Gallery
You want me chiseled,
the way George Washington rises in granite
above the palaver of his countrymen,
in hairspray.
How will hammers transpose my features
edgeless as a ghost.
How in rock will they elaborate?
You want me sketched by compass,
as Vitruvian Man,
angles on a field, proportions of equivalence,
fleshed by degrees.
How will the draftsmen discover my motions,
like a flicker at her hollow trunk?
How may paper and pencil recall the skittish?
You want me photographed,
the way Avedon posed celebrities with backdrops,
platinum chloride on matte,
risen superior, then, to dilettantes.
In a darkroom, in gloves and goggles,
how will they pull my image from a pan of poison?
How will they capture my contrasts,
moon without an earth, overwhelmed by light?
You want me caricatured in ink,
as by Al Hirschfeld, his NINA
cleverly hidden in Sunday memes.
How will the caricaturist accentuate my clumsiness,
my attempts to be seen?
How will they hide my name?
In a gimmick, an ambivalent sleeve.
Isele Magazine (April 2022)
