Poetry & Photography by Adrian Moens

"I hand process all my negatives. Everything is shot on medium format film. There's often a search for emptiness in my photographic work - especially in my landscape endeavors."

yard

(dallas, august 1987)

when my mother turns out the light

after kissing my forehead, my cheek,

my small mouth, the slivered halo

brimming the bedroom doorway slips

across her hand as she departs.

i begin to dream and listen

as the insects die peacefully,

finally, in the yard.

not eaten in groveling mouths

of birds, sucked in

to lawnmower blades, smeared

across windshields – the insects die

peacefully in the yard.

a final softness drifting

from their rigid shells,

they stagger empty

across the dusk.

this is a bone, no this is a bone

kids mingle on the corner, where a man was stabbed

last thursday, searching for a scrubbed-away stain

on the sidewalk where blood ran from his chest

& pooled.

how much blood doesn’t matter. it was the perfect amount.

one kid,

who thinks they found it, invites the others to look.

it’s nice to see these kids acting so kindly to each other.

kids on their knees, bent to the gutter, picking at twigs, saying

this is a bone, no this is a bone.

Adrian Moens was born at home in a single wide trailer on a Southern Oregon hillside, and spent the first 22 years of his life climbing trees and jumping into rivers. Adrian now resides in Brooklyn, New York after spending a decade in Chicago, where he earned his BFA, with a concentration in experimental sound and music at the School of the Art Institute. His work has been performed and exhibited in print and online journals, The 2008 Whitney Biennial (in collaboration with Neighborhood Public Radio), the 2010 Electronic Literature Organization Conference, and various galleries and venues in the U.S.A.

Stone Pacific

a zine of unconventional art and writing from the PNW and beyond

Poetry & Photography by Adrian Moens

"I hand process all my negatives. Everything is shot on medium format film. There's often a search for emptiness in my photographic work - especially in my landscape endeavors."