Small works on paper about the implied narrative of nostalgia and regret in vintage ephemera and family photographs.

You bid on an auction “lot of vintage ephemera” and carry your loot and your glee home to sift (grave-robber) through the layers, treasure-intent. The dead’s detritus appeals because it is a mystery. You assume irony or sincerity?

Caramelized newspaper clippings. A mimeograph. A penny postcard, blank. A photograph of a child with the face X’d out. A spent matchbook like a dead butterfly, faded folding wings. Aunt Flotsam and Uncle Jetsam.

A passing sense of loss, a sense of passing for these fallen leaves, sheaves, leavings. A person in paper. A heart into pulp.

Bang the nail and hang another one before the bugs triumph. Get down inside every photograph until you find something to love: a farcical moustache, a lanky strand of pearls, a baby brandished like a bone-in ham. The gravitas of the posed and the mirth of the candid. Have people always laughed?

Let your eyes run circles around the matriculates and the party guests and the Christmas gift distributors. A hundred years of people eating dinner. People on the farm, on vacation, on horses and sleighs and trains and porches and teams. Studio shots and snapshots and someone always blinks. Hemlines high and low, hats on, off. A fortune in old automobiles and the pre-Ipana nightmare of yesteryear’s dental hygiene.

They’re all dead. And so are their friends.
“Who are these people?” “I don’t know.”