piispanen & Melissa Castillo-Garsow {Part 2}

Nevermind

I hope that she will remember my birthday this year and maybe even

he will too. She said he was proud of my grades and that was enough. But

I thought it was the claymation video too. I wanted a party like my friends.

He said there has to be a piñata even if we are ordering pizza. After she

let me eat peanut butter pie too. I ate so much I threw up after my party.

I couldn’t say enough. I wanted to invite my whole class but he said no

there wasn’t enough pizza. He told her twice it could only be two pizzas.

I said no it had to be plain cheese. But he wanted veggie for his friends. And

I hate green peppers. Even though the red ones are ok. Nevermind. And so

 I’m glad they don’t remember anymore.

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Ossi Piispanen is a Finnish photographer, currently lives in Helsinki and works in London and Helsinki. Ossireceived a BA from Swansea Metropolitan University’s Photography in the Arts program. Almost all the photographs he takes seem to be portraits. { www.piispanenossi.com } 

Melissa Castillo-Garsow is a Mexican- American writer, journalist, and scholar pursuing a PhD in American Studies at Yale University. Her short stories, articles and poetry have been published or are forthcoming in numerous journals including Acentos Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Off The Coast, El Diario/La Prensa, The Bilingual Review, Women’s Studies, and Words. Beats. Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture. { www.melissacastillogarsow.com }

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. The first week, a writer is given a photograph to inspire the creation of a new piece of writing. The following week the photographer is given a piece of writing and responds with a new photographic piece. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.  This week’s edition is guest curated Conveyor Assistant Photo EditorAlison Chen.

Ossi Piispanen & Melissa Castillo-Garsow {Part 1}

Rupture

When I die, I hope they don’t bring flowers. He used to bring me roses that would prick my fingers, and white azaleas that would turn brown and sunflowers that would turn my head. I would throw them out after a day.

When I die, I hope they stop telling lies: rust sunset makes ugly dawn, gorges are messed up rock formations, and my life was pleasant enough. I smiled back then as I cut my arms in cornfields, scratched my legs on blackberry bushes. But they never knew that. Some bruises are much harder to see. So he brought flowers and they brought checkbooks and I was lovely sun-lit curtains.

I just want them at my bedside bringing me crisp apples, spiced donuts, McDonalds, and carved jack o’ lanterns with peanut butter chocolate centers like that one summer we spent by the lake, before there were instant transfers. But he brought flowers and they dropped phone calls.

I am afraid of death and all the years leading up to it. So I learned to run away,

run far far away until the ugly dawn remembered nothing but tumbling after a ball in the grass. I missed memories. I drained vases. In the end, there was only tissue, flabby matter unused to walking, a slow but steady heartbeat clutching a homemade blanket warmed by trial.

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Ossi Piispanen is a Finnish photographer, currently lives in Helsinki and works in London and Helsinki. Ossireceived a BA from Swansea Metropolitan University’s Photography in the Arts program. Almost all the photographs he takes seem to be portraits. { www.piispanenossi.com } 

Melissa Castillo-Garsow is a Mexican- American writer, journalist, and scholar pursuing a PhD in American Studies at Yale University. Her short stories, articles and poetry have been published or are forthcoming in numerous journals including Acentos Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Off The Coast, El Diario/La Prensa, The Bilingual Review, Women’s Studies, and Words. Beats. Life: The Global Journal of Hip-Hop Culture. { www.melissacastillogarsow.com }

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. The first week, a writer is given a photograph to inspire the creation of a new piece of writing. The following week the photographer is given a piece of writing and responds with a new photographic piece. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.  This week’s edition is guest curated Conveyor Assistant Photo Editor by Alison Chen.

Debra Papa and Grace van der Hoff { Part 1 }

From the front picture window of The Golden West I could see a woman in a parka and galoshes.  She balked at crossing the avenue; the sun balked from behind a herd of slow-moving winter clouds. I lifted a glass of cheap gin to my lips, not flinching at her attempts.  Dirty chunks of slush melted in gutter puddles.  The floor of the bar was a polished amber ocean of hardwood interrupted only by my standing shadow, hanging on her efforts to cross the avenue and my own penchant for disaster.  She stepped from the curb, bounced across the checkered crosswalk and I raised my glass to her then, having made my own decision, mouthing the words slowly, “Fuck it.” 

