G. C. Waldrep
_____

The Resurrection: Sweden

The idea that there is such a thing as the elemental
is an old one. Why resist?
There’s fire, and then there’s water. Earth and sky,
Simon says. At the center of the park a scale model of a ceremonial kiva, sealed
except for one secret entrance the carnies use for smokes.
They’ve been taking my money all day
and I’m tired of it.
Every seduction duplicates a gesture
the real world vends for free:
vertigo, weightlessness, the texture of corduroy
on an autumn night somewhere downstate, in the sticks,
with the lights coming on
the same way they are right now.
I can hear them laughing.
I’m tired of it. Bursting through the sod & stucco won’t help.
Remembering that Marsden Hartley sketched the two crucified thieves
as a bodybuilder & a clown comes closer,
only his Christ had no face.
Hartley was, essentially, a landscape painter
who remembered, periodically, how much water there was in the human body.
He was ugly. He liked garish colors.
All summer he cruised the county fairs of Maine.
His brutalized Christ had no face.