one looped year but the lake is a journal series at Danspace Project guest curated and edited by NYC-based writer and teacher, Asiya Wadud. In February 2021, Wadud invited 3 pairs of artists into a seven-months-long series of private exchanges through emails, letters, ephemera, and other forms of communication. Jesse Darling and devynn emory, Tarik Kiswanson and Asiya Wadud, and Angie Pittman and Anaïs Maviel were paired based on what Wadud regards as “threads and resonances in their work and the trace knowledge that they might like to know one another and would—perhaps—naturally run into each other during a non-pandemic year.” Wadud writes,“In the dual absence of chance encounters and touch, what other kinds of gatherings are possible? How else can we find our way to each other?”

Please enjoy this thread between Tarik Kiswanson and Asiya Wadud.

During March 2021, Tarik Kiswanson and I began to slowly write a poem together, adding lines as the weeks passed, volleying the poem back and forth, watching it find its shape. At the moment, the poem is at a good landing place, though I believe Tarik and I both remain open to continuing the piece. The text becomes a piece written as a call and response, but also a piece written as a we. No longer does it matter who wrote which individual line. What matters instead is how the language exists as a whole. 

Sincerely yours,

Asiya

one looped year, but the lake

1.

time and again I have held a photograph to my face to smell it

make of it an arrangement then bouquet

let the time orient to an edge more pristine

the precipice then court it

as organ and filament lace or lattice

or breathe 

time and dare to climb the column and lay in wait

laced and lurked and comforted by the hinge of attrition meets monument meets evidence on the page now lets us lurk

 learns to lurk

bare bone in the waiting

bare breath in the waiting

what animal then beguiles me with its its own burgundy heart 

barronnes to wonder then the upstream then the upstream

2.

Beguiles, beguiled, beguile me of all strength. Made me feel calm, made me feel at home.

Took me in and nurtured me, fed me and made me feed. 

In the absence of sun, I manage to find heat in the cold. I let myself feel more, be more.

Heavy breaths, bits and pieces scattered and shattered. Bits and pieces tied together. 

The search for your eyes has begun. 

The words take your shape. As I observed, observe your words, your world looks back at me. 

3.

In the absence of sun, what cool distance becomes reciprocal— takes on warmth?

What other charged warmth to feel 

lead breath 

lead become?

I have opened the side door, shattered anything expectant or tethered 

Let the shape form in the shadows in the drift

Cleaved now, bit by bit

4.

In the palm of my hand, your warmth has reached me. 

Though in the wait, fear not my forgetfulness. Our breaths are synchronized, our hearts beat at the same speed to the same rhythm through the same night. Shatter the norm, shatter yourself, become more in the O. 

I drifted, to get closer

All doors are now open, taking us further.

Let’s fall faster.

Let’s all fall faster?