Good Dang Lullabies in my head humming while by myself while you’re upstairs in your magic suit two sizes too big for you I know you’ll grow into it. All the busyness addressing us like we’re important something I’m still getting used to and you’re dang good at being cute, cause you’re […]
Would’ve Been Could’ve Been But only one was an astute enough navigator through the precarious tunnels, and strong enough to break through the egg’s rigid shell. A monikered tadpole. An industrious radical. A traveler transformed into a cellular stronghold. She blasted off to blastocyst nine months passed. She’s near to seeing it all- including the […]
Expecting My wife is expecting me to be the man I promised to be when I told her “even when we return to dust, I am certain our molecules will be holding hands creating something solid like we always have.” My wife is expecting a sober husband soon. One who tears through expectations […]
The Hayloft The rickety hayloft door, like terrible drumming against its tattered track, was our barrier between the thunderous swarm and blusterous squall. The night was our journey. Two of us could move hay bales from stack to stack to form a fort of towers, a malleable playground to jump from apex to cavern […]
The Blue Jay The blue jay flying, see it? The soft under of her wing rustling in the wind’s stream. How her tail provokes the jaundiced morning sky and her squawk, a planned shuttering reverb. She is one of us. Born to survive a foreign existence beginning before sight, tossed into life’s circus like […]
Ample Singing She lifts me like a balloon. She caresses me like a song that makes me cry. She destroys me like dynamite and I am new. Her spirit dawns like the moon- simple and luxurious. Her heart explodes like broken crystal. Her ample singing, like bees buzzing. She is stars. She […]
Be No More When my wife incinerates me and I journey through the flue befriending, no, becoming air, free of touch and possession, I will be no more. Wafting with lost balloons, soft in breeze against a cheek, seen through, no, never seen, present with a yawns release- I will be no more. […]
Butterflies We are all born caterpillars fuzzy and crawling, amused by the sky and her shape-shifters: first a dragon, then an angel. We flail our limbs testing their stretch and retraction grasping on to grass to see it bend before resting in its vastness. We grow longer with appetites fiending like a […]
Three Steeples Three steeples patina glimmering mossy green after rain. Green as copper does after salt and pollutant-filled raindrops clobber for years, after intermittent wind burns and sun bleaches beat their surface like flint for fire; the parts most exposed are most faded, as with us humans. Three steeples centered in the heathen […]
Molecules –For Danielle, my muse of abundance Eyes on eyes I ended with our death claiming even after our molecules would combine holding on to each other for eternity. By that I mean as our flesh turns to dust and is picked up by a seedling with whom we grow to an […]
Vinaigrette Disregarded drips collecting along the bottom rim of my mug, staining rings on Grump’s old desk, prove combined similarities can leave a mark. My city, similar in thorough collectivity, patient in method, observant of other’s moves, reminds me that stained history is tough to disregard. Those rings will not be […]
A Good Animal Day Ladybugs popped out of his ears as he emerged from the hollow log. She snapped one and they scooted to the dam, did yoga, then ignoring the downward facing sign, they raced to the water. He won, but, she thought to splash him – truly taking the […]
Brink He introduced me to his son. He was enamored. In awe. When he introduced me to Jennings, procurer of me and D’s first dance – front stage – our wedding night, his eyes reflected enlightenment. When he introduced me to Black Rebel, I believed him that it was real rock-n-roll, baby. […]
Folds of Paper A workman’s glove trampled, tattered abandoned on the sidewalk. Pointing to the sky. The index finger signals: look up. The great blue, A half moon between wires, A plane inching. Why reveal the obvious to a wandering man seeking answers? Are they there hidden like words beneath […]
Burnt Bridge I carefully burned the bridge aware of the river below. Warnings rang from the common folk declaring, “if your venture in this new city proves illegitimate and you must return to your place of old, your welcome will be diminished like ashes from the fire’s stoke.” In the unlikely event, I’ll build […]
Balloons To pose for pictures, we hid our faces in balloons bouncing off one another from the breeze. Their colors were a box of crayons. Holding them, it felt that the correct gust would lift us for the treetops beneath to tickle the balls of our feet! The exploding children swelling in excitement begged […]
