ASIYA WADUD, LINDA WEISS, WE TIE A SERIES OF SECURE KNOTS WITH SUZAN LORI-PARK’S WATCH ME WORK IN RIVER TO RIVER: FOUR VOICES, ASIYA WADUD: ECHO EXHIBIT, LOWER MANHATTAN CULTURE COUNCIL, WWW.LMCC.NET/RIVER-TO-RIVER-FESTIVAL/ASIYA-WADUD-ECHO-EXHIBIT, NEW YORK, 2020
we tie a series of secure knotswith Suzan Lori Park's Watch Me Work
1.
perennially the warming then cool
arrangement
permanent future rhizome minutes
or what have I missed
now the lithe reply comes
I lift the lid of a box
unfold the lined sheets
the note reads
you have not missed anything
2.
certain questions
the sturdiness elided all fields into one
felled surface.
I am a minute. I am a box.
the door is opened or travelled
inside the rooms
lateral shoots make a good grid
make a question of me
3.
fix our eyes to our pages
arrange the nine letters into two words
did it again for thrill and future
by Linda Weiss + Asiya Wadud
Poems form in the space we make for them. Sometimes a few words rattle around our minds, with only the faintest context to give them shape. Sometimes there is a fleeting image we want to imprint — we want it to stay with us a little longer. If we sit with the image, we can watch it come into focus — we can take hold of the words, we write them down and watch the poem take its shape.
Scattered throughout the Seaport District and Pier 17, you will find poems written from telephone conversations held in June and July with individuals in Lower Manhattan and designed by Shannon Finnegan. These poems are the lasting evidence of a conversation between two strangers during quarantine, capturing the ideas, textures and sensations of that particular interaction. We invite you to celebrate and reflect on these mutual experiences, both personally and as a community.