Tuesday, July 11, 2017

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


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