Expatriate Recommends Diaspora
Now Tony, dear, what do you call yourself?
“Enthused, confused, stunned, besotted….and a designer”
Anthony Xavier Edwards, unlikely fashion star,
moves to Shanghai from down under
Ensconced to the Bund* by postage stamp,
envelope sealed by Yves Saint Laurent
Tony loved his Australia, then left it
Do it, but, where? Do it, but, where?
Pack the tuxedo, treat the crème one with care
Ooze north with glamour, oh aren’t you fab
Design a restaurant? Sure, take a stab
Line China with cashmere
Your office with mirrors+
Find the modern in the erhu^
Minus the tears
Press the chairman for his email
You want to scatter your seeds
Feng shui for the Wall
Will it include beads?
First, headline failures
Think turbine engine tour
You wanted appreciation
Damn Australia, it’s a bore
Next, wool deal goes awry
Valise emptied of money
Stripped to your Tee
It’s terribly unfunny
Soon there were scarves for Hillary, the dressing of Chinese King Tuts
Costumes for the orchestra, lace and tailoring and fine hautes
It ended all “prêt-a-porter”
“Nothing’s better than you” he’d say
and “That’s not ego
but confidence, I pray”.
Pronunciation guide
+ meers
^ are-who
~pretaportay
*Shanghai's Bund is the riverfront promenade that evokes
pre-War glamor present-day vitality and modernism. The
Peace Tower and the former HSBC Building are among the
best-known pre-War structures still standing.
With inspiration from Shelley Silverstein’s Nothing to Do? A
children’s poem
East German Lust…oh Bodo, where are you now?
With cool attention, a small audience stands around
an industrial road roller parked at the Museum Biedermann
before a raised platform flanked by slight ramps on either end.
A monotype will be printed this day, here,
with the help of a very large machine.
As the driver prepares to deliver the final crush to the
work which lay before him, he pokes his head through the cage
of the driver’s compartment, checking the alignment of the paper's edge.
The gaze of a bystander intercepts the attention intended for the
now moving steel drum flattening the soon to be “print”.
The tension of hips and lips conspire to relax the bodies now
a repose without clothes ensues
A calm reception relaxes to flatten the limbed corporeality
rising like the smoky scent of kaiser speck
The flattening completed, the head darts around the cage’s corner,
looking back on the work now, and climbs down the ladder
lifting the thickened paper sheath….revealing to the
softly cheering audience, his heart.
Just Press the Button to be Free
The man lassoed her
with a three-point seat belt
firmly bolted to the frame
of the aging sports car.
Safely ensconced,
choke satisfied,
they wiz past the sanctuary gate.
The rocks
are tattooed
with sunlight.
Wild turkey display.
Kneeling does* unfold
legs to stand.
A distant river
comes into focus.
Select trees
united by an orb web
remind us what eyes
are for.
The spider is the
only hunter today.
*does, plural for the female deer
Mornings on the Island
Mornings on the island, that compact strip of green
bordered by a wrap-around street, were spent
in the company of others like myself.
Seeking fitness mindfulness, or nature’s beauty
mindfulness, or nature’s beauty
(in bloom that day, a week or so after the spring equinox)
we walked around and around the island as it is called
and breathed in new mornings.
Sorting out issues of concern with each lap
I was creating a check-list of what I considered to be
good work as part of my membership in the various
communities in which I participated.
I needed validation.
The loop in my mind mirrored the laps formed by my legs
as they made their way ‘round the island.
Interruptions included ever so brief greetings to neighbors
if only with a wink, or the occasional “good morning”.
Round and round in space and in my mind.
Again and again I wondered, “Where am I going these days?”
“Nowhere” filled me with dread.
Clearly, I was feeling lonely that day.
Bored, although fit, I sighed or simply exhaled unconsciously.
Next, with no warning, my body rose from the asphalt roadway
as though through a transparent cylinder made of air.
Lifted straight up, my feet moving skyward with my upper
body leading I was sucked up and into the clouds.
Soaring over the clouds, now, in an upright position,
my last recollection was of my legs, slightly bent at the knee
The experience appeared to have happened between footsteps.
At first, I thought I had been deposited back on earth
just a few paces from where the journey first began, but no
I now know that I missed but one footstep--the loneliness truly lifted that day.
Oh-prefaced responses…that’s o…h…prefaced responses
Oh Victor, oh victory…two very different responses
Do you think about sex too much? The question appeared in Glamour
in 1990. Did you answer…yes? Or was it….oh, yes…
Changes of state registered by both.
Victor, the man, the state of his manliness.
Victory, the state of the state or what ever sovereignty was chosen.
But in both, a shift, an aha moment
or an oh moment
glorious each in their own way.
O’Reilly…sorry, different.
OMG…silliness for 2.0ers…
O…Prah….I still don’t get it.
Oh carry on
oh yeah?
Oh you again?
Oh, you’re kidding…or….
oh, you’re killing me.
Oh, really?
Oh, I see and
Oh, I gotta go, and
oh no!
Oh master, oh servant.
…[singing]…Oh, oh oh oh…oh oh….!!!!!
Choose your ohs wisely.
Photographs Not Taken
There are the photographs not taken
An aged, elegant couple
sitting on a 5th Avenue park bench just north of the Met
matching blue-tinted eyeglasses
serenity in their long couple-hood
a “biopic” of quiet seated before the volta
A widow living in a tenement built by Mussolini
Tending to a crude distillery housed in a Mussolini granted garage
the quiet drip drip drip of slivovica welcoming visitors to sit
in deplaned seats of the now defunct Jugoslavenski Aerotransport
Wearing a stained, but clean apron
this simple, yet noble woman
is unknowingly part of an image
solely recorded by grey matter
A recently slaughtered calf hangs from a hook
on the ceiling of a farmer’s work room
slowly dripping its blood in anticipation of the butchering
tiny raised glasses of herb-infused liqueurs toast the beast
foreshadowing the soon to be prepared tripe, stews and soups
And the pic formed by a talented, but short-sighted gallerist in a
town house gallery standing before walls once rioted with
iconoclastic works
Most resting in storage now, unseen, unaccompanied, and
increasingly unremarkable with their exile
Clean white crew neck T-shirt over standard Levi blue jeans
A nod to basic good taste and handsomeness
minus the scarred belly the clothes would later hide
Untaken photographs, but photographs none the less.
Photographs Taken
The square head
as seen from above
faceless
but I see it is you
Trademark folded arms
shown with head
but recognizable as you
even minus the head
Hands holding the live trout…
your face facing a fish’s face
fish’s head as stiff as yours
…a wanting photograph of what men do
sometimes when they are together
The curly-haired teen with grand dad
and body language claiming know-it-all-ness
or is it hardheadedness
The dubious expression surveying saffron
colored Gates in mid-winter Central Park…
a dismissive attitude turned
tastemaker’s boast later that week re: Christo
I no longer take your photographs
but your head is still square, still
hard, so still, so stark
The Siesta Project
Tomorrow we launch the Siesta Project
We begin with stopping, as in stop making your bed
Lounge at your leisure,
Ignore the clock
And forget you know how to tweet
And floss, and fold
Loosen
Or better yet
Loose