Framing on Liberty [the Journey of Dust] Beginning from the saw teeth, the wily bits skip pass the vents. Fine particulates floating like a plastic bag in the wind catch draft from the motors and blast into a grand journey. With no ventilation, dust rapidly drops only if no bodies […]
Gold & Yolk I cannot claim to know about death, but I have seen the way it makes a mother tremble and a father crack the hard shell he had spent years perfecting. I have seen it prolonged with the use of drugs like with my Grandmother when she told me Myles was […]
Lust of the Lush My cheeks rubricate especially with red wine, then turning purple if I also eat pecans, and my eye feels pressure, itching around the lids. I predict a mild nut allergy. As the alcohol opens my facial capillaries, so the nut elements squeeze through the normally closed cells, a reaction […]
Guillian-Barre Onset What a way to wake up! One eye was stuck cocked to the side like a cartoon character who gets whacked in the head with a frying pan. Regardless, I went to the theater and watched with one hand covering one eye to see only one screen. A palsy, the doctor claimed, […]
by Maxwell Redder A Father’s Roof I. Terracotta tiles lain on bamboo stalks; fired earthen rain protectors, decorous and new. The roof of past was treacherous due to brilliant swoops of egret flocks landing, loosening grass ties as they gawked, waiting while others caught up. Cankerous, thwarted surreptitiously; cancerous, the rotted old roof was carefully […]
by Maxwell Redder A Journey to Discover what I Already Know I. Driving North America’s main arteries, I nod to Hudgins’ Cadillac in the Attic while snapping a shutter, amused that the attic car will never visit Cadillac Ranch; I nod to Amarillo. II. Airplane window. Vast lines: canyons, roads, and rivers; the Earth’s nervous […]
by Maxwell Redder I. Production moving up is a scummy tank whose bubbles always read as green because the budget doesn’t allow for a thorough scrubbing II. Hierarchy: everyone has eyes that report to other sets like a wave, slowly and always concentrating on the tip: anticipate a breaking point. III. Low Management (Peace Keepers), […]
by Maxwell Redder But Little Blips I. Seeping from my brain like sap from a pine, slowly building into a sticky clump. I clean the wax from my ear and ponder is it formed from wasted energy of my pale thoughts — never written on paper — the ones but little blips, like rain particles […]
by Maxwell Redder I Two cardinals and a murder of crows distinctly chatting between neighboring branches; barren minus twisting auburn vines slunk like somnolent tails, and an occasional jostling squirrel. Snow swallows hooves as a deer herd leaps along my father’s fence. II True, a fence is like an hourglass: flipped one way to […]
by Maxwell Redder Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Crumpled Paper –Inspired by Wallace Stevens: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird I. Crumpled and torn the paper’s fluidity, like a loincloth draped against breasts, stiffened, becoming jagged, rigid, recyclable. II. Performing gymnastics, a piece of plain white dropped from a vibrantly checkered hot-air balloon […]
Poetry by Maxwell Redder City Walks (Winter) I. Hypnotic eyes watch passing strangers whistle tunes of new pop culture, lugging thirty packs like a mother a lulling baby – careful not to drop or shake it for fear it might explode. Hypnotic sunset splendor igniting clouds gorgeously with chemical pinks and elegant golds, carefully […]
Poetry by Maxwell Redder MLR+DAM=MLR+DMR As our eyes meet they signify the trust we have earned, and I promise that that trust, which is excavated from the precious mines of our souls, will last beyond the life of stars. I promise that our love will remain a river: always flowing, always fueled. I promise […]
Maxwell’s Poetry Corner By Maxwell Redder Manta Mantra Like pulling a tennis ball ten feet beneath the water and releasing so the molecules inside, fiercely rejecting suffocation, jet through the liquid’s surface into careless air, so does the manta ray leap with force between the waves. Does it meet the air leaping vertically to […]
Exploring Innocence and Experience –Maxwell Redder Thunder-sky, Inc. Gallery is one of Cincinnati’s most unusual. The current exhibit, INNCE/EXPCE, running through Aug. 10, 2013, is inspired by a collection of poems / prints written by the great 18th & 19th Century English poet, painter, print maker, William Blake. Its title: Songs of Innocence and of […]
Poetry By Maxwell Redder An Audacious Escape Now parked, I saw the firefly ascending from my truck bed. His fluorescent tube acted as a gentle jetpack, a hovercraft, an audacious escape. Relaxing on rusty vacant bolt holes previously used to clasp the cap, he did not recognize my turning ignition signified a twelve mile […]
