Mastodons wash slowly ashore,
atomized in miners’ gold-gravel
They arrive with no pretension to truth
alive in the visible form of disappearance
city-bound inside metal vectors
Annihilated by longitude and latitude
natural surroundings surrounded
surging forth, the mastodon confronts death again
in the grotesque picturesque of the lens
in the screaming reappearance of the screened
The state of the world in our absence
preserved for our presence, is a décor
dictated by decree and demanding irony --
like the fly, with its faceted eye and
broken line of flight
______
Joseph Osel is a critical theorist, writer and Editor. He studied Society, Politics, Behavior & Change at The Evergreen State College and Existential-Phenomenological Psychology at Seattle University. He is the former Editor of The Commonline Journal, a magazine of realist poetry and literary criticism. His impending book is called Revolutionary-Antiracism. "Resurrection Theme" is exceprted from his forthcoming collection of poetry Catastrophe In Miniature: Poetry In Fatal Tense (2016).
atomized in miners’ gold-gravel
They arrive with no pretension to truth
alive in the visible form of disappearance
city-bound inside metal vectors
Annihilated by longitude and latitude
natural surroundings surrounded
surging forth, the mastodon confronts death again
in the grotesque picturesque of the lens
in the screaming reappearance of the screened
The state of the world in our absence
preserved for our presence, is a décor
dictated by decree and demanding irony --
like the fly, with its faceted eye and
broken line of flight
______
Joseph Osel is a critical theorist, writer and Editor. He studied Society, Politics, Behavior & Change at The Evergreen State College and Existential-Phenomenological Psychology at Seattle University. He is the former Editor of The Commonline Journal, a magazine of realist poetry and literary criticism. His impending book is called Revolutionary-Antiracism. "Resurrection Theme" is exceprted from his forthcoming collection of poetry Catastrophe In Miniature: Poetry In Fatal Tense (2016).
