WEBVTT

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Here it is.

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The second poem
we're going to read

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will be published shortly in
Sonora Review, the magazine,

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certainly more
than 20 years old,

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that has been edited by a
succession of MFA graduate

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students here in the program.

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And the current
co-editors in chief

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are Melissa Koosmann and
Matt Sadler, I believe.

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And the issue number 45 was
out just a few weeks ago.

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46 will be on the heels
of it in a week or two.

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And this is a poem
from issue 46.

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Also a prose poem.

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It's titled "Visage,
After John Berger."

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And many of you will
know John Berger

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as the brilliant essayist,
novelist who lives

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in the French countryside.

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He writes frequently
on visual art.

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His meditations on artists and
their work are art themselves.

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They're beautiful,
philosophical, rich,

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provocative pieces.

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This poem is after John
Berger, because I stole an idea

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from an essay of his that's in
a preface to a novel trilogy.

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So the first two
sentences of this

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are really a kind of paraphrase
of an idea in this essay,

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and then I see what
I can do with it

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in the rest of the poem.

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"Visage, After John Berger."

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"In the household, or the place
of work, any community whose

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numbers are small and stable,
the stories that pass daily,

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person to person, are
like dots of color

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on a pointillist canvas.

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If you could stand far
enough from the whole,

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an image you might think of
as the face of that community

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would compose itself.

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If the family's
middle son drowned,

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or the boss's
administrative assistant

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was disfigured in
a car wreck, people

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would talk about it in low
serious tones, some weeping,

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releasing a flood of grief
dots the color of coal.

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A few would grow angry at the
injustice of such a tragedy,

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resulting in dots at the
yellow, orange, red end

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of the spectrum.

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The portrait would
darken and shimmer

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in places with
the terrible news.

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Inside the canvas, you can only
sense, walking room to room,

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exchanging words
with other people,

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variations in the
atmosphere, the subtle shifts

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in color of the larger image,
the way your skin might

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register small changes
in temperature, just

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as inside your mind, as
you look out at the world,

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you carry only a vague
and incorporeal impression

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of your own face, unless
standing in front of a mirror.

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Even then, the image is
somehow unbelievable, so flat,

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so lacking in contour.

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We can't walk around our
own bodies, after all,

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as if they were sculptures.

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What might it be
like to see yourself

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as others do,
strangers in the gym,

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for example, whose job it is,
for the hour of the workout,

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to become appraisers of bodies.

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"You're ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly!"

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the identical twin shouts
at her lovely sister.

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They are 14, radiant and
trim, hair a royal auburn

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and eyes a coastal green.

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How infernally annoying, to have
your double there before you,

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at all times.

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How can you concentrate
on anything else?

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As you take command of
your language, your own way

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of making yourself
known to the world,

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as your sexual
efflorescence changes

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the sound of your voice,
the shape of your body,

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the way you imagine others
and yourself in the future,

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as the very death that awaits
you, your awareness that there

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is an end, rises up to
embrace you in adolescence

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or your twenties, with
every step that you take,

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you face this duplicate,
this impostor."

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