Bethany A. Spiers and Monika Sziladi {Part 1}

Road Notes

There’s nothing poetic about Florida really.

Everywhere we drive, we try to outrun the rain

that assaults our green jeep in fistfuls.

D falls in love with the delta today.  We keep the

steering wheel close, cigarettes closer.  I sit up

waiting to hear you made it home.

Try to find my reflection in industrial towns.

Everywhere the ground shakes with your absence

but everywhere it’s perfectly summertime.

 

Southern sand between my toes now

not the persistent black sand of Oregon and May.

The beaches are steep and full of bad tattoos.

The grayness of the sea reminds me of our city winter,

remnants tangled in our leg hair for hours.

 

“Thank God there are smart people that

built these bridges for us,” he says

 

And on the highway

 

the tires curled like caterpillars on their sides.

But this one lay there, thrashed open like

a dead falcon or some other great black bird,

wings upturned at their tips, reaching for the sun.

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Mónika Sziládi is from Budapest, Hungary and lives in New York. She is a 2010 Yale MFA graduate in Photography. In 2008 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She holds a Maitrise in Art History and Archaeology, Sorbonne, Paris, France (1997). She is the recipient of the Alice Kimball English Traveling Fellowship (2010); a winner of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Photography Portfolio Competition (2010); juror’s pick by Julie Saul and Alec Soth, Work-in-Progress Prize, Daylight/CDS Photo Awards (2010). She is an adjunct lecturer of art at Drew University, Madison, NJ.  { msziladi.com }

Bethany A. Spiers holds a BFA in Writing for Publication, Performance and Media from Pratt Institute and is currently pursuing an MSS from Bryn Mawr College.  Previously published work includes Pretty Lou (Black Lodge Press, 2006) and the self-published chapbook series Oratoria (2003), as well as poems in various literary magazines.  Spiers lives in Philadelphia and performs under the moniker The Feverfew. 

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Words with Pictures is a weekly two-part post that pairs photographers and writers. This week, a photographer was given a piece of writing to inspire the creation of a new piece of photograph. The following week a writer will be given a photograph and will respond with writing. This series is curated by Conveyor Editor Dominica Paige.