pray to nothing or maybe to the
video where the prime minister tells the
world that Franco’s finally dead where do
we go after fascism an american Golgotha
awaits I wish I had hung art on these
walls framed magazine clippings
self-drawn portraits tesserae made from
cut up money—anything to absorb
the light and especially my attention I have
begun wearing only threadbare clothing
unbecoming as it is I can’t bring myself
to buy to shed to procure only to fabricate
but I can’t fabricate so I’ll wrap myself
in a sheet dump myself down the
drain or onto a pyre enflamed by the idea
that we’re still alive after what we’ve done
I could have invented a new language or
at least engaged in some kind of
cryptography but I’m no collagist or
puzzle-maker the whole world is
laughing at us in other words we have
the world’s most slappable faces and I
think they could have laughed at us sooner—
for Andy Warhol maybe or for drinking
whisky with breakfast into the 1830s but
I wish you could have been there with
me when I painted the Pietà when I painted
the hammer that smashed the Pietà when I
painted Thomas Stearns Eliot (supposedly)
falling on his knees before the Pietà when
I painted the decline and fall of the
American empire as seen from a rest stop
on the 10 somewhere between Indio and
the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station
ca. 2020 or 2021 AD
~
Bryan D. Price’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Broadkill Review, Posit, the UCity Review, Diagram, and others. He lives in San Diego with his wife, a dog, and a cat named after Pina Bausch.