When I Was a Man
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As if with the eventual expansion of a sun
I set out to touch it all over by irreversible means and await attendant mourners’ forgiveness The brevity of blue verbs such as “reason” became me Though I was about the efficient business of a river at a hair trigger I would overflow with corpse-hauling ambition and lay it like myrrh at the large feet of men before me I tended to floss with bootstraps Stricken with visibility and the quiet violence of lightning I was excused to be what I was gone be My quote brokenness was begotten in centuries as gracefully forgotten as foundations of Roman Catholic cathedrals I mean the noun “hurt” was a survey of architectural corrections I was much too busy with the feat of standing up inside the future to pretend what with my feet I mowed down was to me the matter I was a virtuoso in the medium of utmost my mouth invasive yet the one void I avoided owning |
Chandra Glick. Lost and Found #4, 2011. Ink-jet print. Courtesy of the artist.
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Justin Phillip Reed’s first full-length book of poetry, Indecency, is forthcoming from Coffee House Press in 2018. His work appears — or soon will — in Best American Essays, Callaloo, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Obsidian, PEN American, and elsewhere.
Chandra Glick is an artist living and working in New York City. She is the Photo Editor at Artforum Magazine and Faculty at the International Center of Photography. Chandra has taught at Rutgers University and lectured at Hunter College, the School of Visual Arts, and Fashion Institute of Technology. Chandra holds an MFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts and earned a BA in visual art from Brown University. Her awards include the Alice Beck-Odette Chairman’s Award from the School of Visual Arts, the Brown University Purchase Prize, a Summer Residency at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, and a Residency and Artist’s Grant at the Vermont Studio Center. Chandra’s work has been exhibited at Black Ball Projects, One River Gallery, the Visual Arts Gallery, and X Initiative.