This poem is for Steve Orlen.
It's not a poem.
I forgot.
It's like a story.
[LAUGHTER]
It's called "Loss Itself."
"The man was large, though not because he
ate a lot of fast food, or not solely because of that.
He was an artist.
He'd taken in a great many things in his life,
and he didn't have the time or inclination to fuck with diets.
His thick, shaking hand held the paintbrush.
Sometimes there was no paintbrush.
Some days, the paintbrush itself became the airbrushed painting
of a paintbrush in an airbrushed cafe.
It became, as if, awful and depressing,
as all the crap in a dump of crap,
all the deep, dumpy crap that accumulates.
Still, he held the paintbrush in his warm hand.
His hand was a vivid reminder, the sense
that vividness itself can wear mittens,
that we labor against our inability
to be precise, to call into being
what we experience and see.
But he did labor to call into being.
He did labor to see."