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
A Selection of Drain Poems
By Ken L. WalkerMAY 2022 | Poetry
Ken L. Walker has published two chapbooks—Antworten (translations of Georg Herwegh from Greying Ghost) and Twenty Glasses of Water from Diez. He has poems and translations in Boston Review, Tammy, Seattle Review, Atlas Review, and ANMLY. His prose and reviews can be found in The Poetry Project Newsletter, Hyperallergic, and Diagram. He holds an MFA from Brooklyn College, works in advertising, and spends the rest of his time documenting drains.
Tuhin Das’s Exile Poems: In the Labyrinth of Homesickness
By Tony LeuzziOCT 2022 | Books
From an interview that follows Das’s new collection of poetry, Exile Poems: In the Labyrinth of Homesickness, the writer says, “I am a Bengali and Bangladeshi first. Some people want to define me by my religion, but I want to be known by my culture, which is Bengali.”
79. (Brooklyn Navy Yard, Columbia County)
NOV 2021 | The Miraculous
An artist in his mid-30s living in New York and working in a 300-square-foot studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, finds himself consumed by frustration and anger. Although he is having exhibitions, after the shows close his paintings inevitably return to his studio, unsold. He’s not sure he wants to go on being an artist. A psychiatrist he consults helps him to understand that his anger revolves around his feelings about race, class and entitlement. Eventually the psychiatrist recommends that he begin working with a physical trainer, who has him start boxing and working out with a punching bag. Around the same time the artist, who is half-Choctaw and half-Cherokee, has been meeting with traditional Native American artists who tell him how the practices of dancing, drumming and beading have saved their lives. These experiences lead him to make a breakthrough in his work. Instead of focusing on painting, he begins to adorn Everlast vinyl punching bags like those he has been using at the boxing gym in extravagant styles inspired by Native American beadwork, pop culture, and everyday life. Along with beads, he adds tassels, sequins, brass and steel studs, yarn, chains, and sundry items. Some of the bags feature beaded texts quoting everyone from Simone de Beauvoir to Public Enemy.
The Brooklyn Presence at SXSW
By Nic YeagerMAY 2022 | Film
Between March 11 and 20, four Brooklyn-based short films screened at SXSW, each shot in Brooklyn and made by and featuring Brooklynites. SXSW is known for celebrating innovation in tech and education, and these projects offer their own kind of innovation: namely, an irreplaceable artistic ingenuity that flows out of this borough.
