I. Zebra

after Elad Lassry
Ever since the glue you’d been
dipped in by the heel began
to peel, you’ve borne this
contradiction, yes and no
coexistent. The only sign

of inner agreement
is your tail: it flicks
in careless circles which,
in this instance, are larger
than the loop of 16mm film

which projects all your gestures
in parts as the camera pans
at a close zoom. It is as though
a few blind men are grasping at
the disparate natures of this flank

and snout and deliberating how
they can be reconciled, only
I am each of the blind men
over the brief progression
of frames.

After The Exhibition [revised]

after D. J.

Excuse me, Mister Judd?
I just couldn’t help overhearing
The silence in your latest work,
Untitled. It reminds me of a rainbow
In cross-section, freeze-dried and preserved
In monochrome, mounted but as yet unlabeled.
I’m as confounded as you, but when will you go
And see your stepmother at the Home?
She misses your piano playing.

You claim your hands will never touch
This sculpture, the ladder rungs by which
You could ascend to Euclid’s perfect world,
The only provable universe, if it existed.
So won’t you draw a picture for your daughter?
Today she especially loves butterflies.

Your desire to be and not seem—it’s as if to say,
Perhaps God’s bathroom could use some shelving.
A suggestion devoid, of course, of specific toiletries
(Which cleanser for the Necessary Being?):
Just green brass ledges for the Almighty’s loofah
And accoutrements, which I sincerely hope you celebrate
By letting your English terrier sleep on the bed.
Does he whimper at the door?

Somewhere beneath the exhibit, then,
Must be the shower drain, leaking into the earth,
Into the dirt of your garden uptown.
Your wife, who cannot help but put one second
Before the other, would so very much like
To tend it with you by her side, clutching the weeds
Through garden gloves and gauging the fresh headway
Made by the budding leaves which, Occam’s Razor aside,
Really are there, Donald, which occupy
The space between each of your boxes.

Why I Am Not A Poet

(thanks, Frank)

I am not a poet, I am a garbage man.
I take what’s been thrown away
To a place where it can decompose,
Some of it, and become a tree

Or a bird again, some new instance
Of itself. I am a clockmaker,
Too, but not a poet, just tinkering
With a meticulous little device

Whose aim is to accord
With what happens.
I'm also a mathematician,
Proving that X is X

Again and again, necessarily
And sufficiently, no matter
What operations are undergone.
I have tried my hand at floristry,

Arrangements of lilies
In milky water… Once,
In some past life, I have a feeling
I was even an embalmer,

Searching endlessly
For the unknown secretion
Or rare plant resin
That would make us last.

Unfortunately, it seems
There is too much simple work
To be any kind of poet,
Whatever that may entail.

Exposure In Black & White

[explanatory note: what follows is three poems.]

Bus Riders (George Segal)

Clara, Clara (Richard Serra)

Exposure In Black & White

after George Segal's Bus Riders & Richard Serra's Clara, Clara

Some time ago,
              You thought you were just waiting
To pass through
              On a certain street,
Parabolic trajectories
              The name of which
Nearly touching
              Still escapes you—

Would have been the best
              But, in reality, a clearing
Situation or circumstance
              Of the throat,
To bring us closer—
              Or at least a gesture
Until the doors open,
              Toward the ceiling

That is, of the vehicle
              Which carries a reason
Whose walls we imagine to exist...
              To curve toward one another.

Seminal Work Of Minimalism

after Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians

We occasionally suggest this world
Contains only eleven harmonies
We are destined to repeat and repeat again,
The same in the Galápagos as in Bali
Centuries later. And yet,

We cannot help but change,
Giving ourselves over
To the psycho-acoustic facts,
Taking the duration of a human breath
As a measure of pulse.

Dust Between the Gaps

after Donald Judd

In an exhibit in San Francisco
There is a stack of blocks
Previously owned
By an overgrown child.
Tucked neatly between them

Are their absences,
Crafted when his last toys
Lined the undifferentiated darkness
Of the chest, and he’s left
Even these behind.

After The Exhibition

after Donald Judd

Excuse me, Mister Judd?

Sir, just a moment of your time

For some arbitrary points

Of interest to your public—

Having freeze-dried

A rainbow's cross-section,

When will you visit your stepmother

At the Home?  She misses your piano playing.

Having shorn the idea of beauty

With Occam's Razor,

Do you still let your English terrier

Sleep on the bed?  He'll whimper at the door.

Having sliced and mounted

The cross of Calvary

When the evens and odds were stacked

Against you, surely you'll answer:

Do you still put one second

Before the other, Donald?

What occupies the space

Between the boxes?

Babel

after Donald Judd

Boxes cast in brass

And green plexiglass—

They are ladder rungs

To Euclid's perfect world

Of yes-men.  Each is one

Of God's immaculate fingertips

Reaching through.  Inaccessible,

Virtues in identical wrap

Cast dissimilar shadows,

Overlap despite the sign

Whose letterforms

Say "Do Not Touch"—

Which even the creator

Aims to obey as such.

Before Easter Morning

The blackness of the band at the picture's middle,

Constricting the figure, is certain

To catch the eye.  The source

Of light, concealed behind the backdrop,

Imbues the central subject with a halo.

Her two pastel subordinates angle in,

The smallest obscured by a scarlet thing

Yet smaller from the six-foot vantage

Of the photographer,

Who, in the image qua image,

Does not exist; without whom,

What it contains must cease to be.