Joshua Escobar writes a poem in response to Sunny Leerasanthanah’s photobook, Homes Against Tides (2018).
Magnetic
Honduran bananas in a red bin
Imagine their algorithm
A loose dog causes traffic
Making out on a roof in Veracruz
A wood garage door painted evening green
Men between 30 and 50 fabricating metal in Moreno Valley
Patterns and clothes painted by fresh art students
Light up sculptures of the Three Magi
Migrants living under beige tarps
Futurity negativity and reality
A school library with magazines and computers
Specifications determined by global investors
The number of times the definition for city changes
Damp earth at a monster truck rally
Dying knowing as much as we can
Of the continent beneath us
The fixations of the rich and the fixation of
Sloping Roads and rose colored clothing
Bruise pretend and confidence
The morning sun intensifies
The studies of dreamy ambivalence
React pay and confuse
A day with no laws
Under a portico
January 27th, 1962
Childhood's lasting spin
Ramping pains of losing someone young
Whose small mistakes you prize
No day is the same
When you are twenty or forty
In hell
In cinema
In Johannesburg
In the south of Thailand
Raves are thrown
By an ancestor's
Fruity Mexican gardeners
Who want
Mazes to carefully
Replicate hazelnuts
And computer chips mud
And modern art before
And after sand bubbler crabs making smoke bombs and catacombs with Indo-Pacific sand
Work crowds disassembling on sidewalks
Around Milpas between 2 and 4
— Joshua Escobar