4 poems

Jory Mickelson

[What have you been thinking about?]

What have you
been thinking about?

I’ve been learning to live
without, by leaving

all of my blemishes
out of the record,

even though they are
what mark us

who we are:
the beauty mark
the bald spot
the scar.

But what we excise
is also part

even if they
have no place

in the picture we desire
to see.

I mean, that’s why
I love diaries —

all that writing
meant for privacy

& how we record our tempests
for beauty or learning or favor,

the blood & the ink intermingling
clarifying the doubts we hide

from. So, when I copy someone’s
work the theft isn’t a violation

of property, but
of privacy. Because

I’m after the who
behind the curtain

of the page. I’m not
self-conscious about copying,

but I admit the willingness
to duplicate is a kind of vanity.

So, is the impulse
to write anything

down, ergo the ego
meets ego in the steal.

It’s not plagiarism
if I transform it.

I always manage
to heighten the contrast

until the world comes down
to black and white.

I remove the problematic
tonal qualities —let’s say

the blemishes —& make things
easier & even then

everything still comes out
chancy.

[Sometimes the I]

Sometimes the I
is so exhausting
you have to let it rest.
But we must do our
best to keep
from the bed
where the man
still sleeps.
The bed the child fled.

So, here’s a skull,
one that’s lain
in the earth
(take it.)
Will it, in your care
be crimsoned in sunset
or whitened by the moon?
Bathed or waded in the water?
Lain on a table
with a dinner plate and pitcher?
Will you break the pitcher
placing the skull
among the pieces?
Or smash the skull
(you’d enjoy it)
watch it shatter
in both directions
dead & still
unkillable, the tiniest pieces
rattle themselves back
together, and if
the rebound skull
fidgets, let it rest
in your lap
& if it gives you its nervous smile
let it smoke a cigarette
the vapor playing out
its eyes like catastrophe.

[I always wanted a job]

I always wanted
to get a job
in a department store,
to be among
all those glamorous things
I saw printed
in the glossy fever dream
of the bedsick child’s
magazines. Strong images
into your head and
stay there.
I came to New York.
I came to New York to be.
I came to New York to be known

[What is America?]

After all, I’m an American
painter if nothing else. Let’s maximize,
I mean moralize the work.

America is: an object having nothing to do with its subject.
its airports, its post offices, its public schools.
all anxiety and violence and grief.
the smallest of transistor radios.
obsessed with its size. (who isn’t?)
gorging itself with even more politicians.
open late and everything’s for sale.
a pet cemetery with 80,000 graves.
its own flag made in China, in Nepal, in Kurdistan. (Now with tariffs.)
the fantasy of being modesty and shyness.
100 people dying of opioids every 24-hours.
America is:
the song on the radio playing in the background.
embarrassed by its relationships.
having a hard time not talking about sex.
a dozen hotdogs but only eight buns.
a horoscope everyone reads but no one believes in.
a franchise in its own food court.
unable to help another America.
America is:
12 children a day dying of gun violence.
collecting hundreds and hundreds of salt-and-pepper shakers.
a territory and the collapse of its borders.
a baby giraffe born without spots in Tennessee.
first and forgetful of its poor.
making us all uncomfortable at the dinner table.
unable to tell the difference between a bowtie and a noose.
America is:
every holiday and especially wildfires started on the 4th.
never knowing what it will do.
wanting to get stronger, but only by taking supplements.
18 planes waiting for takeoff and one falling from the sky.
succeeding in being minor.
working at a check-out counter in Sioux Falls, SD.
America is:
finding the consequence of its actions extremely painful.
cynical about the news, but believes the conspiracy
is using fentanyl to escape its poverty.
is a buffet and the person in line just sneezed.
still killing black people and brown people every day.
the short history of the planet
never finished with itself.