Persistence of Vision with Gwendolyn Brooks
In the rearview, fog extinguishes the hills of new
money—mansions on acres away from road or sight.
Their architected privacy, windows to look out at
a land that won't look back. The fog's secure drapery.
It's space to dance through they buy and what one
might call "dappled light" moving across their acres, light
through their oaks moving over their mares, brushed to a sheen.
•
Palms of sugar cubes. Soft snorting, I bet. Here, Muybridge
proved their horses fly a moment. In their homes, they can't
hear each other call from foyer to pool house. I am
jealous of this loneliness most of all—loneliness
delimited by colonnade and cold pressed juices.
They make excellent corpses, among the expensive
flowers.... I imagine hills and hills dappled like this.
Copyright Credit: Solmaz Sharif, "Persistence of Vision with Gwendolyn Brooks." Copyright © 2015 by Solmaz Sharif. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow, a partnership between the Poetry Foundation and the WFMT Radio Network.
Source: PoetryNow (PoetryNow, 2015)