Featured in the interactive installation “Making Waves”, part of the 2014 Transforming Spaces Art Tour at the Doongalik Studios art gallery, and partner to the sound piece on “Are You A Witness?” these chapbooks contain a single poem in the voices of the infamous female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Reade, as they reflect upon gender, desire & sexuality at their pirate trial.
Bound into the letterpress printed cover is a fold out of the poem printed on one side of a page and a hand-marbled ocean pattern into the other.
OFFERINGS MATERIAL
two women
prisoners at the bar
are here
to witness your
grand firing
of tongues
do you have witness or
any questions to ask
then go from hence
to the place from
whence you came with
nothing but your memories
which will betray you
by colors and shades
and your voice
clear with longing
but do not forget us sirs
how can you
how can you forget
the thing you once possessed
it still exists out there
without you
a beloved blinking
horizon light
you can’t approach it
it marks a graveyard
ask us how we know
ask us what we have buried
to love in the way we did
piratically feloniously
upon a dear high sea
and below a dear high sea
when you kiss
the tongue of the ocean
it will wreck you
a scattered debris of
insatiable desire
we will tell you a secret
the difference between waves
is one breaks and one takes
and one moves
a shoreline so slowly
you will think your memories
have betrayed you
ask us which ones we are
SONIA FARMER 