"Survival Equipment/Cy Twombly"

Karen Weiser

   

Unheeded as a threshold

The Great Monumental Text

that can not be read

because it's not words

 

It's a letter to Mars

stapled at the center

it contains:

           

            Infinite Space

 

Think of Apollo

the crafts that allow godlike movement

skin envelopes we create

measure the smallness of our own selvage

 

One is always setting at the corner

partial views we pretend oceanic realness

but the paper crinkles as your eye moves out

it's only light coming back to us

 

Our beings are surfaces we collect light and bacteria

drawing 14 numbers around the clock

for each turn in the light

one surface covers another

 

In this diagram he drew the colors from his own heart

hidden in the shadow cavity

we will be closing in five minutes

the minimal arch

 

Notes towards a cloud

hang iambic

This is no time

 

in the rain of color

 

            Melting

 

            toward blankness


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Author Bio: Karen Weiser is a writer who lives in New York City. Currently she is in advanced training for Psychoanalysis at the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy in New York City. She has a Phd in English and American Studies from the CUNY Graduate Center and an MFA in Poetry from the New School. She writes poetry as well as essays on 19th Century American novels and poetry. Her second collection of poems entitled Or, The Ambiguities (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2015) was written in conversation with the works of Herman Melville. Her first book To Light Out (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) considered the idea of talking with the unknown while pregnant.