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2/1/2017 7:57:27 PM Joey Oliva Posts: 4	There was no art in the graffiti on your walls, just bilingual tribal markings, adolescent impertinence dividing up the entropy of migrant backs bent over under the unrelenting Sun and foreign flags reducing rich heritages to pastries and hand me down musical collections. No false pretenses. No deeper meanings. No metanarrative to justify a discourse that somehow gave permanence to a transient people toiling for survival. Taped up glass cases and boarded up windows that for decades had resisted hurricanes rapidly gave way to gentrified sobriety. The raw realness of ugly which cut through with pride, like a deformed beauty mark, now reduced to more palatable ticky-tacky. From Palmetto to Palm Avenue local papers glorify the triumph of development, the diversity of sameness, much in the same way that all turds look alike. It is safer now. It is quiet. One can taste the shine of new in the plastic bags of insatiable consumers. Even the unrelenting Sun seems now more forgiving. Hiding in the fringes, the bended backs of toiling migrants carry on brandishing the raw realness of ugly, like a deformed beauty mark, for no one to see.
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2/24/2017 5:36:52 PM Doug Vinson Posts: 102	Wow, Joey - well done! I think you set out to do and say something here, and that you succeeded. I like your comparisons, images, etc. Hard for me to give any criticism at all. "One can taste the shine of new in the plastic bags of insatiable consumers. " --Great line, and if anything I encourage you to be "poetic" like this. "Taste the shine of new." Cheers!
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2/27/2017 3:12:42 AM Joey Oliva Posts: 4	Thanks for the kind words Doug. I am pleased with the imagery that I came up with. Doug Vinson wrote: Wow, Joey - well done! I think you set out to do and say something here, and that you succeeded. I like your comparisons, images, etc. Hard for me to give any criticism at all. "One can taste the shine of new in the plastic bags of insatiable consumers. " --Great line, and if anything I encourage you to be "poetic" like this. "Taste the shine of new." Cheers!
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