Tuesday poem #223 : Ander Monson : AFTER PREDATOR

It all got switched a bit from what it was before:

tits still existed in the world untouched, unlicked,

undreamt, and I couldn’t see them any better

or into the infrared any better and I could see

that even here I could be hunted or I could hunt,

these were the passageways that were open to me

and like Frost said, that most people misunderstand,

there was no difference in it really, that I could still not

understand the language everyone else was speaking,

but that instead I had learned another, that of the future

governors and the alien that hunted them, and what a man

meant, and what a hand meant on a thigh,

that by now I had consumed so many films like this,

the whole Schwarzeneggerian canon, I no longer

questioned them. Had I ever? Well, in Commando

when he Frisbee-throws

the sawblade that scalps the dude, that seemed to me

just a touch implausible, even at thirteen. But these scenes

meant something, operating in my interior—and you?

were you too bewitched by these ballets?—and in this way

could we be for a moment together in the dark?

Ander Monson is the author of six books of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, most recently Letter to a Future Lover (Graywolf, 2015). He edits DIAGRAM, the New Michigan Press, and Essay Daily, among other projects, and directs the MFA program at the University of Arizona.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan