Mother, Edith, at 98 By Michael Lee Johnson.

Edith, in this nursing home

blinded with macular degeneration,

I come to you with your blurry

eyes, crystal sharp mind,

your countenance of grace

as yesterday’s winds.

I have chosen to consume you

and take you away.

“Oh, where did Jesus disappear

to,” she murmured,

over and over again,

in a low voice

dripping words

like a leaking faucet:

“Oh, there He is, my

Angel of the coming.”

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet, freelance writer and small business owner of custom imprinted promotional products and apparel, from Itasca, Illinois.  He is heavily influenced by  Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and Allen Ginsberg.  His new poetry chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are available at Lulu. The original version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom, can be found at here.

THE WEEK: Sept 26-30.

LIVE from the NYPLROBERT WILSON with Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed, Lucinda Childs, and others in conversation with Paul Holdengräber 
Friday, September 30, 2011 7:00 p.m.

Robert Wilson will talk to Rufus Wainwright, Lou Reed, Lucinda Childs and others about his artistic collaboration with them over the years.  The conversation will be instigated by Paul Holdengräber.

Robert Wilson is among the most distinguished theater directors of our time. Creator of such works as The King of Spain and The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud, Wilson also collaborated with Philip Glass on the hugely successful opera Einstein on the Beach. Today, Wilson’s accomplishments are recognized not only in the spheres of theatre and opera, but also in the visual arts. Retrospectives of his work have been held throughout the world, and his installations have appeared in several Guggenheim museums, among other venues worldwide.

This event marks the US publication date of The Watermill Center – A Laboratory for Performance – Robert Wilson’s Legacy, a new book about the first 20 years of The Watermill Center.  It will also feature the new book Robert Wilson From Within edited by Margery Arent Safir.

Organs in The Snow
Opening Reception: Sep 30, 8-11pm

A Group Show and Story by Rachel Mason

Dan Asher / John Baldessari / Michael G. Bauer / Michael Bilsborough / Nancy deHoll / Jen Denike / Tim Dowse / Ellie Ga / Laleh Khorramian / Jason Lazarus / Mamiko Otsubo / Samuel White

Opening Night Performances: Thank You Rosekind, Doom Trumpet, No Sky God, Mark Golamco

She was a lion sitting on her dad’s shoulders. They formed a totem of two heads, one large, one small as they walked down the street. Powerful with her lion-painted face, she stuck her tongue out at a man passing by. He tripped on the side of his foot and then fell to the ground.

The girl’s father didn’t realize that his daughter scared the man, causing him to fall. The man already had a fear of children. The girl’s father also didn’t realize that had he reached his hand out to help, the man wouldn’t now have two permanent rods conjoined in his hip bone, and wouldn’t have lapsed into a permanent hallucinatory state from which he’d never recover.

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LAST CALL: DEBBIE GROSSMAN, MY PIE TOWN.

Jessie Evans-Whinery, homesteader, with her wife..

Debbie Grossman
My Pie Town

April 14- May 21, 2011
JULIE SAUL GALLERY
MAP

My Pie Town is a project by Debbie Grossman in which she reworks and re-imagines a body of images originally photographed by Russell Lee for the United States Farm Security Administration in 1940. Using Photoshop to modify Lee’s pictures, she created an imaginary, parallel world – a Pie Town populated exclusively by women. The images are revised in subtle ways, making the reading of them very complicated and compelling. The sixteen images in the series are both color and black and white, and are all based on Lee’s unpublished series on Pietown, a homesteaded community in New Mexico.
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