“Another Event” by Esteban del Valle is acrylic, pastel and spray paint on raw canvas. 78” x 60” Esteban del Valle is an interdisciplinary artist born in Chicago, Illinois in 1984.  He completed his MFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009, where he received a Presidential Scholarship and the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship.

May we wrap in tanoor bread our enemies swirl/ them in date molasses scoops of sesame paste / may we fill their bellies, stuff them in fact / like leaves of chard

on the shore / she gave birth, a Japanese soldier / stabled her with his horse. carved / teeth into dice. if they landed even /   a woman was shot. odd / & rape instead. sometimes / death can wait for a man to open his pants.

My father ate fire from bottles that burst / when emptied—sharp embers I learned / to tread across without being burned.

We call this the ordeal blues / Now crawl to the piano seat and make a blanket for your cell / Paint scenes of a child dancing up to the court appearance / And leaving a man, / but not for home

I trace your brow ridge, / how it is mine and how it is not / and think how years from now / you will drift / down Holt Avenue plastered, and appear / in daydreams– making homes of sofas.