Eyewear is very pleased to welcome the American poet Richard Deming this week (pictured) as the featured poet. Deming is a poet, art critic, and a theorist who works on the philosophy of literature and visual culture. His poems have appeared in such places as Sulfur, Field, Indiana Review, and The Nation, as well as Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present. He regularly writes for The Boston Review and Artforum.
The Picture of JB in a Prospect of Ladyboys
The Picture of JB in a Prospect of Ladyboys
(after John Ashbery after Andrew Marvell,
for Joshua Brown)
I.
A
hand holding a soda trembles
as
some latent wish casts its lots.
The
generous arch of a penciled brow
brings
the gaze up close. Where else do
names
choose their changeable places?
And
the one girl with an impossibly
slim
waist faces the camera and smiles,
while
uneven skirts sway above the knees.
In
this picture there’s no nearby garden
and
everyone’s eyes are wide open.
II.
Did
you? For how much? and how must
the
imagination quicken
a
reality that is and is more
necessary
than the one in
hand,
the one we’ll squint and blur
into
focus. Curiosity is a kind of daily
translucence
and their hair’s so long,
it
invents its own virtue.
Leave
things be for now. Forgive me,
standing
beside you, they are so lovely.
III.
There
may be a future of doctors,
hormones,
a shiny scalpel meant
to
slit and fold because truth’s
a
hard thing when it’s wrong.
The
animal light of being
wanted
is more than comfort and
persistence—the
body directs
itself,
everyone, all of us, along
for
the ride. There’s a word for
these
swelling hips. Reform its
error
into certain reply.
Battered
by luck and the fast intent
of
the dream of otherwise,
give
us a kiss for the hope that bears
all
it’s given. Just put your lips together.
poem by Richard Deming; published at Eyewear with permission of the author.
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