poetry projects:
FLURRIES OF DOVES is an intimate letter to a world alight with paradox. This collection of poems and photography are relics from one's venture of devotedly seeking ordinary miracles, alongside the grief that is inextricable from existence.
F.O.D is composed of fifteen poems written by Alyssa Bunce & film photography by Brin Schoellkopf. It is currently in its final stages of revision and production.
Any inquiries can be made to bunce.alyssa@gmail.com.
[excerpts from
The Teachings of Miraculous Fish]
vii.
in a vision I see
the centre of the earth
as a heart
pumping the tears of saints
thru underground springs
that defy odds
making it to the surface
splitting the crust of hatred
x.
maybe one day
I will laugh so hard
that I vomit up fear
and the grin in the sky
will unravel before me
and we will laugh together
May I Believe the World is Good?
The blue bus insect machine droned gasoline heat, turning a miraculously tight maneuver to fill all unoccupied space in the warehouse. Overused nerves flicked my vision, it rained and luggage hung from my sopping shape. I caught my reflection in the window of a vacant storefront and thought about the accumulation of one’s life. Slipping through the clogged tin throat of the station I unloaded onto a seat in the back, between a sleeping pup and an elderly man, whom I learned was headed homewards, into the prickly folds of the desert. I strained to understand as he spoke to me of desert murdering unsolved bloodbath man strewn dead in front of peoples homes. -Y porqué? -No sé, anduvo bien enpeyoteada cuatro, cinqo dias, no sé. Unknown motives, no resolution - it just happened, joining the flurry of uncountable things happening at all times. But I want to believe the world is good! I believe the world is good. Does this make me insane? I know humans are killing and dying forever in torturous cruelty- animals, insects and ecosystems folding in mass death everywhere- individual love stories and dreams of salvation are dying. This body I live in will die unannounced, the absence of mercy bleeds over the planet and the hymn of suffering fills the entire world. How will I survive if I forget that the world is good? I mean to tread her body collecting proof, so I’ll stay alive; like when I found a robins egg vacated in the sandy sage, I held it in my hand while I walked, and when I laid it on the earth, I laid my own body beside it and overhead an eagle circled in wide glory. Once an infant led me by the hand to a pasture of newborn goats suckling their mother. There is poetry everywhere served to us on this earthen platter. I saw a cactus clinging to a slope slouched in a brilliant sculpture, and even as the old man spoke to me of horror a puppy slept beside me curled in a heavenly knot. The original atom, the innermost seed, had particles bouncing inside it but it was mostly empty space. 99.9% empty space! It’s gone on expanding and proliferating from the inside out creating larger forms that are also mostly empty space, and invisible doves flit through the allies of infinity between particles and most of the world is made of empty infinities hot with Gods breath. The ants scuttling in subterranean masses have a declaration painted in their empty-space brains saying “The world is Good. She has Always Been Good. We will all be fossils or worm excrement or ocean sludge soon and the World is Good.” The ancient fish creature clumsily navigating the primordial water said “I Must Live” and the water was frigid and all it saw was pale blue and it pushed out legs and bloomed lungs and dragged itself into the shock of oxygen.
May I Believe the World is Good?, Flurries of Doves, Alyssa Bunce 2024
Brin Schoellkopf, Flurries of Doves, 2024
A HELPING HAND INSIDE MY BODY is an informative and poetic book created to exist alongside the show Our Lady of the Home. It is composed of article excerpts and pop-culture relics from the era, original poetry, creative film photography, and factual information, illustrating the relevance of the topic: both historically and in present day. It is a written counterpart to the show - an archival and poetic perspective. It is made available in contexts where "Our Lady of the Home" is presented, and upon inquiry.
i. [ from Liza, & her Kin ]
I confess
that I would eat
any powdery stone
that could bring me closer
to the unattainable Expectation.
or at least let me care less about it
at least make it quiet, or funny
I guess I am not enough. I am tired
in me, their names settle
Equanil, Vyvanse, Ozempic, Ciprolex
authoritative, indelible, comforting
like the names of my grade school teachers
I seek them out, through well worn strategies
rehearse the tone I’ll wear to next week’s appointment
upon leaving the clinic with my signed permission slip
I am triumphant and aroused
when I lay it on the drugstore counter
I will look straight at the pharmacist
straight through the plasma of her assumptions
I know what it says thrill warms my hips
there is no guilt, I am not afraid
I am satisfied with myself.
I got caught in a relentless event
& it must get easier because I can’t get out
not my fault, the world wasn’t my dream
I’m looking for deliverance
from this brain I’ve collected
I’m reaching towards
a helping hand inside my body
ii. [ Autobiographical ]
The body was very pale. I wondered if it was pale enough to be dead. The way it lay, a sculpture of total detachment - a testament of the peace concealed beyond the physical world. I noticed the orange scabs chewing his ankles, I noticed the arches of his feet. Their slight outwards rotation, drooping under gravity as if reclining on a heavenly bed, languid amongst angels - though he spread across the stone path of this painful park. Observing him, I felt how loosely tethered his soul was to body; a homesick ghost, vaporous in bleak air. Just a moment ago, I nodded to a man whom I often see leaning on his walker and smoking his pipe. Scarcely beyond the bend of the concrete bench, he remained, with his tobacco and the story of his life. Everything was sticky with a slow, unreal quality. I needed to decide what to do - not yet confident in recognizing the colour of death. I hoped, and dimly trusted, that my intuition would steer me, if action were prescribed by fate. I passed by, kept walking.
Returning. The sight of an ambulance hollowed my throat; I was thrown back into the dense lucidity of life-or-death matters. I watched the paramedic watch the man, an eye seasoned in reading the colour of death. Looking again to the body sprawled on the path, I sensed him painless by now, in a warm cradle. PRAY FOR US ON THIS SUFFERING ROCK, MEET US AT THE GATE WITH A LOVE THAT REMEDIES ALL THIS ACHING CONFUSION
iii. [ from Him, on the sidewalk ]
so soft, golden….
my body isn’t here.
Safe forever
I feel my mother humming
I must be touching her heart
it’s limitless all edges permeable
I’m cradled in the centre
swaddled in her gaze
the pain is so far away
I can’t recall if it ever mattered
A Helping Hand Inside my Body, Alyssa Bunce, 2024.