O.K. Cupid: Little Songs & Look Book, and: Ok, Pan to the Heroine, and: Ok, Pack a Flashlightk, and: Ok, Switch, and: Ok, Astronaut?, and: Ok, Sans Allure?

O.K. Cupid: Little Songs & Look Book, and: Ok, Pan to the Heroine, and: Ok, Pack a Flashlightk, and: Ok, Switch, and: Ok, Astronaut?, and: Ok, Sans Allure? Jennifer Sperry Steinorth (bio) and Jenny Walton (bio) Keywords poetry, Jennifer Sperry Steinorth, artwork, Jenny Walton, dating, OKCUPID, matches, conversational, gaze, intimacy, performance ARTIST STATEMENT Jenny Walton's series Match/Enemy consists of over two hundred water-color "portraits" of men matched to the artist's profile by the online dating app OkCupid in the mid 2010s. The numeric titles come from algorithmic calculations based on user response to questions in the app, the first number indicating percentage of compatibility (Match) and the second incompatibility (Enemy). The Enemy algorithm was published to encourage oppositional attraction but has since been discontinued. In addition, Match/Enemy looks at a subset of men who have chosen to obscure, alter, or hide their physical facial features, a liberty no longer allowed on many such apps. By choosing these portraits the artist explores the ideas of altered and adopted personas within social media and contemporary portraiture. The works on paper are 9x12˝, approximately four times the size of the images as displayed on the artist's iPhone screen where most "shopping" took place. On each painting the artist spent two to three hours, about the time one might take on a first date. AUTHOR NOTE In this series, a close third-person narrator penetrates the mind of a single woman surveying potential suitors. While the 200+ paintings of Match/Enemy form a composite portrait of the artist, this scant representation, chosen by me, distorts that reflection. The woman whose eyes we look through is not intended to represent the artist. If anything, these poems reflect my own obsessions with gaze, performance, intimacy, and aversion. [End Page 175] OK, PAN TO THE HEROINE A lover once referred to her as investment.She thought—mutual bonds? but he was all liquid assets, soon divested, no chance of return. So cut to the crop of hands caught in the scrim light between billable hours—an overexposed black & white—glimpse of the animal mid-skin—the deed done—blood rinsed—opposable thumbs buttoning up his linkless cuffs before backto work, the boss, the wife & kids, pressed & starched where life is good and good, Love, is dull.Is Hollywood to blame for this tragedy? Maybeit's not power but plot that defines what's sexy.We flirt with what we fear. No accident thenwe call it heroine—that most addictive drug. [End Page 176] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 177] OK, PACK A FLASHLIGHT Some say marriage is made in heaven, some in the rear end collisions on Gross Street. Dante says delusion is an egregious sin,but it's merciless chance—that blind pair of die— that fills us with terror. Duh. This from a bookshe bought to read with her bae—before she sawhim reading it with his wife. What're the odds? Huxley said six monkeys striking keyboardsat random for millennium would eventually key a sonnet. Had she known it all along?What difference lies twixt love and chance if both are blind? A sentence revised for clarity may be a mercy: This from the bookshe bought . . . the night of the blackout. [End Page 178] Click for larger view View full resolution [End Page 179] OK, SWITCH Some hands whip; some hands smart; some play with feathers, some with tar; what's the difference between life and art, between role play and reality? Not even dogslove unconditionally—even they know the difference between humility and humiliation. So does she.Though some postures she cannot bend her mind to imagine, she doesn't have to. A body recallsbeing struck by someone it loves. The open hand. Slotted spoon. Spatula. Belt. It never feltlike love. Like this. How to distinguish human from instrument?—even that upturned gaze intimates no scrim of defiance, no twitch to retaliate, even to stand. But maybe she's about to face her fears. Maybe she's got an open corkscrew in her hands. [End Page 180] Click for larger view View full...