Tony Nozero © 2010 All Rights Reserved
Tony Nozero © 2010 All Rights Reserved
Outdoor Conservatory
Muscled into the hatch of wingspan
and wing. Barbed wire not needed
for snagged birds of prey, carrion
of freedom snared and spaced,
like a painting by Seurat. Impressive,
the conditions—classic—of hell.
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,
should have been the sign affixed
to the steeple of sky: the eagle
long dead, the vultures drool.
The suspended body is bloody, still,
dazed. Faraway, in an open field,
a family of deer bow their heads
to drink, and, eyes darting, graze.
***
Still Life with Nietzsche and Horse
Humbled by the death of civilization,
he settled for mere colors, shapes,
the faintest suggestion of design, having
exhausted after pounding, incessantly,
at the hard heart of his disemboweled mother
tongue. One fine morn he walked outside,
expecting to be justified by weather, to see
a coachman whipping his horse. Not into
submission—the horse was rooted in place.
He returned to his room to write: the death
of god is not a single act but a process, bound
to eternally recur, like the history of human
nature, cruel, which cannot change. He lost his
mind that day, upon perceiving how the world
began: the Lord who casts no shadow falling into
a folie á deux between the maker and the made.
Virginia Konchan’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review, Notre Dame Review, the Believer, the New Republic, Michigan Quarterly Review and elsewhere. She is a contributing reviewer for several publications including Rain Taxi.