CALAMITY
Appendices to Bartholomäus Traubeck’s Years (1)
If it’s the artist stars as a balustrade of ethic
where aesthetics end, the trick’s the same as in music—
if you make a mistake, repeat it—& no one’ll ever know it’s a mistake.
Coherence is a styled vanity & this isn’t a contract, it’s a conversation,
a coiffed self-portrait. A portrait of a self-portrait
as self-portrait of a media artist who’d decided
to slice out a cross-section of oak, polish its tree-
rings, & spin like a DJ over a specially pre-
programmed vinyl record
player’s electronic eye a growing point to widen his own.
Widen what music’s growth from trees
strum in order to garden woods’ piano wires, if any. Embellish
wires, if any. Slip the eye’s plug into the ear
& widen what difference a socket makes, if any.
Jake Syersak received his MFA from the University of Arizona and is currently a PhD student in English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Yield Architecture (forthcoming, Burnside 2018) and several chapbooks. His poems have most recently appeared in Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Verse Daily, Omniverse, and elsewhere. He edits Cloud Rodeo, co-edits Radioactive Cloud, and co-curates the Yumfactory Reading Series in Athens, GA.