Inspired by the photos of Eugene Meatyard
Abstraction: chalk with nails
lying one against the other
amid layers of dust
settled beneath eraser clapped,
chalk marked
board,
both nail and chalk
ten penny sized,
one blunt & reused many times,
the others hard & permanent,
unscathed
& a child’s hand nearby
poised to choose
one or the other
Boy wearing white mask beneath broken mirror
hung at adult height
for easy viewing
what is no longer there
The boy’s horror mask
conceals what he might be
feeling,
creates the suggestion that
something might lie
beneath
or within:
the boy and the image
of the boy
wearing a white mask beneath a broken mirror
in a marked
for demolition
home
Two boys, one seeing through a hole in the wall
the other
in profile
in another ruined room
The peeling wallpaper,
the dropped ceiling
where someone fell through,
random piles of dust and debris
broken shards of glass
for trapping the sun’s last light
Boy holding shard of glass before face
When a mirror breaks
where do all
the images it once
contained go?
Are they set free to wander as memories
or is their liberation a kind of
banishment?
A punishment for trusting
such an inconstant medium
as glass?
Only the boy holding a shard
of glass before his face
knows
Boy with two rubber masks climbing rock
one covering his face,
as he climbs
the rock wall,
finger tips grasping
the next hold,
right leg testing where
the left one should go,
the other mask
hanging from a belt loop
in his pants,
its features drawn,
deflated,
as the empty eyes sockets,
nose holes,
the downturned mouth,
with no words left to express
Romance for Ambrose Bierce #3
after Gene Meatyard
Deliberately placed about
the outdoor scene are
painted numbers like
evidence cards for forensic
reasons like markers at a crime scene
randomly spaced on these
rude wooden viewing stands,
bleachers for outdoor events
children dressed for this late Fall
afternoon’s entrainment
wearing sweaters, corduroy pants,
jackets, turtlenecks relaxing,
waiting for second half, quarter,
next event, whatever follows once
shadows lengthen, their grotesque
rubber masks visible after dark
when nothing else is.