Poetry
Window
"A bloom perfuses the meadow that shows in different tones
when the wind blows and at each hour. A transpontine Holland
countenanced with illimitable eyes: a floral St. Lucia's!"
from Walkin' on the Sun, 1997
a door on the roof
rests off its hinges
an artist could turn into
\
a door painted
in the heatlight mouse bone
sprite sanctuary lanterns in the basement
a columbaria through the skeleton
gets to the heart
a form composed entirely of repetition
particulate motion as a constant
so the door enters itself
a hunch
collection of cinnamon sticks
bootleg seance double divination
through divination anastomosis
rejoin as in rejoicing
the door permits the green weathers
branches of the salix and pinecones strung along the door to make a thyrsus command of season
"The view we take…endued with supra-biological forms, in the shape of play" a theater of
the door moving through re-imaginings
the space creates the time,
hang three sage leafs from the knob, after constructing the knob from goose down
whipped into a halo from the recently departed resting there, and link those leaves
with a measure of extension cord
lay down the door
stepped onto the door reciting
If thou be true and true thou art to me
betrothed to truth, though truth is not with thee
Did anyone overhear?
dust props in abandoned theaters, the spirit of the stage!
the curtain withdraws a mouth that touches every corner
glass tickets admit three positions of the door
actor audience inbetween and
between and below, and the stage the
script and the walls the door sure, the
door a wall if off its hinges
it finds itself
a murmur of exiting excitement at what it saw
the door portable potential the door in the mind spun as if with several pivots
360 flip
the kicker & the jam
love
the door
as through it all things
if on a roof a door rests the lightest hand to touch with embodied by imagining
the risk of a latch to freeze the door in place,
famously,
a labyrinth and there at the end the door that could only lead back in
so, the door,
thrown crushed cans at, permits
please, if it ends up anywhere, it should
on a wall or a roof howadoormeansomuch?
In a dark room,
I once saw two projectors point-blank pointed into each other
lens against lens, with the question repeating where is the image
what is the image, I read it was made in '89 by a very little known
Canadian performance and video artist who when I researched, if
that's what I did, either I got the name wrong, or she was completely
overshadowed by the director of public schools in Charleston,
who could be seen cutting a ribbon in images
I remember from the plaque that this was from a series of projects
retroactively named This Vision: Unsatisfied (realized?) one piece
included a projector with wrench jammed in its reel, another was
a cement cube, inside of which, the viewer was told, was a camcorder
that had been left on while the cement was poured, but it's the last
that makes me a happy camper, in this piece (which was
named Generation I (or one))… In Generation I, two projectors
face each other seeming to block the image the other attempts to
transmit, the result is that some light escapes from either side of
the lens enclosure, bisecting the room with a band of light. The film
in both projectors is blank. Ta-da! Roll credits
except that never happened
and there was no roof
Contributor
Joe FritschJOE FRITSCH is a poet and critic. His writing has appeared in Underwater New York, Mad House Journal, and elsewhere. Originally from Rochester, he works at Poets House in Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn. He hasn't been to a barber shop since 2010.