Accompanying Poem by Chris McNally
Poles Apart
Tap:
Every heart is a ladder And a bridge is out walking
Every story has two endings
When every door is a stranger
A man is a hunger His hunger is mounting On mountains of steps Two eyes on his shoelace Half a mind in the sky Duty is his daily bread
Aspiration a twinkle Above the forest line of worry
Every song is a mountain
With a voice climbing up it
Every ceiling has a stairway
Or it could not be flying
The shoreline rocks the tide
The sea swallows its dreams
Every boot is felt pounding
Out the back beat of this town
As the days roll in And the seasons roll on
This hunger growls for something
Square truth is too, too that Real life syncopates Broadway shakes up the avenues
Till the buildings all go cockeyed
And still demand a King’s ransom
He’s hungry for ornament To bring life to his structure A load-attracting bearing member
In need of a rebirth
Rhythm without explanation, that’s what
Once you’ve been there long enough
You play it while it plays you A suite for rough fingers
Crash:
Forgetting is deaf mind
The sky is out stalking
Between the glass cages It stares in vacant mirrors
Until blind birds fall off it
And Narcissus didn’t know
Not to eat his own image
And the people walk past it
Like a permanent umbrella
Every untimely withered leaf
Is a dying angel of trust
Every step is a branch On a tree with many pasts
Every sky that is scraped
Will sow long shadows Every shadow that’s thrown
Forgets its secrets Where they are buried
There’s a soothsayer rambling
There’s a soothsayer His eyes are black lightning
He is rambling To the river of ears Full of tiny white thunder
Siren-singing from the shores
Weakening the untethered race
The Apocalypse is dressing
Meticulously for the bash In grays and in blues Other colors are at auction While men listen mutely And raise their numbered signs wanly
Forgetting is buried mind
Boom:
Every action has a sister She is pulled Through a tunnel at both ends
To teach someone’s children
She leads them unforgettably
By the hand with its own love
Across the rivers of metal
Inside a sea of eight million
Spangled oceans
They take her sunlight rightly As a grant to their innocence And don’t look up to say goodbye
She braces and descends Below their indifferent buildings To swim to her perfect table waiting Single purple flower leaning Held in place by the chip on the lip Of the slender Lalique vase That was a gift from her aunt She lays her chin on her palm Sighing to herself as a sylph In an earthen world While dinner simmers on the electric stove
At 8:00 weeknights
This day she is hooked loose
From the river of habit A shaman casting about
Snags her sensibility
Every untimely withered leaf Is a crying angel he says Tears of recognition Spring from a perfect loneliness
Standing with her book near the edge
As her train leaves the station Safer now in danger than in safety A petal falls to the napkin
From her waiting flower
Every end has a beginning
Every mercy is a ship With 10,000 stars hoisted
Each star a windless harbor
He stands on the same edge
Panting for all his mounting 8 million oceans And one skipped heartbeat away
From her syncopation
The hero prepares But now is not for thinking
He asks why she is crying
Holds out a white rag flying
With a star in his eye
There is no thunder in her ears
Except for the sound of his voice
His breath is an arrow Her blood rushes to it
Every wound an echo
Of an ached-for ending
Their faces become trust
Their bodies become dancers
Their dances become children
They string iron truth Into the eternal bow
She sees herself as a sylph He sees her as a symphony He sees himself a working stiff
She makes him feel like a million
This is why we need each other
Every embrace is a beginning
At the end of an emptiness
Every heartache a ribbon Of a trusting angel
The Artist
Stephanie Corne is a New York based-French painter and multimedia artist. In 2016 alone, her hybrid and experimental art traveled across the world to be featured in exhibits in France, India, and cities throughout the United States, a testament to the global interest in her art. Corne’s “Vitiligo” project transformed the traditional canvas workspace into a multidimensional stage, as she painted her subjects in real time, similar to “Facemotions” and “Embodiment”. The series garnered significant attention from CNN.com and Mic.com for its evocative content, function as a healing tool and social commentary, and innovative presentation format. Currently, Corne is developing a series on NYC and its inhabitants with acrylic on canvas to render her experiences of the city she has lived in for 25 years. Her format for this series is 72’’ x 22’’, giving a human size to the monumental element of NYC. Stephanie Corne’s art is rooted in both the ‘personal’ and the ‘political’, often existing in the liminal space between intimate and provocative. She also just finished a series called “On Nature” and which theme is the power for Nature to renew itself as well as our responsibility to protect it.
Exhibitions
Colorful Abstractions: International Online Juried Art Exhibition, Fusion Art
December 2019
“Facemotions”, Stephane Plaza Gallery Space, Orleans, France
April 13th – 29th 2017
Group show of Public Averti, Villequiers Castle, France
September 23rd – October 16th 2016
Private exhibit of photography and performance in the castle garden
“Beyond the Skin”, Kalinka Gallery, Pondicherry, India
July 8th – August 21st 2016
Solo show of photography and paintings
“Facemotions” and “Embodiment” Performance, Waterfront Museum, New York, NY
June 4th 2016
“I breathe with you”, Augusta Savage Gallery (UMass Amherst), Amherst, MA
February 1st – March 6th 2016
Group Show
“Embodiment”, Flyer Art Gallery, Rome, Italy
February 2016
“Vitiligo” project photo shoot, MAI (Montreal, art interculturels), Montreal, Canada
November 14th 2014
“World Vitiligo Day” Event and Photo Shoot, Detroit, Michigan
June 25th 2013
The artwork was used as advocacy by the VR Foundation
Featured on CNN
Stephanie Corne, New York, NY
The Poet
Chris McNally was educated at U.C. Berkeley, NYU, Université de Lomé, West Africa and on a fishing boat in southeast Alaska. Previous publications include his book of narrative poetry “Fragments of an America,” and poems in the Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review. He lives near Hudson, NY.