Send Help
Listen if you have
No daughters give them
To your sons
& then we were found wanting
& then we were wont to never be
Alone again These things happen
Quicker than you might expect
Lesson: a thing dispensed
& forced in
Fable: over night the pauper
Turned princess
Let me see
Said Cinderella laughing
If it doesn’t fit
He saw that she
Put it on with little effort
& it fastened like wax
I’d rather not fit to form
A body that isn’t
Mine I hardly
Wear clothes
For that reason
When we think of chairs we think
A comfortable place to sit in order
To rest or efficiently complete
A task this however is a very
Modern idea that presumes
Everyone has a seat
Here it comes
Our cool command
Tell us something is happening
Or not To be
Waiting is forbidden
& forgotten in the time
It takes to push your thumb
A fiction: he of memory
& the life I left behind
Nothing gentle will remain
Repeated like a little
Verse in choral class
Meant to teach the heart
Beating Send help if you haven’t
Thought to let me know by now
Comfort is not the purpose
While muscular proportion is one idea
Of physical perfection
Other models related to
Height, grace, & silhouette
Have inspired artists on the street
Hot cross buns
One a penny two a penny
The high heat days are gone
The long delay the bait the trick the unforgiving
Waiting a thing
Of the past
Here we are in the palace
Here we are in the dark
Silent desert
All held together
In a body
With a voice
Lord
Here I am
Installation in progress
& the privilege of witnessing
The actors
Walk forward, backward
& in slow circles
Choreography which moves between
Letting the footage play
Naturally & reversing it
Making it unclear
If the action is unfolding in
Real time or not
Techniques of repetition confuse
Time, space, & sequence
Book of the Dead, chapter 17
“Tomb of Inherkhau”
Re in the form of a cat slaying the Serpent Apep
Several feet from
Portrait of a Lady as Mary Magdalene
Always a question
Of being unaware
Of the game or playing
It too well
Pretend I am this until I am this
Pretending I believe
Is born in childhood in spare
Moments of solitude
I am someone else
Sometimes my girlfriend
Says I just don’t get this one
Looking up from the poem
& then back to the poem
I’d been writing recently
About iterations & rearrangements
See the line before or
The one before that
I really mean it
Feels as though I let myself
Fall with my eyes closed
Into the sun-fed earth
Not even a mound of dirt or leaves
To catch me
Instead we move
From room to room
Wearing more or less
& feigning not to notice
In this scenario I am forever
The student learning by leaning
Better to see what’s inside
The frame what’s outside
The man appears to sit
Among cuts of meat, including a large slab
Gleaming with white fat on the floor to the left
& a platter of pig trotters & sausage behind him
On a table covered with bright linen
Some scholars suggest that this is an artist’s studio
Cluttered with the makings of a still life
Not raw meat per se but a framed canvas
Containing numerous sketches of meat
Imitative sympathy or simply
Gifts for the king
An offering
Table overlaid with animal flesh
For comfort if not
Also style a sure sign
Of modernity the pleasure
Of what was once
Alive & deemed fit
For ritual implements
Consider a body might be more
Easily opened with time
Both of these works, separated by many centuries, use the human
Form as a platform for expressing & displaying script
The long, pointed end would have been inserted in a handle
The tall walking stick & paddlelike baton indicate his official status
The woman’s name, inscribed above her head, has been lost
A face turned toward the viewer at the apex of the movement
I’d mentioned earlier
Appears unfinished, or overdone
Images like this one could house the dead owner’s essence
Before the advent of photography in the nineteenth century
Painted portrait miniatures permitted their keepers
An immediate access to the memory
& appearance of loved ones
Portable & convenient
As today our own
Screens afford us
Security & the death
Of having to conjure a face
To match the spirit
We are not ourselves
Never again will I
Dance as though no one
Is watching
Chris Campanioni teaches literature and creative writing at Baruch College and Pace University, and interdisciplinary studies at John Jay. His “Billboards” poem that responded to Latino stereotypes and mutable—and often muted—identity in the fashion world was awarded the 2013 Academy of American Poets Prize and his novel Going Down was selected as Best First Book at the 2014 International Latino Book Awards. He edits PANK and lives in Brooklyn, where he wrote his new book, Death of Art.
