Thank you for coming tonight.
Can you hear me?
Good.
I'll be reading from my first collection, "Chinoiserie,"
which is a style of European decorative art from about
the 17th to the 18th century.
And it draws from Chinese influences,
with a lot of elaborate imagery and asymmetry.
But the book itself just plays on that very loosely
in an abstract way.
I'll start with "Red Transferware."
The pagoda's roof curls beyond a lake view
glazed in reproduction pink, on serveware
matched to the butter dish, the gravy boat, the once a year
feast.
No Villeroy and Boch but good enough herr
doktor to fake that recherche look.
Pastorals stand for the village, and candles
like black trees in the Brothers Grimm script
happiness we could drown in.
Ladies inked on ironstone sleep the sleep of the dead.
We hear their hearts clink with elegant thrift.
We hear their forks tuned to another orbit.
The fox hole with its grass selvage,
limns a hunger, thin as bleeding edge prints.
White rose, red ranunculus, red rose,
ganglion of wires, white asparagus, red coulis,
cool arrangements, dinners like driftwood
in the ark of hospitable, surface of terror and pleasure.
Before the first snow, before the last course,
maleficium settles in our lungs.
We swallow bitter like good guests.
The red line hems our plates.
Of bindweed or flourishes, nothing to say about the hand's
elaboration.
Of creamware, where only stacked and brittle confusion.
We bargain daylight out of black bread.
1756, copper etched with scenes from Britannia or East Asia.
Manners and pheasants, peppercorn prints.
2010, where nothing had lived, we built an altar of porticos.
Set the cows in good stead against the beat board hutch.
Paperwhites, ginger jar, cake plate.
Josiah Spode, what crockery, what England, what codex
drawn in scalloped borders.
Red tide, nothing like Hokusai.
The house weathers an eye that won't rest.
Scoured with salt and lemon, the tea stain dissipates.
We set the table with transferware,
pretended women could speak.
When the willow swept past us.
No summons, no cyclone but this.