Here I perform my poem "No Other" accompanied by the River Cow Orchestra
during Fountainverse: KC Small Press Poetry Festival on 13 October 2018
at La Esquina in Kansas City, Missouri. Video recorded by Jason Preu (thank you!).
I wrote "No Other" on 30 March 2018 - inspired by Tony
Ingrisano's "Far Enemy" - for an Ekphrastacy program at Heights Arts in
Cleveland Heights. The poem first appeared in print in The Gasconade
Review Presents: Missouri Is a Ghost Shaped Thing, edited by John Dorsey
and Jason Ryberg for Spartan Press.
No Other
after Far Enemy by Tony Ingrisano
A wide web of geometry and pixelation
looms over my brick suburban bungalow.
The colors warm and entice me
with creeping florescent sophistication.
I feel them drawing me up and in
while equally I am drawing them inside.
It’s a network of jasmine attraction
bringing untoward craving and resentment,
hate and cruelty from America the beautiful,
Russian bots, unacknowledged racists,
television networks, Amazon.com, nihilism
proponents, penile enhancement specialists,
trolls, moles, sexist pols and ad-mongers,
while the colors of it all bleed into pools
of need and reaction, stupefaction,
failure to listen disguised as debate,
hasty action, dystopian dissatisfaction,
snark disguised as lark and warring factions.
This poem began as an expression of appreciation
for a wide web of precious colors and pixelation
before I met the so-called far enemies
in my bathroom mirror and hardly
recognized them as something other
than other.
Love the music! and the poem!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, S!
DeleteI apparently missed this one, but great poem! I really liked the internal rhymes, and I didn't suspect where the poem was leading from the beginning, so that was cool. :D
ReplyDelete