Jason Carey-Sheppard

My family and I live on the edge of a wetland. Last summer the mosquitoes were so bad that there are now scars on our bodies where we itched at the welts. In some odd way, those scars trace the downed trees and vines that beguile the wetlands' murky surface. It’s as if the wetland laid claim to us, drafting its mark on our skin, making us into its image. Here I must admit I’m a disillusioned radical; I’ve fallen out with man-made protestations and revolts. But I still do have faith in radical action, radical ideas, and radical materialism. In petrified fruits floating mid-air waiting to be plucked by a toddler’s fat hands. In breakfast bowls made up as gardens. In wind trapped in trees making no sound, only blowing cold. In the sighting of a beloved cartoon, slinking misanthropically across a driveway. It’s fair to say I’ve become more a mystic than a Marxist, sketching out praxis not in a refined theory of cause and condition, but through the organic onslaught of bodies in space.