Awareness of natural forces ebbing and flowing is balanced in the collection by man-made stressors.  In Barker’s collection, cognizance of employment and work always runs in the background.

Review: La Serenissima by Wallace Barker

Psychoanalyst Leslie Morris may be Phillips’ keenest creation.  He has absolutely no intention to tell the truth. His office is papered with false documents, populated by prop women (patients? partners? grifters?) coming and going. 

Coper, Doper, Kopman, Spy: Review of Essays and Fictions by Brad Phillips

Imagine seeing a puffball mushroom in a field and knowing its name is Calvatia gigantea. Such a one appeared Wednesday.

Forager

 the metal screen, the sun-thrown darts of willow leaves 

Mary-Pat

I couldn’t decode cricket, noise looping excitedly all around in the night, in the trees: labor pains. What are they saying, Apollos?

Summer Baby

God knows it’s terrible the California coastline drops off so hysterically.

Twigs

Claude emerged from the far side of the great hall, with transit trains and bus lines and blood cells hurtling forward with him like a discus or some dogwood flower of time. 

The Crescent

On the cloth, the old man makes room
and draws in two wrestling figures,
whose lines suggest a violent time.

'Two Figures' by Francis Bacon

The Fresh Kills landfill birds the sky,
and greens the World Trade voids and vaults,
caresses sorrow. Noble boats
lay down their wreaths in Kill van Kull.

A. E. Weisgerber

Selected work

Projects