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Patrice & Chris
I’d like to take a picture of you
your name will be Patrice
you will have a house
somewhere in the valleys of Oakland
with a stream flowing behind it
and I will talk to you
and make you stand at one end of the bridge
and then the other
Chris will be there too
kneeling for no reason and smiling
you will have to share it all—
the collection of teddy bears
a dog whose soul is made of mercury
and a tree with a cement heart

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Sapna & David
I will then meet that woman with olive eyes
and voice like a crystal bicycle
who questions all before it has happened
David will be there too, answering
rarely allowing to untie his arms—
scales of breath dangling

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Jill & Shyam
enter a garden of black lines—
Jill and Shyam’s house;
black is the color of borders
and of stripes on her dress
and of silky hair
and of gentle shoulder tattoos
and of squarely framed glasses
and of Quick Shadow;
grip from which faces
when smile

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Chalems
Adam, Nathan, Naomi, Wendy—
chain of half-pursed, half-gulping laughters;
“we get the morning sun”
our heads can enter your lens
and bite into darkness
we draw whatever we like
with just our eyelashes

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Hans
I’ve known Hans for years
yet never as clear as today
through his own glasses;
“that’s close” says Hans
and words add miles;
“Grand Prix Sailing Acade”,
whispers a hanging jacket

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Maggie, Judy & Katie
and yes, what I mostly do
is build this archive of light
this library of silence
but then who wouldn’t notice
that what Judy fights with her shield-like glasses
Katie does with a mug that says “nothing is real”
and Maggie with the picture of Harold of whom “90 years
is not enough”

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Peggy & Dar
Dar rubs her face with her palms
to summon a smile and sometimes even
gently pulling her facial muscles up—
all that Peggy has learnt and does (inside)

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Marion
If stone had the power to mirror,
the hills around Oakland would show
Marion’s face

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Cecilia & Sons
gulping the air, the sun
a woman full of the knowledge
that her features
especially the timid curve of lips smiling
on her sons’ faces
are yet undisclosed unspoiled
parentheses

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Destiny
with a snake-like braid hidden under her cap
and a butterfly flock around her tattooed arm
she paints this wall as if she’s teaching it
of earthquakes—
“after all, you have to live up to your name”
thinks Destiny

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Casey
Casey’s a magician—
she just pulled out a superstar face
out of her green cap

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Alessandra
all the while Alessandra’s been
carefully aligning her hat
with the hairline—
a forehead is a clean stage—
one thread of a wrinkle

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Sophia
golden swerve hair
deep blue eyes
bold rose cheeks
abrupt dimples—
someone’s strong hands
must’ve mixed together
these features

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Carolyn
part-time rainbow angel
full-time swan
“70 in november”

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Keith
mostly uses his eyes
to damp flames

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Catherine
sometimes dreams
are trapped in our eyes
like insects in amber

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Erich
and sometimes
the gaze is like amber jewelry
that you’d rather hide

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Kevin
just as wearing your keys on your belt
makes it seem like you could open
any door,
so glasses are misunderstood
since they don’t shelter the eyes

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Dana
sewn into her whole being
‘the scar project’
with golden/pink threads

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August
ink black bandana
a scar for a slash
and eyes for dots—
“/s.h.a.r.p/”

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Michael
he had covered his body
with badges
of all Oakland
mayoral candidates
as if in the end
he’d let gravity
or touch
decide

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Wilbert
let me teach you
how to smile
with an unbudded
smile
the kind that gives you
the right look
the right wrinkles
the right light under eyes

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Chris, Linda
rainbow beads;
brown eyes—
eye-beams twisted, threaded
upon one double string (Donne)

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Marsha
and yes, what I mostly do
is layer lenses and darkness

sometimes my hand falls heavy
finding an empty space
between books

sometimes
—swing—
—refraction—
everything back

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Margarita
round shapes
pierced by metal
skin by freckles
smile by look
behind glasses

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Leah
and yes, one can be
a reviewer of face-stories
a reader of story-lines
on the forehead
a connoisseur of conflicts
between smile and eyes

even if I didn’t tell you
Leah is a teacher
you’d be able to open
her book

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Chris
likewise,
one can spend hours
trying to prove
the congruence
of a hint of spiky bangs
and the slightly more
elevated right corner of a smile

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Spenta
there was a story
about birds on a tattoo
flying from one shoulder
to another

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Maurya
as she danced
her reedy body
into the picture
I thought
Giacometti
didn’t even dream

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Rebecca
swinging her body
on a slackline
from one leg to another

a shifting shelf for her beauty
a moveable horizon
“this is my life”

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Sember, José, Gladis, Tamara
they stand
under a tree
sheltered
and sheltering it
with their bodies

called out of silence
their faces show
their names

Siempre!
Hospitable!
Glad!
Tamarisk bloom!

