by G.C. Waldrep
after Edith Rimmington
The blood of the hand, écorché
rising into expectation. A stairway
creates the illusion of
domestic entitlement,
the viewer invited to rise
as volition dictates, step by step
the swifts. Their delicate.
I mean we see it as.
Choreography, these turns
they make, defenestrate
the natural habitat. We prepare
each local species
for its inhument, Kharkov
burns its slow way into all
our premier vacation destinations.
No, not physics, the post-
colonial body recoils
as a sort of spring-tapped gun
leaving bruises on the shoulder’s
thickish jail. Prisoner’s
dilemma, whether to compose
after the manner of a CIA drone
or. Something. Soft,
a bank teller maybe. He wants
you to withdraw money
& you want to too,
this is the tragedy of art,
we all want the same things only
some of us go on wanting.
About the Author
G.C. Waldrep’s most recent books are The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta, 2012), co-edited with Joshua Corey, and a chapbook, Susquehanna (Omnidawn, 2013). BOA Editions will release a long poem, Testament, in 2015. Waldrep lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Bucknell University and serves as the editor of the journal West Branch and as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.