Sweating and exhausted from having walked through streets and art galleries all day, I ended up in the Monet exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Sections of his work wrapped the entire room. I sat on the padded bench to rest. Frankly, the section of the painting in front of me revealed almost nothing. It was a smeared pastel, a still from a dream misremembered. Yet, while I stared at it as if meditating on a real body of water, words began to appear and drip through me and I started writing. For a few beats, my notes would not stop. I was taking dictation. Then, silence. I let the notes rest a few days past my arrival home, then began typing up what I had. This poem is a first draft.•
Where the sun at dusk comes to weep, hue as teardrop,
as muted blade, in wrinkled receipt of grief
prescriptive tarot spread beneath a stalactite mustache
of birch, cypress, red maple, willow
If a canvas is a type of ghost, this one moans
haunted with colors fading as beneath
generations of dashboard sunlight—as if one could
install a pond on the instrument panel of a used car
Through exhaust of memory; a cataract of clouds
toked, exhaled, swimming as a collective,
white pink lavender purple gold copper
texture of eggshells crushed underfoot
can a flock of kingfishers and herons appreciate this
or does beauty only belong to us in our manic weakness
to replace god
This poem appears in Issue 34 of Alta Journal.
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Oakland native James Cagney is the author of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory, winner of the 2019 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award. Some of his poems have appeared in Poetry Daily, The Maynard, Anvil Tongue Books, The Racket Journal and in anthologies Colossus: Home and Civil Liberties United. Visit Nomadicpress.org for his book, and TheDirtyRat.blog for more writing.
