The Post-Memory Age

Painting by Michael Parkes


the post memory age


collecting re-collecting
recollection a hand
pushing this &
that here &
there just
as if
this
is how
it was: was
trimmed & clear
& subject to our hands
our eye knowing the hand eye
dance of light & shadow sound &
hurry of objects thru a dissolving space

the hand writes & moves on
the blood drips down
drips down drips
down undrying
no black
how it
holds
even
as we
return to
say an empty
field—no not empty
there are tufts of grass
weeds scattered litter of
cigarette butts cellophane bits
thin paper wrappers & aluminum
cans the carcasses of insects & birds
a few mice perhaps a raccoon or a coyote
a line of scraggly mesquite by a drainage ditch
but he sees the ghost of
that old house two stories
the white railing on the first floor the boy
balancing himself arms outstretched
the wasps swarming & the thin
man with the cigarette
dangling between
his sneering lips
white t-shirt
cuffed blue
jeans &
combat
boots
pulling
out a pack of
Camel cigarettes
the woman in the white
dress or was it gray or a print
with tiny purple flowers & pale green
vines the white metal pitcher with the red lips
the water pouring like the sky
had been turned soft
wet spots of tobacco on his skin
as if a map of dark stars

the professor says art is an attempt
to preserve what is lost
to pre-serve for those who cannot attest
to the light
we saw that there was a light like they
will never see save to be as lucky
or as cursed as wont to suck
life & meaning
from acts we
would not want to see
again: vampires cannibals
victims of an auto-immune disease
we eat our own pasts (pasts he says again)
hording fragments of a world we gutted
to preserve conserve deserve a legend
(legere a gathering, a reading) of
what we almost were never were what
we pull into an empty skin;

the etymology of a lecture on a collecting
service: how do you read this (pull it
together, draw out the poison, draw out
the beauty, the husks left out in the field)

Richard Lance Williams

Posted over on More Poetry