Summer Writing Resident James Steck: Constructed Barriers
James Steck is the first writer of the summer 2020 cohort to spend his week onsite participating in our local residency program at Northern Virginia's Woodlawn & Pope-Leighey House and Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture. Our summer writers-in-residence focus their weeks on-site exploring ways to rediscover and re-purpose place and place histories, and use writing as a means to build community, to bring awareness to critical social and environmental issues, and as a creative force of empowerment.
Read more about James' experience on site below, along with two poems composed during his stay: "Future Song" and "To Frank, Within the Pope-Leighey House." You can read more about James and his fellow residents here.
I did not know what to expect during my time at the Woodlawn & Pope-Leighey House Residency. I did not have any plan outlined, no ultimate goal, no research to concentrate on. Rather I wanted to exist in a new space and to be somewhere that cultivated a new angle on what it means to constantly see the world through constructed barriers. Whether those barriers are self-created and internal or external and architectural, I think there is value in exploring what we attempt to have control over (the world or ourselves). However, it appears that control and true free will might be as elusive as the animals that visited me at the Pope-Leighey House. We can’t help but move in one direction through time, we can’t help but react to our past and to new stimuli, we can only reflect on what we experience.
I quickly found myself enamored with Frank Lloyd Wright's Pope-Leighey House and spent most of my hours there. I enjoyed being surrounded by trees and animals as opposed to people and concrete in DC. A fox came by to watch me pace along the outside of the house, and a groundhog came by to watch me write. Both make a brief cameo in one of the poems below. Most of my curiosity, though, was driven by Frank Lloyd Wright. I wanted to see how close I could come to finding his “ghost” through writing, and I ended up running circles in my own mind while trying to turn the house into something that has been and always will be gone. This ultimate feeling of frustration, of not being able to reanimate the dead, of not fully knowing a person who is immortalized--only through their constructs--was extremely frustrating. But this frustration proved to be a strong foundation for artistic expression.
I managed to reflect on my own life and on the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. I tried to step into his body and view him from the inside out--through the lens of his architecture, which produced a lengthy piece of writing. “Future Song” was also produced during my time at the house and “Love Through a Window Frame” was another poem that I edited during the residency. Each of these pieces will fit into the manuscript that I am very close to completing. Spending hours alone only felt natural given the reality that we all find ourselves in. And despite the anxieties and the uncertainties of the current pandemic, I am grateful for the opportunity to explore another space that felt untouched and removed and quiet. I couldn’t help but think that the fox and the groundhog were grateful to see me, as well; I suppose they would not have stopped by to tap on the window or to watch me from the woods otherwise.
Future Song
Infinite trees
with infinite leaves
spread
to the horizon
and shutter in the wind thick air
vibrating.
Lightning above.
Infinite trees
we live below
look down and see our shadows.
We smoke with our backs against your bark
as your skin falls apart
behind us
hair is rigid on the neck
when we feel the static--
burnt wood.
Infinite trees
in a gasp of lightning:
some belong to families
others belong to houses
some belong to the woods
some belong to children
and some are crushed with vines
others don’t grow just right
some die slowly in the night.
Infinite trees
with infinite leaves
now saturated with rain--
your unyielding smoking wood
we turn into tabletop art--
can’t stop dancing beneath shade
or smoking with backs against bark--
widespread leaves
keep me down below
keep me from climbing
and keep me here.
The infinite trees
with their infinite leaves--
we are skeletons of wood
just like the rest
waiting for a future song
act of alchemy--energy--
your hand that has
just been touched for the first time.
Your smile
that is real beneath the leaves.
There is the smell of thunder
like wet smoke
like your skin absorbing the night
through a window
absorbing quiet humid streets
in the summer heat.
You know what the thunder smells like
but you don’t know me
until the rain is there in the dark.
I don’t know you
but I know what the thunder smells like too.
I’ve seen lightning twist wood around
into muscle or split it through the middle
set fire to the stillness.
And I could know the future
if I went far away--
looked at a blackhole so closely
in the warped time and space.
I could come back to the earth
and hold your hand again
and kiss you purple.
But old eyes can’t read lyrics
when eyes drift like leaves--
expedited time to hold your hand
if you were ninety then like the trees
and lived a life staring up
singing a future song
waiting for the air to vibrate.
So I reach over now
to set my glasses down
beside the wooden bed
and lay still
to wait for the lightning as well
next to the hyacinths
and the can of beer.
To Frank, Within the Pope-Leighey House
Your house is here, Frank.
I sit in your architecture.
I observe your texture.
A groundhog comes to the window
sticks his nose right on the glass
looks me in the eyes.
Could’ve been you.
I don’t know much
but it could’ve been you.
We measure our lives with algorithms
the groundhog just looks for food
I just sit and write here inside of you.
Your algorithm was on paper
in geometry
gliding graphite along graphs.
I sit here in your structure.
I step into your construct.
I see the backside of your ribs.
You don’t know my ribs, Frank
but I measure my time just like you.
You built order
among particles.
I sit in the architecture
of your immortality
Frank.
I teach high school.
I don’t know about building homes
I don’t have millions
nor does anyone know me.
I have no Wrightian style
no unique accent of verse
to be analyzed here.
But I see the backside of your ribs
and your heart is clear.
I see your stomach churn behind the wood
the veins in the grain
your still blood liquid here.
Are you in love
or just the groundhog passing by
or the red fox--ears perked--listening?
Is my presence unsettling
or do I comfort old fingerprints
on old brick bones?
I consider your dark eyes
smooth forehead
and thin lips.
I see how many years you’ve lived
within the rings of the wooden soul
and watch condensation drip.
If you knew decades ago
I would be here
aware of your time
aware of your wives and your
architectured life--
if I watched you in the morning
laying next to you--
had just woken up
watched you yawn in sync
with the dew
on your windows
outside
would that be Wrightian
or am I just measuring time?
There have been families inside of you
yelling
loving
children
death in a pond
and tea on the stove
sweat in the night
and hands
on the inside of your eyes
leaving stains against the glass.
I sit inside as a tourist
walks by
taking pictures
through that glass.
I am bothered, Frank.
I sit and consider you--
your skeleton I applied to.
We have a deal
you never agreed to.
We are together
you and I
and the wandering photographer
doesn’t know that I know when you were born
and if you are still alive in the past
in that other dimension--time--
I know when you die.
I know about
Catherine
Mamah
Maude
Olgivanna.
I know how Mamah will die.
I know the morphine within Maude.
Your architecture remains.
Leave skeletons alone.
This will do
we can talk like this.
I can warn you now
to not worry about death
to leave the houses unbuilt
to leave the woods to the groundhog and the fox.
But there is no message I can send
no rewriting an algorithm
no truth against the world
to reach into the reverse
and tap you on the shoulder
to feel something other than.
James lives in Washington DC and teaches high school English in Virginia. He sketches frequently and enjoys performing at open mics around the city. His poetry and artwork have appeared with small press print and online journals such as Beautiful Cadaver Project, Pittsburgh, Better Than Starbucks, Wordpeace, Tiny Spoon Literary Magazine, Goat's Milk Magazine, The Wild Word and others
Follow James on social | @jamodsteck