s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

Dismember the Night Thread Slams
Dianne Bowen & Kofi Fosu Forson

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Iron lungs on iron Trojan Horses. Helene plays the jukebox sipping scotch. Treaty’s ritual signed in blood. Mont Blanc pens don’t spill their own ink. Sifting garbage sidewalks brimming the broken and unwanted, infested, prays another life, Sculptor seeking mongo, finds cacao. Chocolate Jesus in hiding, refrigerated truck somewhere in Red Hook. Angels of god show no mercy or humor

Battered lungs made cruel by signatures. Gallerist’s blood, painter’s oil, bartender’s gin, guilt guttered from hearts of poor men. Uneducated feasting on signs written, sprawled along streets made of dirt and concrete. Language like virgin, of bones, skin, we bite, masticate become one with history. Lovers in Chelsea, conferences. Legends at war with words, crucifying language bearing it naked on a cross

In the hinterlands, tales of battles won and lost, land, love, greed, power. Queen of Diamonds prisoner of war, locked in towers, peeling pearls for pigments. Paintings’ exaltation’s double consonants, monks burlap and rope, forgive themselves a chalice of wine. Corrupt language from pen to page. Pope of East Village secret meetings. Godiva on horseback dodging hands grasping for hope

In a room of art lords weapons drawn we have come to salute a general, man of winter ice and snow. Paintings blend within white walls, sparkle a little like diamonds. Pearls around neck of woman in cloak. Midnight bird spreads her feathers. Flying above throngs of sheep. In garden of pigs we drink wine, stretch miles to bed. Bakers dough, butcher’s prime rib, two bodies simmering on an oven after midnight

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Kofi Fosu Forson is a Ghanaian writer and artist who explores gender based art about the art muse, root of the artist’s psycho-social transformations, habitation of a city (New York), by using collaborative interventions in poetry, theater, and performance.

Dianne Bowen, originally from Brooklyn, New York, was a multi-media artist. Through various mediums and techniques formally her work was about pushing boundaries of drawing as a medium and “the line”. Conceptually she addressed the dichotomy between white noise, silence within nature and the loud and constant banter of urban living.

Dianne Bowen: The New York Optimist→
Dianne Bowen: Saatchi Art→