Ammiel Alcalay
1. Old Bridge
Mir- is in The Museum of Modern Art.M'ro is in Sarajevo.
Wendy Wasserstein is on stage at Symphony Space
and over the air on N P R.Terry Gross calls me twice during a break to find
out how to pronounce the name Izeta.Izeta is M'ro's wife.
They have a dog
It is December 1st, 1993.
Certain people say we should always go back to nature. I notice they never say
we should go forward to nature. It seems to me they are more concerned that
we should go back, than about nature. If the models we use are the apparitions
seen in a dream or the recollection of our prehistoric past, is this less a part of
nature or realism than a cow in a field? I think not.The role of the artist has always been that of image maker. Different times
require different images.Today, when our aspirations have been reduced to a desperate attempt
to escape from evil, and times are out of joint, our obsessive, subterranean
and pictographic images are the expression of the neurosis which is
reality. To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all,
on the contrary, it is the realism of our time.
Adolph Gottlieb
1947
no pyramids dot the skyline
in the seats of power of
this crumbling empire
the ghosts of industry eat
this old half city bridge
of nevermore again
eat Glamoc and
Grahovo
eat these
years
posters of Sadaam whirl and spin
stealth bombers drop TVs
over Baghdad books
burn in Sarajevo
babies choke
in clouds
of evaporated milk
the ghosts of industry
dot this landscape
lo these many years of construction repairing the irreperable potholes
the gaping erosion of industrial repetition this tarred and feathered
landscape this tarred and feathered history
my neighbor found an arrowhead in his backyard 385 10th st. Brooklyn
waking up in a sweat I found the Old Bridge hanging
from my neck and the whole town of Pocitelj
in the pocket of my jacket draped over a
chair in the shadow of a pot filled with
rosemary and lavender.
trust the least
desire imaginelight together
gazing at bottlesfloating in the port
pushing against atime we imagine
years furtherspinning leaves
a bed a pillow
gazing at sailors dying for trust together as light plays
through the leaves when you least expect a burning desire
in ways we could hardly even articulate attached to no real
itinerary eyes too slow to shelter too close to part
our park just souvenir feathers drawn across states skin taut
across manifest destiny listening ear to the ground for what isnÕt
there evidence of beauty evidence destroyed everywhere desire
and hunger taxis with amulets evoke wounds across time within
earth underground too slow to penetrate too late to spawn such
a chaste upbringing such sheltered accents for no language escapes
warm stone cold stone rooms at either end and the room in the middle
of this journey dank and mouldy elegant and even gentrified now but
a poor room a room for the poor a room to end up in bones creaking
and lungs clogged the hard life embedded in the very body of the city
in gold adorned and manner straightforward her head covered like
the dome a part of her very body you would have to rip the eyes
out of to destroy the memory of "fourteen of us" in this room
in sailing
tempest
river no
river tents
upended
attracted by
trollies and
desire born
of a farther
aqueduct
neither owl nor eagle nor deer
only feathers on a souvenir
drum bought from
an Algonquin
feathers on a souvenir drum bought from an Algonquin
speak parking lots and minarets toppled to dust ponds
and rivers Mashpee next to Barnstable and
Sandwich speak for the garbage we help
attracted by trollies a view of the
river imagine escutcheons herald
aluminum arms door knob or handle
either grip the very same even this
oblong sea that ocean grandfathers
on the move underground the bloody
corpse gnawed and nibbled at by
tourists of fortune caution stop
words kill writer ahead by the dead
hand of heraldry of glories past and
yet to come feel the weight of this
token in my hand in yours holding
mine the night the bombing began the
night we decided to kill the garden to bury Eve forever to starve her children starve her veiled sisters Night and Layla who'll never find the prince
that opened a cookshop in Damascus her groom and lover who left his turban by the bedside to go to the privy
only to find a hunchback up to his ears in shit caught headfirst by a demon lost in a makeshift trial of trials and
tests and travail and wandering in the
whirlpools of space commandeered
by our own obsequious hosts gearing up at every idle moment to steal not only life but even air itself don't you see / we're on the eve of destruction
unlikely
intimate
unraveling
toy wrapping
the daily tideour park
manifestdisappearing city
injured at the outset astute
observers anonymous random
kitchen speak for the garbage we helpon the river of joy and
when time comes
and on the day of jewels
and upon a crown of wealth
and depths of poverty not
my own none of
this surprise meshe sang