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Natalie
magnetized by her eyes,
someone imagined
the zipper on the back of her blouse
slide away on the tree
like a snake

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Dylan
meanwhile,
Dylan took off his cap
and his glasses—
the kind of hygiene
we do when decide
what to show
what not

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Demetric
the slackline
runs from his job
to his weekend
like an electric wire
charged

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Joseph
it’s not that he put the
left earphone up his neck
rather he let it glide down
on his chest

string of an arrow quiver

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Lina, Gina, Nika, Leane
busy around the slackline,
prettily failing

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Lucy
it is hardest to photograph
people whose eyes are
made of the very
stuff of photography

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Owen
when he let her leave their
awkwardly shaped embrace
his forehead looked like a hill
perfectly shaped for the sun

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Charneese
drawn by Art Nouveau,
mixed by alchemists

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Marika
note to self:
to master geometry
of closeness

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T.J.
a skateboard for a shoulder
a pillow
a bullet-proof vest

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Jesse
everything magnetized
by the scar on his right eyebrow,
symmetry pulled out of gravity,
beauty non convex

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Saiya
she was wearing
this diving suit
designed for
the Angel Falls

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Ajuwon, Basheeer
and yes, lenses
are like glass doors
of which one can open
none or all

so they stepped
into the pic

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Veronica, Patrick, Alexandra
his eyes looking at them—
shifty mirrors
turned out kaleidoscopes

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Ione
poised on a yoga mat
her legs like gentle scissors

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Forrest
he’s been juggling
a soccer ball

vectors still traveling
up his torso
his neck
his face

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Jessica
when she ended
her mesmerizing twisting—
her aura in the shape of
a hoola hoop—
everyone except her
was dizzy

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Christopher
in a cocoon-circle
made by the neckband and the cap—
“deals w/ death”

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Mark
taken out of the context
of his backyard
he looks like an engineer of
ruler-exact triangles
and not a man at leisure
eating tortilla chips

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Daniel
they called him
Swedish sleek

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Elisa
because she couldn’t find the
right background
her kids made fireworks of fingers
around her head

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Desmond, Elliot
they always matched their green T-shirts
with the grass in the backyard
and walked around with mouths
full of laughter

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Joseph, Amany
a couple of blocks away
from Oakland Pride
their bellies rebelliously exposed
by their short t-shirts;
wearing glamorous synonyms
of rainbow beads

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Aimee, Cece
1) labrets 2) earrings
“but please discover
the hidden symmetries”

august 2014
100 portraits in a day

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Kitwan
people walking
to, from, through, by
Oakland Pride

he could’ve
conducted
orchestras
in silent films

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John
a perfect smoker
breathes only tobacco
since birth

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Christian, Curtis, James, ***, Christian, Cory
by the end of the day
Oakland Pride unfolding
its gift of faces and people

they were
not portraits but
one by one
each other’s
background

a relay of
kisses and
feline looks

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Nik
scattering
people unmaking stands
in the wind
people walking in currents

stepping on those streets
was like drawing lines with your feet
on singing sand

suddenly
a voice both deep and high
saying something about youth uprising

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Kehontas
barely visible
the wrinkles
from one end to the other
of the forehead—
marks of a little crown
or of the casque-hairstyle

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Shareena
when in doubt about posing
do a first-quarter-moon smile

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Hope
Hope always wears
a flower in her hair
but in the back
where you can’t see it
but you can perhaps
smell it or guess it

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Allysa
when she turned to me
for the picture
her shoulders moved
giggling and saying something
to the street behind

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Neda
she could’ve written a book
called “The Obligation to Smile
and Other Issues of Facial Geometry”

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Lie
she waited for the red light
and posed for me
in the middle of the street

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Stefanie
enters a picture
so that her tattoo appear
as transcripts to her face

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Anna
her hair so long
she could’ve used it
as a very precious scarf

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Darren
a truck slowly drove behind
to match his Malevich-style beard
T-shirt and cap

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Rebeca
a massage specialist,
she knew how to make
her body gently clash with
the cold metal of jewelry

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Kevin
he was jokingly wearing
paper towels on his legs
to keep warm in the wind
or perhaps as sails

as soon as he stopped
he looked at me with a
steel kind of heaviness

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Kempton, Raynald
tired velvety smiles

if only all days could close like that
with Kempton’s gold zipper

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Steven
streets and streets
everyone walked
towards everyone
so that everyone was
against the current

“we had lived in house-like frames for portraits
and rested in those little chambers inside harmonicas”

a man whose body could not contain
its own smoothness
pulled the blinds over his eyes