POETIC SCRIPT
Wormhole dé ma figur
WORMHOLE OUT OF MY FACE
2024. December.
I went to the dentist for a surface correction
a jaw–a curve of bone–
your jaw–
but the jaw was a structural program.
A grid landscape mapping my own
wormhole de ma figur.
In 2010, a dentist said:
take out the wisdom
this is where the hole would grow.
Insurance refused.
Go to the ER
she said:
pretend it hurts
make them take it out,
but my jaw had learned to seal itself
–it sealed itself.
So the wormhole de ma figur went quiet
joining the silent fraterntiy
of people who keep pain too long
until it turns on us.
WORMHOLE DE MA FIGUR
Marks the moment Jackson speaks directly of their medical surgery and the strange time warp that followed the discovery of the “hole in my face.” Moving between the body’s interior and the expanse of weather systems, the voice-over pairs images of weather balloons, radiosondes, NASA archives, and vessels with the lived sensation of pressure, rupture, and gravitational pull.
This is not a narrative of recovery, but of orientation–locating oneself in altered time, tracing the contours of absence as a force that shapes both perception and orbit. As the first part of a trilogy, “Wormhole dé ma figur” lays the ground for the next chapter, where Jackson will inhabit the geodesic dome built at the Bemis Center in 2024 to open each plane as a portal–linking land and air-based scenes of resilience and innovation through magazine, internet sourced footage, and family archives–weaving urban with rural and digital with tactile.
WORK IN PROGRESS
Part one of a trilogy, “Wormhole dé ma figur” builds from footage and ideas in Iterations of a Welcoming Place (The Contemporary Austin) and Resonant Landscapes (Ivester Contemporary). Those works explored portals, soil-based structures, and atmospheric imagery; here, the focus shifts to my own experience with a jaw cyst, linking the body’s interior to weather systems and gravitational pull.
At the lake–2019.
I played with a weather balloon–
let it rest on water’s breath
and the ache was there too–
low tide under the gumline.
Under shores sand met wet rubber
and silence tore open.
I was the radiosonde–
balloon above–
instrument below,
lifting through layers of air,
measuring storms from the inside out.
Pressure building in the jaw’s dark sky
but no transmission made it home,
just the quiet pull of
wormhole de ma figur.
X-Ray.
Before anything
He says:
We must remove the hole.
Pink noise circles my face–
a slow storm making landfall.
Eyes closed.
Jaw locked.
I still see the blue light–
sweeping my horizon,
circling
coordinates of wormhole de ma figur.
Nurses guide me out,
their hands warm on my chin–
like ground crew unhooking
a radiosonde from its tether.
I see nothing.
I feel nothing.
Yet he points:
a swirling circle–
the calm eye in my bone’s weather map–
the balloon I’ve been chasing
since before I knew it was there.
The entrance to wormhole de ma figur
A new image:
3D skull, slow rotation–
satellite footage of a cyclone.
Zoom.
The calm eye swells
where the hole feeds
collapse without wind.
forces and futures–mouths opening
into unmeasured distances.
Once I spoked from inside a sphere
A voice transmitted through static,
signal searching for its ground station,
falling always toward
wormhole dé ma figur.
in the storm’s quiet center of my face
–called into question
jaw–called into question.
Had this pain been shadowing me for years?
What if I had never looked?
I had been chasing a pain that was systemic,
while the slow ersoion of my body’s structure
went quietly unmarked.
with the hole in my face.
sur de ma figur,
get out of my face,
sur de ma figur,
get out of my face
–and so it shall be
and the gravity keeps me
circling.
POETIC SCRIPT