Thesaurus for Ceasing War, photographic print on silk panels with silk embroidery and accompanying 12-part poem. Silk panels: 7′ x 7′ approx. First exhibited at the Illinois State Museum, Chicago Gallery in 2009 (as part of the solo exhibition, “Dream of Water”), it is now in the permanent collection of the USC Fisher Museum of Art, where it was exhibited in 2013 in “Drawn to Language.” Exhibition catalogue is available from USC for free download. The work was again on view at the USC Fisher Museum of Art in Staged Meaning/Meaning Staged, January 22 – April 13, 2019.

The poem was published by Word For/Word in 2010 and can be read in its entirety online.

POEM EXCERPT:

9.

placed within
the subterranean ocean, the possibility
of releasing vast water-
ways was described as a closed system:
the system’s extreme sensitivity to minute shifts in
initial conditions, bound by the Law of the Sea,
a fragile document made of integers, movements,
aspects, the possibility of beginning
with cipher and ending
with cipher, was described as a closed system:
deep beneath the earth
‘s deep mantle, a subterranean ocean, the possibility
larger than the Arctic Ocean, the ‘earth’ itself
the floating world, was described as a closed system:

You Are Attempting to Reach a Page That Does Not Exist

effluent, flowing out or forth, and so forth,
water dousing is left to the professionals,
we see right here the Law of the Sea
states a closed system, the possibility of