You’ve rented the public hall
to exhibit collages assembled
from trash found by the highway
or sifted from the public landfill.
Desiccated newts, mice, insects,
pelts of squirrel, chipmunk, raccoon,
shards of rusty steel, scrap copper,
tarnished brass, nuts and bolts, screws,
nails, rubber, plastic soda, vodka,
and iced tea bottles, beer cans, wraps,
cardboard, broken toys, dead shoes,
torn shirts. Construction adhesive
in thick impasto coerces
this muck into an aesthetic stance
rigid as freshly poured bronze.
The entire town turns out
to wonder at your insistence
that art comprises everything,
even the exhausted condoms
that festoon some of your creations.
I admit that you’re an artist
and this is art. But the townsfolk
mutter in obscene shades of gray.
They want the government to crush
art that differs from the pictures
in their vast collective mind.
You won’t sell a single collage.
The village constable frowns,
and the fire department stands by,
prepared to wash away this mess.
Still, art requires a little risk,
and when I help you return
your unsold work to the landfill,
we’ll celebrate with cheap champagne
as if you’ve reordered the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment