| stay sharp || be soft |

Wingate Flowers - Hayley Barker , 2023.

American , b. 1973 -

Hiroshi Nagai's paintings need sunglasses to look at.

They look like how it feels to walk across a parking lot on a 98° summer day without a speck of shade in sight.

They look like heaven but also like you'd burn your bare feet on the ground.

Even when you can see shade you know it's not enough and the minute you step out you'll be burnt to a crisp like a vampire.

This feels like I could trip on that radio and fall right into that water, feeling the crystal waves as I drop in.

And this, a nice stroll down a resort strip, where my sunscreened skin could literally feel cooked if I leaned too close to the tiling.

And then a nice stretch of summer street, wherein you could see your face in the flushed red of that car provided it didn't blind you from its sunny reflections.

Ra, God of the Sun

"After they overheard that ICE was at the courthouse to arrest someone, they improperly accessed court databases to determine who was not born in the United States," a DOJ detention filing says. "They then snuck every suspected illegal alien who was at the courthouse out a back door, where ICE, who was waiting in the parking lot for their target to leave the building, could not see them."