Maxwell’s Poetry Corner By Maxwell Redder Accordion Highway From my window: buzzing highway traffic slows as the sun lowers. Head lights and break lights suck out the last rays, proudly displaying their eminence along the road. The screaming red streaks blend with submissive yellow ones like an opera singers vibrato. Their passing hollows out the […]
Maxwell’s Poetry Corner By Maxwell Redder Dandelion circle of intellects brewing over film, undermining, photography and drinking homebrews one called Eight and a Half unabashed with black and whites flashing forward like a carousel carousing laughter over emotions, undermining, photography, and spinning: drinking homebrews: eight hops mixed and brewed for bursting contrast: unabashed photographs […]
Poetry by Maxwell Redder Locusts Noticing the cellulite clouds moving south, the match stung me and I dropped it. Grasses, the size of corn stalks, sizzled quietly at first releasing a silky stream of gray smoke; black came within a minute. I remember their stench, the locusts burning. Their sound was like children popping […]
Girandola’s Sticky Art By Maxwell Redder Duct tape drawings are an interesting concept: taking a material originally created for sealing the joins of metal ductwork, and using the different colors available to cut shapes and collage them into an image. Of course, the production of an array of different colored duct tape is a more […]
Maxwell’s Poetry Corner By Maxwell Redder Horns Horns of hartebeest inspiring the drawn heart (tip as spine and curves as breasts) were removed to use as tools. One: a drill plunged and spun through baked dirt, exploding a hole of rusty powder when yanked like cork of wine. Two: a dagger feather wrapped with […]
Maxwell’s Poetry Corner by Maxwell Redder Carbon Vacuums Diamonds & dead leaves: carbon vacuums venatically sucking off the latter to slowly birth the former. My fiancée’s finger is banded: exploding rainbow rays bounce and zoom from three carbon births trapped in gold & loyalty. The latter Proverbs recommends wearing like a necklace, the former is […]
Cedric Cox and the New Cubism – Maxwell Redder Few artists in Cincinnati have emerged so quickly and ubiquitously as Cedric Michael Cox. A 1999 Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate from the University of Cincinnati’s Design, Architecture, Art and Planning Program, he has in the last four years landed four solo exhibits at top exhibition […]
Poetry by Maxwell Redder Garden Thought Lifting the large rock, smooth with a few dimples like my grandfather’s face, I found positivity living in the mud under it: Worm-wiggle squirms, needle-toothed beetles, and karma-dowsed larva mingling in harmony. Paper Mountain I’d tear down a building With a hammer and teardrop And move […]
Poetry by Maxwell Redder Gallery Asylum Cranberry juice, funneling through prickled paths of beard hair, drips from my Adam’s apple to my crotch – gray jeans turned sanguine. They won’t give me paint, only cranberry juice. Me, juice, chair, alone in a white cube – fluorescent tubes buzz. I tell them I will drink […]
The Boxer: Sol LeWitt by Maxwell Redder Walking into downtown Cincinnati’s famous Carl Solway Gallery (424 Findlay St.) between September 7, 2012 and December 22, 2012 is something I recommend to everyone. If not for the sheer simple beauty of works by the late Sol LeWitt, an extremely important contemporary artist, then for the inquisitive feeling […]
The Wine Rep Naked, making money, laughing just as hydraulics hiss from the bus lifting itself back up to go – easy life for a wine rep. Dressed, no cigarette yet, relentless phone calls ringing like church bells – clients wanting their orders on time. Bathtub, backrub, a bowl of yogurt with […]
Editor’s note: Aeqai welcomes Maxwell Redder to its stable of writers and critics. Redder, a recent DAAP graduate, is an outstanding poet, and since art and poetry often intertwine, we are introducing Maxwell’s Poetry Corner as a regular aeqai feature. For awhile, all the poems will be Redder’s. The Sound The sound […]
By: Maxwell Redder “Museum Gallery / Gallery Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio. 104 degrees; a new record: Saturday, July the seventh of twenty-twelve.” The fathers of existentialism often explored the concepts of being ‘thrown into existence.’ The fact that we neither asked for, nor gave permission to enter this universe as a conscious being, presents more challenging […]
By: Maxwell Redder Photographs taken by: Mark Patsfall Rarely does an artist have the opportunity to express so vividly an equal passion for music and visual art. Jon Langford’s solo exhibit which came down July 14, 2012, at Clay St. Press was able to achieve that dichotomy. In fact, he has lived on both sides […]
