Poetry
Minor Treatise on A Warning from Robbe-Grillet
Stunned bird rewakes in the cold
pan. Fluttering heart
placed there by hand, hand screened
in a plaid dishtowel—
When windows face each
other the thousand grassblades
quarantined in separate yards merge—
you like the phrase mise-en-abîme
—and the pan is named "Bake-King," innards
greased with old burnt oils. The bird’s
error is transparency, okay. But could this resolve
the stove’s erotic corners, enamel
curves harmed— how— as if by hammer-blows,
black metal shown through, bone
reversed. Temporarily broken-necked, small
duped-by-vision imperceptibly
revives. "Electric" is a slowly reddening
spiral, "gas" the sudden blue mandala/tit flaring
in the mother’s mother’s mother’s muttering
dark. You set it free by the dead stump, it hops,
hooray. Dumb energy recollects itself
into itself but if you begin
by believing in metaphor you will end
by believing in God
Contributor
Frances RichardFrances Richard is nonfiction editor of the literary journal Fence; a member of the editorial team at the art and culture magazine Cabinet; and a frequent contributor to Artforum. Her first book of poems, See Through, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2003. She teaches at Barnard College, and lives in Brooklyn.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Five Poems from Pavilion
By Gabriel PalaciosNOV 2019 | Poetry
Gabriel Palacios lives and writes poems in Tucson, Arizona, where he recently received an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. Recent work can be found in West Branch, The Volta, Typo Magazine, Territory, Spoon River Poetry Review and Bayou Magazine.
3 poems
By K. Desireé MilwoodDEC 20-JAN 21 | Critics Page
K. Desireé Milwood is a Panamanian-American poet & author of Poems for My Namesake released in 2016. She is known for her witty & thought provoking style of haiku. She currently resides & creates in Newark, New Jersey.
Brooklyn 2020
By Steven TaylorDEC 20-JAN 21 | Poetry
Steven Taylor is a writer and musician living in Brooklyn. His latest works are Don’t Hide the Madness: William S. Burroughs in Conversation with Allen Ginsberg, from Three Rooms Press, and Songs of Innocence and of Experience, from Ace Records.
Through the Uncertainty, Agnes Borinsky and the Working Group for a New Spirit Are Taking Inventory of Our Lives
By Daniel KraneNOV 2020 | Theater
How can we find assurance and community in our upside down world? It is an especially taxing effort for theater artists, whose work and livelihoods depend on collaboration and communion. Enter the Working Group for a New Spirit, playwright Agnes Borinskys free initiative that offers a virtual home for transient artists, seminars in how to take stock of our lives, and more. Daniel Krane dives into this efforta series of gatherings for clarity and direction in our messy moment of distance and collapsethat the Bushwick Starr is hosting now through December 7.