Contradictions in the Design

Matthew Olzmann

• Publisher: Alice James Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781938584404
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Poesía

These political poems employ humor to challenge the cultural norms of American society, focusing primarily on racism, social injustices and inequality. Simultaneously, the poems take on a deeper, personal level as it carefully deconstructs identity and the human experience, piecing them together with unflinching logic and wit. Olzmann takes readers on a surreal exploration of discovery and self-evaluation.

I.

BUILD, NOW, A MONUMENT

No longer satisfied by the way time slips

through his life’s work, the maker

of hourglasses yearns for a change.

He elects to construct a staircase instead.

Rather than grains of sand,

he’ll manufacture one stair after another

to lament every transient second.

Look at it now! It rockets upward, almost vertical,

beginning in his backyard, puncturing

the cloud cover, and everyone speculates

where it will end. It will end

where all ambitions end: in the ether,

where the body ceases and a story continues.

But for now, it’s a monument.

For now: a defiance, misoneism.

A bridge between

Earth and what Earth cannot touch.

What does he think as he builds?

Mostly he contemplates the work:

the sawdust, the anger, the hammer.

But sometimes he dreams of cars, highways,

of crashes and sequestered wreckage.

Old pain. He had a friend, out there.

There was a highway, a vehicle overturned.

If his friend was here today,

she’d understand this monument.

She liked the sky, country music, and caterpillars.

There are four thousand muscles in a caterpillar.

It uses every one of them

to become something other than itself.

Is the body a cocoon? the man wonders.

From the top of the staircase, the life

he left below is almost unrecognizable.

Look at the beagle, yelping in the neighbor’s yard.

The rooftops of the shrinking houses. Everything

getting smaller as his view of the world

expands. The roads marked by petite yellow lines.

Graceland and Grant’s Tomb and whatever’s left

of the Parthenon. All of it is down there.

Things end. But what he can’t comprehend

is how, around those endings, everything else

continues.

CONSIDER ALL THE THINGS YOU’VE KNOWN BUT NOW KNOW DIFFERENTLY

—After Steve Orlen

In Michigan, on his seventh birthday,

a boy is given an old toolbox. Thank you,

he says, for the toolbox, Thank you,

for the wrench dotted with rust,

Thank you, for the greased screwdrivers,

and the needle-nose pliers. Just imagine

all the wonders the boy can build

or repair now, right? No siree!

Immediately, he sets out to discover

how the world was made

by unmaking everything the world has made.

A light falls from its fixture, and he says, Thank you.

A fence, relieved of its nails, and he says, Thank you.

Sudden three-legged chairs. Bookshelves

spilling their belongings to the floorboards.

Thank you, he says. Thank you. A demolition man?

Not really. Better to call him “curious,”

one who looks, then understands,

how everything secedes, returns to dust.

Items currently damaged are held as a counterpoise

to the items inevitably (but not yet) damaged.

There used to be elves in the forest beyond our houses.

Green men and blind angels.

A barefooted prophet stepping out onto the waves

of moss. There’s nothing that can’t be explained.

Look at the boy as he looks out at the field.

And now the field is gone.

So why then does he keep saying, Thank you?

And when will he stop? Only time will tell.

Or maybe we should say: only time would have told,

as the child has taken that apart as well.

Piece by ancient piece. Bone, hair, hinges.

Father Time, like an antique watch.

Little screws missing. Revelations everywhere.

IN THE GALLERY OF AMERICAN VIOLENCE

the musket sulks in the corner.

Not only is it exhausted, it feels

utterly humiliated. A pack of wild

school kids huddles around

the display case, bore...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Note to the Reader
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Replica of The Thinker
• Part I.
• Part II.
• Part III.
• About the Author