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Debra Papa is a retired archaeologist, present emissary for the United States Department of Defense, and enjoys drudgery, deluge, and disaster.  She is completing her first novel, The Golden West.  She lives and works in Maryland.

Grace van der Hoff is Dominica Paige on Thursdays.

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. The first week, a writer is given a photograph to inspire the creation of a new piece of writing. The following week the photographer is given a piece of writing and responds with a new photographic piece. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.

Maria Sprowls (photography) and Pancho Westendarp (writing) { Part 2 }

For this  edition of the series, the artists shared the duties and each contributed one piece of writing and one photograph.

Maria Sprowls (writing) and Pancho Westendarp (photography) { Part 1 }

Michael Sharick and Nathan Bett  { Part 2 }

In a Garage

An insect crawled on the shelf, and the Idiot watched. It
marched with regiment precision toward a smaller bug, maneuvered
over a stained glove, around a can of Minwax. The small bug did
not move. The big one had five hundred legs, the Idiot thought,
which would make it not technically an insect at all. It rose
up on its hind fifty, and its front under became a gaping jaw,
and the Idiot saw the tiny hairs around the opening. The small
bug moved. Perhaps this one’s a kind of beetle. The beetle
pushed against the shelf, leapt six inches to the right, and the
hirsute maw of the multipede descended and crashed. The beetle
jumped again, this time onto the back of the multipede. A pair
of horizontal blades like hedge clippers materialized from the
beetle, and burrowed into the space of nothing between multipede
segments. The pede made a noise like the snap of a ripe carrot,
twisted its upper self and dove and took the beetle in its
mouth, the beetle itself now halfway inside the pede. Thus the
two became a rolling twitching mass of pus and exoskeletal
scabbard and the Idiot saw this and thought my god this must
be candy I wonder how does it taste, and he nicked it with his
tongue and chewed three times and swallowed and thought well
that settles that.

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Michael Sharick lives with his wife in Brooklyn.  His work is forthcoming in Lumina.  He no longer fears the robot holocaust.

Nathan Bett is a photographer and MFA candidate at Parsons The New School for Design.  Originally from Marquette, Michigan, he received his BFA from Northern Michigan Univeristy.  Now living in Brooklyn, he spends his between class at The New School, wandering the streets of New York with camera in hand, and travelling as often as possible. His most recent work explores the dynamic relationship between subject and viewer within the urban landscape.

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Michael Sharick and Nathan Bett { Part 1 }

On a Beach

Martha Jones is not alone. The couples from the group
spread towels, the women topless. Martha is too modest
to disrobe in front of Eddie, their guide. His right arm
is a wrinkled pink nub below the elbow. She watches him
roll a cigarette, strike a match, one-handed in the wind,
imagines such skill might be better used. Tobacco, he says.
I’m caught with one spliff, they send me back. She wants
to ask, send you back to where, what happened to your
arm, what kind of hotel needs two gigantic smokestacks.

His remaining teeth glisten in the midday sun, his wide
nostrils flare. In four days she’s never seen him without
sunglasses—in the canyon, on the bus, in the rainforest,
even at night. She imagines his eyes wide and white,
bottomless.

Swim with me, he says, stomping the cigarette
barefoot. She sees herself in his glasses, fish-eyed and
weary, her office and cats, the extra pounds she can’t
lose, the peach fuzz that sometimes collects on her cheeks
and upper lip. He hands her a bundled white towel, too
heavy, stained. He unbuttons his shirt, walks to the water.

Coming?

She unwraps the towel. She knows he’s been carrying,
and the silver metal does not frighten her. It’s more the
weight of the piece. She digs her toes into the wet sand.
No one is sending me anywhere. She refolds the towel,
stuffs it in her bag, tears off her own shirt and follows
Eddie into the ocean.

