On a Lurid Lunch
My mourning comes to pass at lunch,
Eyes are down on the perfect sandwich.
I force away a ricocheting gaze.
I don't mind light but I feel it minding me.
Eyes are down on the perfect sandwich.
It's tuna, I know, profoundly controversial.
I don't mind light but I feel it minding me.
My uncrossed legs become odes to their stares.
It's tuna. I get it, profoundly controversial.
It reeks, beautifully though, it distorts my body.
Uncrossed legs become odes to their stares,
Dead fish and bread will hopefully distract.
It reeks beautifully though, like a miracle.
It's meant to be, Tuna feeds 5,000 stares.
Dead fish and bread will hopefully distract,
An audience of Pontius Pilots assess my fate.
It's meant to be, Tuna feeds 5,000 stares.
But, I go hungry. I go scared, eczema flaring.
An audience of Pontius Pilots assess my fate.
I am forsaken by my Tuna sandwich.
For Agnes Martin
This poem is in response to Agnes Martin’s “Summer” (1964)
In the grid, everything stripped down to the in-betweens,
A practice in containing the uncontainable,
I said I saw God. I said this because in that blue that gave me a migraine, I was sent quickly to "The Usual Place.”
But maybe my awe is far from Seraphic—
About as divine as American football or orthodontics.
You have clearly set to it structure, such benevolent rhythm. But, see: there is a celestial pulse in this “Usual Place.”
I saw in this pattern a self-violence.
But you do not seem to succumb.
In color, white uneven dots marching to freedom, you literally split yourself. And dance in relief—violence in the periphery under blue.
Conjoined to columns, lines of latitude and longitude, I see you. There is a human touch: undeniable, a tour de force.
All the better that you chopped yourself up,
And, organized your bones and skin into strict pattern.
You, like that Galilean carpenter,
Built a piece about which I have thought for years.
New ethos: sit and wait to be inspired.
Riley Gramley is a first-year from Ashland Oregon with plans to major in English and Religious Studies. He once believed he would be a violinist and now wants, on some days, to be a poet. He is currently halfway through “Giovanni’s Room” and “Phantom Thread,” respectively.