Poetic Responses: Mai-Thu Perret At David Kordansky Gallery

text by Claressinka Anderson

 

Hold the gun to my head,
march the valley, 
cut a diamond 
on this wicker warrior.

I have no face—
no target for my blood 
—a history of candy guns 
(& art) to suck and lick.

Stand proud oh
Eve, oh Adam—
pull me up from the well.

You are unheimlich, 
incessant—
glazing a wave, a hole—
fingers in and of 
the texture of a sentence.

You are fired skin
(obliterate)
and polished calf—
you are stones of red, 
of silver. 

You are sinews netted 
in a thread of hair,
a handful of clay, 
an indentation of bullets.

There is no formalist blanket
in your sky of frothy stars—
you are beauty
(fighter)
you are guerilla
(celestial)
you are moon clouds
(watching)
you are blue, blue, blue.