Christian Stanzione

Ants enter the imagination through the eye.

I.

Erstwhile,
they democratized the lungs of a field mouse,
pulling away one-thousand-times their weight in bronchial tissue.

In legion, they colonize your property.
Watch them flee from the rotten oak your father has set on fire; he’s spent a week following them like an angel

and determined this the point of eradication.

He hears their chitin crackling beside the wood,
he does not understand the cross. Some places he is an American,
but here he watches his process and admires the way it constructs the nation we call “self.”

My piece, like Mike's, is both call and response. I sent him part one (a poem I wrote after spending a few moths reading Stanley Hauerwas) early in our process. As time went on Mike sent me samples of his responses, along with some insight into his life and process. I found his language, like his art, interesting and bubbling with poetic phrases; the erasure is his emails to me, which I hope not only reflect the theme of the exhibit, but offer a theological perspective complimentary to those offered in part one.

— Christian Stanzione