Three Poems by Nate Maxson
For My Second Theory Of Impermanence, I’ll Need A Volunteer From The Audience
The faces of the saints on fire
In renaissance oil or black and white film
And that of amateur porn stars
Approaching release
Are reenactments for posterity,
Our very own Joan Of Arcs
Pretending miraculousness is an art form,
An alchemy
With eyes closed for dramatic effect
It’s like,
You’re grinding yourself away in the dark
Waiting for a moment between disappearance
And the fleshy spark of martyrs
But what did you expect?
In a nation founded by Spanish Grand Inquisitors
The mute difference lies
In how convincingly
You fake it
The faces of the saints on fire
In renaissance oil or black and white film
And that of amateur porn stars
Approaching release
Are reenactments for posterity,
Our very own Joan Of Arcs
Pretending miraculousness is an art form,
An alchemy
With eyes closed for dramatic effect
It’s like,
You’re grinding yourself away in the dark
Waiting for a moment between disappearance
And the fleshy spark of martyrs
But what did you expect?
In a nation founded by Spanish Grand Inquisitors
The mute difference lies
In how convincingly
You fake it
The Pale Horse Illusion Explained
A magic lantern (early memory storage) casts its gravity on a slaughterhouse wall, skinned pigs strung like Noh theater shadows
When we are in the after, may I then speak of this? Am I allowed? Are the lights just temperate enough?
Just right, not the coins in the wishing well but the wishes: liquid and swift
I dream this, the end of a film, and it dreams me back: my childhood dog sniffing at puddles of antifreeze glowing like winter (there, again, light projected towards me: an optical illusion in two directions)
All the creatures that populate the distant labyrinth, lift their heads from watering holes in the blind
I’m getting too big to fit through the cracks, not all of me, not anymore: just the eyes in witness rather than the entire weight
Ambiguous creature whose clockwork knees crack like hale storms, is it getting closer or further away? A ship bobbing in and out of being, on the horizon of the grasslands
A magic lantern (early memory storage) casts its gravity on a slaughterhouse wall, skinned pigs strung like Noh theater shadows
When we are in the after, may I then speak of this? Am I allowed? Are the lights just temperate enough?
Just right, not the coins in the wishing well but the wishes: liquid and swift
I dream this, the end of a film, and it dreams me back: my childhood dog sniffing at puddles of antifreeze glowing like winter (there, again, light projected towards me: an optical illusion in two directions)
All the creatures that populate the distant labyrinth, lift their heads from watering holes in the blind
I’m getting too big to fit through the cracks, not all of me, not anymore: just the eyes in witness rather than the entire weight
Ambiguous creature whose clockwork knees crack like hale storms, is it getting closer or further away? A ship bobbing in and out of being, on the horizon of the grasslands
Punchline #5
“A man walks across a bridge and says,
-Ok wait wait I’m telling it wrong lemme start over”
-
“A man walks out of a bar and meets,
-
One more time, sorry, this one’s a real knee slapper I promise”
-
The laughter of old television shows can seem so pavlovian
It ought to appear trite, shouldn’t it?
Lead us not into the temptation of nostalgia
Like a religious intonation, the lighting of candles
Someone yells get to the punchline
“Alright,
A man comes home and finds his house on fire
No survivors
-
Was that it?”
I don’t quite know how
To transcribe the sound of crickets but you get the idea
We do what we’re told really
In service to expectation
Someday we’ll get so subtle as to disappear completely
“A man walks across a bridge and says,
-Ok wait wait I’m telling it wrong lemme start over”
-
“A man walks out of a bar and meets,
-
One more time, sorry, this one’s a real knee slapper I promise”
-
The laughter of old television shows can seem so pavlovian
It ought to appear trite, shouldn’t it?
Lead us not into the temptation of nostalgia
Like a religious intonation, the lighting of candles
Someone yells get to the punchline
“Alright,
A man comes home and finds his house on fire
No survivors
-
Was that it?”
I don’t quite know how
To transcribe the sound of crickets but you get the idea
We do what we’re told really
In service to expectation
Someday we’ll get so subtle as to disappear completely
Nate Maxson is a writer and performance artist. The author of several collections of poetry, he lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.