an emard

^{untitled (viewfinder), 2021, glass, copper foil, lead-free solder}

the river is.
the river is a faggot.

Palatial and destitute, life and beauty abound. Assumed construction, destruction, narrate an untouched or retouched or uninhabited or recaptured or unsexed or restored or

un-

or

re-

the river knows her lane, it was built for her. The army came and laid down their war-grade cement and sealed the river in place on unceded lands, the trees died.

But

But the river is the keeper

            she remembers another time — not long ago, the river rolled and dammed and flooded, shapeshifted and boiled over. The river remembers. Her body is molded, the start and finish chartered, the journey controlled, wrangled, and obedient. Her path was created by the army, a war on indigeneity, on faggots, on poverty, on water…

The river is a faggot not in waiting but escapes each day by basking in the cracks and crevices of decadence and nourishment, of soot and dirt, of smog and gesture, of laughter and idle passerby, of fish and broken lure, of spit and sweat and piss, of corn and cigarette butt, of cruising men and stolen cars and fallen trees, of thistle, sage, and encampments… and the river loves and splashes care despite neglect. The river is a faggot who knows no boundaries but her own nature.

^{untitled (viewfinder), 2021, glass, copper foil, lead-free solder}

whose-notion-of-freedom-postulated-in-untaming-this-force-whose-notion-of-justice-implimented-in-a-revitalization

The river of a city built on conquest and spectacle on military might and sovereign patriotism on wings of eagles and condors on separated mountain lions and extinguished bears on highways and walls that separate peoples and scenes and realities that keep the faggots and the queens and the gods and the houseless in their place cannot download her knowledge. Marriage and service, duty and pride, salute to created commerce while the river

falls



falls





falls

vessel for discontainment, 2021, water from Los Angeles River and Chicago River, glass, copper foil, lead-free solder

deeper into the earth, into what might have been a floodplain, a watershed, an estuary, a forest, whose roots mingle with the bones of mammoths and sabertooth. The river finds new paths if not on the surface.

Do you think a river must be set free?
The river is cemented in, but the river is always free, it is always a faggot.