Lauren Camp – Sailing the Distance (with "Watts Towers" by Simon Rodia)

After a rainstorm, after sun, the air was scarred with coordinates. When the horizon settled, blue accumulated in Simon’s small eyes. To build a curve: railroad tracks & dust. A sail: cement & steel. Where he drew a ladder, the sky was ringed, embedded with a clutter of tile & crackles. He climbed, wrinkling, & built another crown in a wedge of Watts cornered between sermons & knuckles of labor. No one said rung or strut. No word for rivet or bolt. Just the distance from faucet handle to soda pop glass. One stone & mirror clasped by concrete, then another. Reclusive hues hurtled & touched. Simon listened to the dull rattle of strangers stalled on street corners, sweaty & drifting, as every afternoon he attached color to the ceiling of heaven. A traveler lost in the distance, he tucked footprints into the path. He sailed the language of ocean & persistence. Tobacco stained his mouth & emerged as breath, & he knelt in the alcove, fingers textured with a constellation of crushed gems found on the tracks. He glued figments of beauty in the triangular yard, the illiterate man, with a clear view of long waves.






Click here to listen to Lauren Camp reading "Sailing the Distance"

Lauren Camp’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, caesura, Rhino, and other journals. She has also guest edited special sections for World Literature Today and Malpaís Review. The author of the poetry collection, This Business of Wisdom (West End Press), Lauren is also an interdisciplinary artist and a part-time educator. She produces and hosts “Audio Saucepan,” a music and poetry program that airs weekly on Santa Fe Public Radio, and writes for the blog Which Silk Shirt, a resource for poetry and other fine writing.
(Photo courtesy of Petr Jerabek)