When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.
When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.
When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.
—Wislawa Szymborska
Why write? Why do anything? Why not write? It's the same as the impulse to make a handprint in wet concrete or trace your finger in the mist on a window. What you wrote, as a kid, on a window was the simplest version of the vision. Why not unburden yourself of the vision? (But why that vision? Why that vision, and why you?) —Elisa Gabbart
—WORD on the Street continues the ongoing VEXICON sequence spellbinding in syllables and exclamations, longings and foretellings, the lost wisdom of the Marker-Makers of the realm. PHOTOS appearing during the faltering weeks of 2025, as in-drift the Eugene street scene.
—Top, Wislawa Szymborska (Polish, 1923–2012), 1996 Nobel in Literature.
—Above, Elisa Gabbart, in Any Person Is the Only Self (2024)
—Below, Pirouette, a poem by Federico García Lorca (Spanish, 1898-1936)
—Below, Pirouette, a poem by Federico García Lorca (Spanish, 1898-1936)
CODA
If the alphabet should die
then everything would die.
Whose words are wings.
The whole of life
dependent on
four letters.
