Triptych from Home

Second Honorable Mention (tie) - Isadora De Liberty

Judge's Citation on "Triptych from Home":

The poem is an ambitious ekphrastic poem! Each section inhabits the painting with a different form and approach, so the sections build as a triptych to reveal an uncertain, uncomfortable and sometimes violent experience of home. The imagery is evocative, and the voice is compelling. For example, the opening lines: "Tangerine is fire—is a brash stroke / in a basement. The cement would be cold / if you touched it. The paint would be warm / if you could feel it" invite me into the poem and into the experience of encountering and meditating upon the artwork. I appreciated how each section surprised me in its focus.

Triptych from Home

Oliver Lee Jackson - Painting (6.4.83)
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive

Tangerine is fire—is a brash stroke
in a basement. The cement would be cold
if you touched it. The paint would be warm
if you could feel it. There’s no one else
in the room.

Blocks from my house, I hear the blast.
I see the smoky haze. Onyx and bone
ash slick the roof and walls, the windowsills
turned turquoise mud. They needed
a fresh colonial coat of paint.

To reach the mothership is a cup of coffee—
is ease. The smooth silver panels shine through
leafy greens, rain-soak, and chatter.
Its faulty design, the knocked-askew glow;
Half hides tanned fluorescent.

Diplomats and lawyer-speak in circles.
The rules of self immolation and the laws
of being comfortable and the apparent suggestions
of for-to-not-to—of kid limbs and bone-show.
Three hours to cry, then jazz.

Gerhart Richter - Townscape Madrid
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Putting things
in their places
Putting people
where they need to be.
Them. and him. and him.
Cross sections. Shared traits.
Same, same, but different.
This is what cities look like—
all the same until you crack them open.
Differing bits in the buildings
and the inability to fathom why
I would choose this over a
corn field moat around a mansion.
It’s a train ride away,
the film frame flipping through
pictures of the East-Midwest.
New York to Ohio in a blur,
in a frenzy. A manic doorstep
and a duffle and a frazzled friend.
It’s farther for me now, the collection
of cities, the names on the list.
The restraining order tension
numbered single digits higher with years.
Chicago, St. Paul, Manhattan,
Bay, Tri-State, Silicone.
My house is sliding down the mountain.
The cracks on the wall widen with
each seismic tease. The fault lines blame
but they know it’s natural and absolute.
Undifferentiated, this one just happens to be
across the street. I just happen to be
across the street.

Young June Lew - Allegory of a Moon Jar III
Asian Art Museum Solitary.

Silent. A wash of texture. Set. A laugh under the breath; a joke that's a joke but not told to an other. Can you kid yourself? Can you self-deceive? I think it’s funny how he stops and says you see how that would go? I exhale—I do see how it would go if it were to go at all but I think it wouldn’t go. Don’t you think it wouldn’t go? Here’s how the math would pan out if it mattered: kill one less person than you save. Here’s what you would do if you were serious: never tell a lie. I think I am serious about it. My dishes are green glass and I am stacking porcelain. She called me dirty. I send her gratitude. I think I am serious about it. He didn’t want to be my friend. I told him no. He didn’t cross the legal line but there are some salt-piles brushed aside at the threshold. I let him stay the night. I am worried no one in this city cares if I live or die and I’m worried that it’s going to chip me off into an indifferent Atlas-type. My new year's resolution is to eat a fish head. My new year’s resolution is to have some fucking resolve.