ISSUE NO. 21: SELF-PORTRAIT 2
June 2024
This issue of Pearl Press features work from:
Cover image: Anselme Alma Servain
Curated by: Delilah Twersky
Download the PDF below.
Left Hand Pain / Movement Studies, 2023: Roni Aviv
SNOW ANGEL
Time becomes space when a Gurnemanz
Lifts a hand he lays palm down
On the slumped shoulder of a Parsifal
During a living room telecast,
Bootlegged, out-of-focus, snowy,
And both look up and out at you
Sprawled naked in your easy chair,
The Times spread-eagled on the floor,
The Times turned to the Weather page
That says a massive cloud of cold
Is on its way, and will allow
For days of snow, and on his knees
Before you is an acolyte
Come back to life from years ago
Who lifts his face to let you see
How pleased he is with what he’s done
And you’re nowhere you’d rather be,
Sprawled naked in your easy chair,
Than in this space in time where he
Is visible against the snow.
Jerl Surratt
Left Hand Pain / Movement Studies, 2023: Roni Aviv
In Jeans, 2019: Megan Reilly
SELF-PORTRAIT AS CARNATIONS
we would have been gorgeous,
think about it:
the summer sizzling, we’re alive
and stealing air from the bonfires.
there is our house
in Reykjavík inviting the wind in,
dust doesn’t settle.
we are seeing it all,
the northern lights blazing skies
with passion: lilac brushes,
tides of samphire green.
and we have friends
singing happy birthday, hats off
to another year, cheers
to something new. we grow
old as fruit ripens, bread gets eaten.
our leaves surrendered swords
in restaurant candlelight, scent
spicier in the backseat of a car.
we would have been stunning,
think about it:
winter melodies filling the gaps
of walls where picture frames
are for the living;
we’re a different kind of sympathy.
and even when the mornings washes
everything away, we don’t need
to return from the mountains.
Luís Costa
Burning: Lidewij Mulder
Bitter Melon: Anh Nguyen
THERE WAS A BIRD
then
at dawn
when i woke
there was a bird
underneath the porch
singing the song of rain
ashes and rebirth
uttered a word
eyes on me
said this:
fly
When I helped that man lying in gravel on the off-ramp
stand up from the wreck, bleeding from his mouth
and held him up tight against my chest
–lost his heartbeat, found it again–
his weight seemed impossible
his wild eyes so alive
afterward, quietly,
I cried
next to you
in the passenger seat
on the way to the museum
we chatted with your aunt and uncle
about coffee beans and Tanzania and
I have to confess that I wasn’t really listening
Isn’t that terrible? I had gone back to the asphalt
where that man died and came back, his skin so rough
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Jason Lord
Soleil Noir: Anselme Alma Servain
Layers: Lidewij Mulder
Changing Frames, 2024: Quincey Spagnoletti
Self Portrait In A Shared Gaze: Kat Shannon
Self Portrait Nursing: Kat Shannon
Barbie Land, 2023: Quincey Spagnoletti
JASMINE TEA, STEPPING STONES
What did you do when she left?
I wrote my name in every one of her books. I packed each
Buddha statue in her luggage. Smiling in jade, porcelain, gold. I trace
every vein, magenta and green, in a roundtrip pattern to the states.
What did you eat when she left?
Whatever her maids cooked. The conch shells eroded by
greener and greener seafoam. Mooncakes on every mid-Autumn
festival evening. Stews from bone broth, cooked golden on the stove to
be loved from solid to liquid.
How did you sleep when she left?
In resonance, like the dull humming of the boat jet from Sulu
to Monterrey. Like my grandfather doing so before her. Like gutting a
body of water, like some of what is lost will return. Like China Mary
transcending and the forever yellowing passport photo.
from the cradle to the grave, from the jasmine
tea and stepping stones, from the afternoon,
in flux and therefore endless.
Ariel Favis
Untitled: Disha Patil
Blood from a Stone: A Performance in Photography: Matt Moment
LOST IN TRANSLATION
Dad called me a strunzo
when I scraped the side of the car,
tried to blame the dent
on a hit-and-run driver.
When I asked him what it meant,
he wouldn’t translate the Sicilian for me.
I thought I outsmarted him
when I heard Sonny Corleone
call another character a strunz
in the first Godfather movie,
and the subtitle translated it
as “asshole,” something
I could live with.
Until I saw a real translation
in Cinema Paradiso
—shit head.
Frank C. Modica
Untitled: Disha Patil
Inventory Shots, 2019-2023: A History of the Art Market in the Tri-State Area, Told Through Self Portraits: Daniel Terna
Untitled, 249-365: Anselme Alma Servain
Untitled, 314-365: Anselme Alma Servain
STAR STUFF
Science says we’re born of steam and stardust,
the spoils of supernovae given life.
I have proof that I am made of Starburst,
the simple gesture made my mom a wife.
Father slept in class with one palm open,
my mother placed a pink one in his hand.
I owe my life to that single moment,
a sweet display of love she hadn’t planned.
Twelve long years their hearts withstood division,
together they raised three unruly boys.
Though the parting seemed a harsh decision,
the sadness never overwhelmed the joys.
Just like my cells are A, T, C, and G.
The yellow, orange, red, and pink make me.
Tyler Morello
THE RIVER WAS A CEMETERY
we sit still at the table, my father and I. shuffling napkins, cheap
forks clinking on porcelain. he carries a basket of mangoes like a baby
in the nursery, slicing the ripest one into cubes, and
smooths his fish bones like fossils. a surge of water, a boat without
styx. the air smells of the same tobacco he sold in hidden corners of
the province, my uncle and him. he was 10. he chews it now,
not smokes. we have few things in common: blood, divinity.
cerebellum, sweet grass, apricots, indifference. the archipelago echoes.
we want a real house, and we get it: dolls, florals, piles to fold and
fields to die in, my mother back, on earth as it is in heaven
Ariel Favis
Untitled: Disha Patil
Inventory Shots, 2019-2023: A History of the Art Market in the Tri-State Area, Told Through Self Portraits: Daniel Terna
Blood from a Stone: A Performance in Photography: Matt Moment
Thank you for reading.
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Delilah Twersky
Pearl Press
©2024