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Michael Sharick lives with his wife in Brooklyn.  His work is forthcoming in Lumina.  He no longer fears the robot holocaust.

Nathan Bett is a photographer and MFA candidate at Parsons The New School for Design.  Originally from Marquette, Michigan, he received his BFA from Northern Michigan Univeristy.  Now living in Brooklyn, he spends his between class at The New School, wandering the streets of New York with camera in hand, and travelling as often as possible. His most recent work explores the dynamic relationship between subject and viewer within the urban landscape.

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. The first week, a writer is given a photograph to inspire the creation of a new piece of writing. The following week the photographer is given a piece of writing and responds with a new photographic piece. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.

Andrew Williams and Alex K. Rich {Part 2}

The sun is setting behind the Empire State building, but she feels obliged to linger, languid and frayed from a conversation that feels interminable in retrospect. Yet here is the sun, barely a degree from where it was when he started that infinite sentence that started with her name. She squints into the incandescent clouds, glowing with ancient solar radiation that is just now reaching the Earth after billions of years and millions of miles traversed, only to shine on her face for a nanosecond before she descends into the subway. She can’t help feeling that all that travel wasn’t worth it.

 
The subway station is teeming with people, all of them oblivious to the fact that during the extra time they put in at the office this evening, she was being dumped and then utterly failing to make a go of being bitter and forlorn at the bar. She squeezes into the throng tromping down the stairs like cattle, her insides crumpling like a ball of aluminum foil.  The ball compacts, becomes dense and hard in her core, shrinking from something the size of her fist to a tiny pellet, like a ball bearing, and leaving an empty space around it in her chest. The crowd feels warm and enveloping, like a blanket she could smother herself with. She wonders whether it is possible to be asphyxiated by this moving crowd of people, but instead it just leads her through sticky floors into a dingy subway car.

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Alex K. Rich is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn, NY.  He writes and draws a weekly webcomic at { http://somethingsomethinglife.com }  He is a lot taller in real life.

Andrew Williams is a photographer whose subject matter extends to nearly all genres of photography.  He is currently completing a BFA in Photograph at Parsons The New School for Design.  His work can be found online at { http://awilliamsmedia.com } He is also much taller in real life.

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. The first week, a writer is given a photograph to inspire the creation of a new piece of writing. The following week the photographer is given a piece of writing and responds with a new photographic piece. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.

Andrew Williams and Alex K. Rich {Part 1]

“End of the line.” That’s what I wish they said. No one’s ever really that poetic in
real life. “Last stop,” they mutter instead, that second syllable snapping against the
already raw skin of my face like a whip. It’s meant to complete the cycle, to signal
the beginning of another end. But it just sounds cold and final. It doesn’t really
matter where we are.

The grit on my hands looks like mud, like I’m a kid who just came in from
playing, but the smell of grease and sweat, the frustration and the desperation, is
overwhelming and decidedly un-childlike.

“Let’s go,” she says. Or maybe “Let go.”

“Mm,” I agree. Or disagree.

We plod toward the beach, pierced by a cold wind that threatens to unveil us. But
we’re at the end of the line, where no one ever comes, where no one will ever find
us. In a nearby elm tree, two crows bat each other with their wings rhythmically, as
though dancing. Neither is able to muscle the other away from the scrap over which
they’re fighting. Or maybe there isn’t any food. Maybe they are fighting for the
branch, for the tree, for their right to make it their home.

As she gets undressed, I can feel myself forgetting everything, starting with her
name. What else is there to do in these moments of clarity but forget? When I
look away she disappears. I sprint down the shore looking for her, but the beach is
deserted. She’s gone; so am I, I guess.

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Alex K. Rich is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn, NY.  He writes and draws a weekly webcomic at { http://somethingsomethinglife.com }  He is a lot taller in real life.

Andrew Williams is a photographer whose subject matter extends to nearly all genres of photography.  He is currently completing a BFA in Photograph at Parsons The New School for Design.  His work can be found online at { http://awilliamsmedia.com } He is also much taller in real life.

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. The first week, a writer is given a photograph to inspire the creation of a new piece of writing. The following week the photographer is given a piece of writing and responds with a new photographic piece. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.

