Michael Rerick – Two Poems


Michael Rerick

Two Poems


(metal work sculpture)
All around: a park. Inside: hollow. This, publicly,
takes a love story and unfolds geometrically
in ways impossible to fold. As the welts show:
the granite pedestal moans a bird: it jumps. At night
it sings. The story of “what draws me to it, personally”
grows in the socket of a mossy eye, a field of I-beams
that float, pivot, tap, meow, or triangulate the gravity
of healthy problems: rust meeting another wind. Light:
a shiver and smile of wire mesh.

(chess players sculpture)
The 0 point of sixty-four squares disappears,
the hub and radii. Or, an arc follows the players.
Nonviolent field: sweat and ambush: froze.
One calls and one responds in this equation-church.
Disengaged or cast: rook in advance, retreat,
advance. The queen starts on her own color, but to mate
means to begin again, sides switched on ball bearings.
Multiple fingers reach to check the king, from many positions.

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