Jill Magi

Voiceover (male):
“While all of Ellen White’s writings
are available for research,
the unpublished letters, manuscripts
and other materials in the Ellen G. White files
do not constitute a public archive.

The sacred nature of the files generally
and the confidential nature
of many of the communications in the files

require that they be cared for and used responsibly.

Even manuscripts whose primary value is historical in nature
must not be used in a solely secular manner:

spiritual things are spiritually discerned.”

Prophetess:
what comfort did you
water down?

she said child
child give
your heart to Him then
overturned you the table
between

I slap through her
empty phrases

you want

you want more? so go

just
go—

she finally
tells no lies then
shrouded she
slams me with
salvation

(when I say “better world”
you think “politics”
but not that
not that

then I whisper:

“eclipse not desire”

and watch the recoil between us)

---

Jill Magi works in text, image, and textile, and is the author of over five books, the most recent of which is LABOR (Nightboat 2014). Other recent projects include the scholarly monograph Pageviews/Innervisions: a Textimage Theory and Curriculum (Rattapallax 2014), and two e-pamphlets Labor Poetic Labor! Projects 1 and 2 (Essay Press 2015). In the spring of 2015 Jill wrote a weekly commentary for Jacket2 on “a textile poetics,” and of her other critical work has appeared in The Force of What’s Possible: Accessibility and the Avant-garde, The Racial Imaginary, and The Eco-Language Reader. The Project Space gallery at New York University Abu Dhabi mounted a solo exhibition of her visual work in fall 2015. She teaches writing through the study of textiles as well as poetry and art electives at NYUAD.