Passing
Are teapots art
if sufficiently awkward
or plates
with a poisonous glaze?
I keep dreaming of making things that might, like the beveled
edge of a mirror, compound value:
method antinomic, attitude questioning
result, still sometimes birdshit-
in such dreams I am always responsible
for the distance between burnt umber and brown
the roots concealing themselves
in the pilled wool of my pullover
my eyes a soldered bridge
mute before the questions, what's it for?
how long will it last- if irony's passé
shall we bring on beauty, the kind that has absorbed its opposite?
If not why not hovers over
virtuoso, tour de force & trompe l'oeil
but who can know the depth of even one's own heart-
access is guarded by a hard flame.
My ever-breaking promise of bliss:
If it holds water, is it art?
No matter how the poplars hold back the hill
as straight as any trees could be
they sway, as a mountain can appear the only one
or a link in a colossal chain.
One writes in a trance, the other applies Teutonic discipline:
shouldn't it look easy?
Let's varnish usefulness for long duty-
Christmas in the tropics-let's festinate
the yellow daisies into bloom, so icy in their blown glass-
—Natasha Sajé
____
from Bend (Tupelo Press, 2004)