Bibiana Medkova and Neima Jahromi { Part 1 }

He had wandered a far, far way from the highway. So far now that even the fat around his waist no longer strained against his belt and his thick, full hands moved freely in the sleeves of his suit jacket. He could only breathe tight, shallow breaths, which filled his throat quickly and felt like soot. The sweat on the back of his neck and under his arm seemed to congeal as it made dark pools on his shirt. He walked through an atmosphere of exhaustion, over narrow roads, by an old gas station with no store, by young trees, and through tall grass that spit and harbored flies and ticks. They landed on him as he passed. His head felt dull.

When his ankle ached, he wondered whether someone had taken his Pontiac. The thought made him stop in mid stride over a long root that crossed his path. He glanced back down in the direction he had come from, not to look for anything, but to think in that direction. He continued on. Optimistically, reaching a little pool of water, he tried to squat, but he felt like his knee caps would snap under his skin. He washed his hands and his wrists on his knees and got dirt on his pants. He continued on.

The abandoned motel appeared at first in patches through the trees. He moved toward a stack of mattresses as if he had been there before and, putting one foot on the trunk of a car, he pushed himself up to the top. Supine, watching the layered movement of clouds, he reached into one of his jacket pockets, but did not find what he wanted. He reached into another pocket. Without luck and feeling nothing, he found his sandwich and began to eat. 

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Bibiana Medkova is a multidisciplinary artist: a photographer at core, she utilizes installations, film, books, sound, drawings, printmaking, and sculpture to achieve an overall effect.  Her work is a combination of strong narrative content and a raw, personal documentary style.  She is obsessed with manufacturing entire worlds, taking the viewer on a trip that is visually and intellectually satisfying, but emotionally intense.  { www.skrabat.cz }

Neima Jahromi is a writer and works as an Editor for Conveyor. He was tired of watching everyone else have all the fun.

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. The first week, a writer is given a photograph to inspire the creation of a new piece of writing. The following week the photographer is given a piece of writing and responds with a new photographic piece. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.

Bethany A. Spiers and Monika Sziladi {Part 2}

Family Tree

My house is full of animals tooting the same old saxophone.  The play was full of mistakes and many, many balloons.  One cane, alone.  A foot on the ground.  Animal #2 groans with discontent with old age and all humans.  Animal #3 writes a love poem to the obscene.  Somewhere the missing thread stretches farther and farther away from the truth.  That severed umbilical chord/brain stem/spinal cord/whatever.  In passing, the white car hisses with glory.  White dogs bark at strangers.  Even the jukebox screams the name.  Try to escape me, the universe dares.  Try to write a play without animals, a poem without laughter.  I just want to dance without all these machines, howled the crooked, eighth animal.  Animal of Lightness.  Animal of Hilarity.  Animal of the Obvious.  

Machines switch into and out of gear in the distance.  Animal of Excess lies, gasping for breath, in his hospital bed. Animal of Silky Hair searches for the perfect song.  All of us lines and not knowing what to do.  Animal of Luxury. Animal of Sufficiency.  What to do for the calculator money?  Midnight animal, full of classical nonsense.  Dressed in black.  Disgusting. All animals of illusion, calling.  Animal #28 seems surprised.  Animal #28 is named Kyle.  Oft to surrender.  For oft to fall apart.  Some animals are still too young to fight.  Animal #1 drops paw, locks jaw and runs.  Animal #4 is already an album title.  Animal of Architecture strikes up a new line of confessions, wooden line, sodden armchair.  Animal of Aerodynamics uses her cushion as a flotation device.  Some animals resemble their pets.  Some have no time for love affairs.  The Lioness, lightening.

Birds: calling hour:

        forgiving

        forgiving

        forgiving

        regret                     car alarm

        regret

        regret           different

                             different

                             different

                             different

It turns into grandparents.

