Spoon River Poetry Review
              Editors' Prize winner


A Moment for Authentic Shine
This is the greatest moment of your life,
said the voice both familiar and distant, like a childhood
friend become spokesperson for a cleaning product—
which caused the many hats to turn in many directions
and one robed arm to extend.
And what after all had been passing?
The sounds birds made often seemed more cogent
than the swirl of argument, a cyclone in a sandbox. 
So much management we ought to have degrees
was a type of joke made at outmoded parties.
Still with shades and declarations
echoes of heroic solos translated out of urgent decades
while almost unnoticed, pensive tunes accumulate in the mix
like thunder clouds on these warmer days.  Regardless,
the names come unpinned, stars die, a closetful of semi-
recognizable jackets and hats be-speaks
the by-gone, and yet the baffling rekindling of romance
may justify the maintenance of a hairstyle.
A certain heart medication—no, I was afraid to say
a certain heart, beating in the chest of a certain girl.
To say heart in that trite way, and girl when by now she’s fifty,
and real when the elapsing of all things into void
has been made abundantly clear.  But I knew her
and she seemed real, and at thirty still childlike—
a trait adorable in women, rather of concern in men
say the conservatives but look who’s ogling  
the ballplayers around the pool table.
Any slogan invites rebuttal, and a spin into personal views
often doubles futile conversation.  One might live
consuming nothing but packaged goods and still
in that moment of late afternoon crash—
over-heated, nauseated by persistent sexual memory,
blinded by sun, buffeted by wind—unfairly rely
on that prideful sense of authenticity
so prized in our time that it could be said to float,
invisible of course, above a century’s worth of steaming wrecks—
cloud of elemental and reckless
identity unwarranted, silver-lined illusion of nobility—
until geographies choke in the torrent,
shrines assembled from knick-knacks manufactured
by prisoner children dissolve
and in our true magical forest, blossoms
wreathed by small creatures that worked
in tandem with our spirits become
as we become atmosphere.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Beautiful Doom: Heizer's "City" and Scott's "Blade Runner"

Image
There’s a striking similarity between Douglas Trumbull and Ridley Scott’s pyramidal design for the “Tyrell Corporation” headquarters in Blade Runner (1982) and the photos I’ve seen of Michael Heizer’s monumental plaza, Complex City , which has been under construction in Garden Valley, Nevada since 1972.  I’ve not seen any evidence that Trumbull & Scott would’ve been influenced by Heizer. I think the resemblance is probably nothing more than some shared archaeological interests. Still, I love the fact of the resemblance, because it really opens up a web of thinking about art and architecture’s relationship to the future. Both works explicitly and implicitly imagine futures, and both works have monumental properties:  they commemorate the present for a viewer in distant time. I want to start by outlining the web of connections, here: Both City  and Tyrell Corporation are obviously pyramid st ructures, and the structures really are similar—it’s as if Heizer’s massive scul
Read more

Layli Long Soldier's "38"

I'm reading Whereas, by Layli Long Soldier, and in the poem "38," linked here , I learned some history about the Dakota 38 and the "Sioux Uprising" of 1862, also known as "The Dakota War of 1862" (as an aside, this is the same historical event involved in the controversy at the Walker Art Center over the sculpture, "Scaffold." Long Soldier's poem was published by Graywolf, out of Minneapolis. It wouldn't surprise me if the poem was part of what catalyzed the Walker's awareness of the issue, but... that's just me speculating). I learned many things in the poem: I learned about the 38 men who were executed. I learned about Lincoln's presidency and the historical record of his presidency. I learned about the commemorative horseback ride each winter, preserving the memory of the events and of the 38 who were executed. And I learned of Andrew Myrick, who was killed in that conflict. When asked about the condition of the
Read more

Michael Heizer Sightings

Image
I recently watched the documentary, Black White & Gray , about Sam Wagstaff, the New York curator, collector, and photographer who was Robert Mapplethorpe’s partner in a variety of ways.  It’s a really compelling study of a complex human being.  It's insightful, vivid and smart, and really honors Wagstaff's life and legacy without oversimplifying it.  It streams on Netflix.  In addition to all the ways that I really enjoyed the film and respect it as an excellent documentary profile, I was delighted and surprised to learn that Wagstaff had represented Michael Heizer during the (short?) phase of his life when he worked and made a splash on the east coast (later, Heizer would say, “I’d been to the east, and didn’t like what I saw.  It looked like it was degenerating.”).   Wagstaff put Heizer’s works in his shows, and set up a famous earthwork exhibition at the Detroit Art Institute, where Heizer was to drag a heavy mass across the lawn, causing the mass to s
Read more