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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 Fritsch

JOE 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.

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The Brooklyn Rail

JUL-AUG 2015

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