Five Poems After Art

Jack Christian

 

After “The Dam, Loing Canal at Saint Mammes,” by Alfred Sisley 1884

 

Held out from River Seine,
I stole into morning

 

hoping boredom might accrete
into worship if I could be

 

uncalculated as any breeze.
This aim muttered irreverently

 

until true, and no urge did guide
the brush, making me mesmerized

 

by any thing, by boaters
on their errand near the lock,

 

beneath clouds we dreamed ourselves,
water mirroring less than obliged,

 

village grave pastel
common to the cutbank

 

grown of glyphs, my life,
my spirit, uncertain stipple

 

of unseen, homes swaybacked
and rotting like who gives a shit.

 

Not me, fled from the parlor
into the plain air, bleating

 

through midday until
the canal was sky, too.

 

 

 

 

After “Spring at Bougival” by Alfred Sisley, 1873

 

Maybe I’ve missed it again, been beleaguered
by bugs, by weather, with no direction

 

to approach my lostness, so crawl
and call it back. Box easel, field easel,

 

new whoop of the trivial. On the path,
my father holds his arms wide, walking

 

with one leg surer than the other,
inviting and cancelling oblivion

 

for which neither of us can account,
much less stop and hug. In a tyranny

 

of flowers he’s telling me life is like
a ribbon someone ties and then removes

 

the finger. That’s him, he’s saying. That’s me
in turn, a bow wrapped to nothing.

 

For a moment we’re blameless in the blooming,
content to let the trail meander,

 

our day darkened by petals beneath
clouds that are also blooms, beneath a sky

 

we don’t know. The two of us, the flimsy trees.

 

 

 

 

After “Nocturne in Black and Gold” by James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1875

 

If I’m longing I’m painting.
I’m 200 miniature suns

 

against the stinginess of evening.
Cinder plume in the neighborhood

 

that stank of salt. Great difficulty
of happening into, and sure ecstasy

 

of joining. I tried to hold all these selves,
our tide, great jab of palaver, smoke

 

figured in sand, another night
arriving in blue. This one. That one.

 

The suckiness of leisure, making me
complicit, and beside myself,

 

and afraid of getting older. Each step
a shore, spark of the instance

 

I tried to paint into permanence, what dark
exploding, what dark I couldn’t see.

 

 

 

 

After “Harmony in Blue and Silver: Trouville” by James Abbott McNeil Whistler 1865

 

Earth ends here,
not with a scream

 

but with a tourist
lost against an ocean,

 

making the beach
a scene to see.

 

He’s not real.
He’s just this dude

 

stuck happily
in a microwave:

 

Measured yelp
and evocative poster-print,

 

see-through wish
for pretty death

 

as if from a catalog.
Or else no death,

 

sailor coat and woven hat
sold separately,

 

the superstition
death won’t come

 

while we watch
a pretend flaneur,

 

as if salvation
were in accounting,

 

and in keeping-track
an error-code into heaven.

 

Keep looking
it’s all terrible:

 

Translucent fucker
locked down in the gloss.

 

For my next trick
I will monetize

 

this hopelessness.

 
 
 
 

After “Peaceable Kingdom of the Branch” by Edward Hicks, 1822-1825

 

Come see the white kid
doing miracles roadside

 

with his fat face
while beneath his arm

 

the brown lion naps.
See the white kid making magic

 

where the creek is white.
The white kid honored first

 

with jungle animals
and of-late with laser-lights.

 

The white kid scribbling plans
for a precious gems, dinosaur bones,

 

old cars, dead soldier
wax museum, all to commemorate

 

his being so white the lion
doesn’t shred him — His being so white

 

Dixie sycophants buy tickets,
not so much for the miracle

 

of the bridge the creek made
as for the Confederate-sympathizing

 

laser-lights. The creek babbling
for all time. The creek thinking:

 

of course laser-lights
are what this roly poly

 

holy toddler has been on about.
The creek thinking, but then again

 

it’s in the presence of this brat
I become a thinking creek.
While the lion naps.
The lion yanked from Africa

 

so the kid could halt
its first communion with the sheep.

 

 

JACK CHRISTIAN is the author of the poetry collections Family System, which was selected by Elizabeth Willis for the 2012 Colorado Prize, and Domestic Yoga (2016, Groundhog Poetry Press). His poetry has appeared recently in The New York Times Magazine and jubilat.