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Mónika Sziládi is from Budapest, Hungary and lives in New York. She is a 2010 Yale MFA graduate in Photography. In 2008 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She holds a Maitrise in Art History and Archaeology, Sorbonne, Paris, France (1997). She is the recipient of the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship (2010); a winner of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Photography Portfolio Competition (2010); juror’s pick by Julie Saul and Alec Soth, Work-in-Progress Prize, Daylight/CDS Photo Awards (2010). She is an adjunct lecturer of art at Drew University, Madison, NJ.  { msziladi.com }

Bethany A. Spiers holds a BFA in Writing for Publication, Performance and Media from Pratt Institute and is currently pursuing an MSS from Bryn Mawr College.  Previously published work includes Pretty Lou (Black Lodge Press, 2006) and the self-published chapbook series Oratoria (2003), as well as poems in various literary magazines.  Spiers lives in Philadelphia and performs under the moniker The Feverfew. 

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. Last week, a photographer was given a piece of writing to inspire the creation of a new photograph. This week a writer was given a photograph and responded with a new piece of writing. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.

Anne-E. Wood and Tyler Wriston { Part 2 }

Realism

When our journey through the forest comes to its dark and silent end, we lay down our swords and wings and make a bed of leaves beneath an oak.  You wouldn’t know how tired we are.  You never had to stare at the Cyclops’ eye or walk among the restless souls of un-baptized children.  You never had to fly out your window across a starry night in a Spanish Galleon or watch a city ignite in dragon flames.  The moon never showed you his teeth.  The trees are lousy with witches tonight; you can hear them howling for miles.  But our work is done for today.  Time to slip away, to dream of car keys, a glass of orange juice, grocery aisles, homework, skate ponds, the hum of the traffic jam on our way to school.  I brush back her hair, kiss the bridge of her nose, and take hold of her tiny hand.  So there’s this kingdom, I whisper (the wind shakes the branches), where a father sits on the edge of the tub and reads a letter from his daughter, dipping his toes into the warm bath.

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Anne-E. Wood’s work has appeared in the magazines Tin House, New Letters, and Gargoyle, among others. She holds an MFA from San Francisco State University and teaches writing at Rutgers University and Gotham Writers’ Workshop.  She lives in Brooklyn and is working on a novel.

Tyler Wriston has a BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute.  He is presently completing his MS in Art Direction BrandCenter for Art Direction in Richmond, Virginia. 

His work can be found at: { www.tylercampbellwriston.com }

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. The first week, a writer is given a photograph to inspire the creation of a new piece of writing. The following week the photographer is given a piece of writing and responds with a new photographic piece. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.

Anne-E. Wood and Tyler Wriston { Part 1 }

Party Time

It’s not that I think he’s still here, his ghost or anything, restless and haunting these woods.  Why did I come, then?  It’s my birthday, I’m thirty-four, so twenty years have passed.  What have I done with them?  Nobody knows where I am right now.  I’ve still got the knife he loved with the rusty handle, and the picture of a boat he said was my gift.  Listen, I say to the garbage can.  I’m having my own party again, I’m not going to lie…but no truth comes either.  There’s a horrible moon, this yellow gash in the sky.  I want to walk further into the dark, beyond the stream, over the little bridge, find the rock where he sat when I left him, an eight-year-old with his head in his hands, and then further still, to places that don’t exist.  I will tonight.  I’m buzzed off all this quiet.  I step forward, a little unsteady, my sneakers squishing in the grass.  The light turns on, a glaring demon.  My face is red in front of the world.  I’ve got this problem, I say to my shoelaces. I want to talk to you. I can’t sleep. They say, You can barely stand.

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Anne-E. Wood’s work has appeared in the magazines Tin House, New Letters, and Gargoyle, among others. She holds an MFA from San Francisco State University and teaches writing at Rutgers University and Gotham Writers’ Workshop.  She lives in Brooklyn and is working on a novel.

Tyler Wriston has a BFA in Photography from Pratt Institute.  He is presently completing his MS in Art Direction BrandCenter for Art Direction in Richmond, Virginia. 

His work can be found at: { www.tylercampbellwriston.com }

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. The first week, a writer is given a photograph to inspire the creation of a new piece of writing. The following week the photographer is given a piece of writing and responds with a new photographic piece. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.