The pantheon of American politics gathered at its proverbial colosseum, ABC studios, on September 10. The night was young, the stakes were high, and Donald Trump was visibly suffering to not let the words to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” escape from his mouth as he shook Kamala Harris’s hand. Good thing she walked […]
We here at Motif have some sad news to report: The eight-legged arachnid who stood (crawled) careful guard over the patrons of Warwick Library has finally curled into her final resting place. Beezus passed away peacefully at the ripe age of 20 in her spacious cage. She enjoyed metaphorical romps in the park with her […]
The power of imagining depends upon something distinct from me. – Rene Descartes There is nothing more magic and beautiful than lines forming across paper. It’s all there is. It’s all there ever was. – Charles Bukowski In a small room, a woman sits at an even smaller desk. There is nothing except a bed, […]
Between paper-bound streets, a young man sits at a small desk. Around him are amassed towers of books, each title like a glowing yellow window in an elusive night. The book is a beacon of comfort in the dark, akin to the sight of a roaming silhouette traveling through the light canvas of city windows […]
It starts as not a particularly outlandish night. The sun has escaped behind thick clouds, a few raindrops hit the windows, and the wind moving through the leaves is louder than the cars speeding through the slick streets – just another fleeting summer storm, nothing more, nothing less. Inside Riff Raff, PVD’s only bar-and-bookstore, a […]
When I’m sad, I get up and go around the world — Tomaž Šalamun Why should I feel lonely? — Henry David Thoreau The streets are covered in shadows. The orange cat of sun slinks through the city, crawling between the crevices and alleyways as though she is filling up the empty spaces between buildings […]
The parking lot was hot. As hot as hell, or as hot as a parking lot in the middle of Rhode Island at 12pm on a summer afternoon can be – the two are synonymous. A few lost clouds scuttled over a dark-cloaked couple walking across the asphalt. The black-painted fingernails of their conjoined hands […]
Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic. – Oscar Wilde We let our eyes linger on a page. We brush across the strokes of a canvas. We stare out at the sea, an empty plain, the way leaves filter sunlight through the trees — our eyes spend a lifetime processing a wealth […]
In the dark room near the bottom of the ocean a myriad of shadows float by. Strange, undulating fauna grow from an endless floor. Particles of flesh hang suspended between their blue curtains. Silence is a thick blanket where the sun doesn’t shine. The mind is left with nothing to process, it imagines the sounds […]
At the Motif headquarters there is a corner full of white boxes. Their sides are emblazoned with dates, months, years, scribbled in different shades of marker. Some are crossed out and hastily re-written, some boxes lay coverless, or bound in a thick plastic tape. This hodgepodge corner is the Motif archives, and was my home […]