Annie’s Predicament (A Letter) Poem by James Niles

Dear Annie,

Avedon, you look so much like him nowadays. I loved sharing the cherry phosphate at the soda fountain below Union Square. The paparazzi were so so very pretty, in their Calvin Kleins and Madoff muscle shirts.

Amazing; raises all kinds of questions about copyrights, portraiture, art vs journalism, the nature of photography itself, and value, intrinsic worth and the marketable kind, that few artists are capable of thinking about. Art, that stuff hanging in museums and some that deposits itself, as huge bronze turds sinking in city council cement, or a carved marble kiss erupting in a room, too large and smooth to be real, too real to be so large; indecipherable sprayed murals, masterpiece murals moving on freight train cars fixed in acid rain to a hammering rhythm of this land is your land, better living through chemistry; the murals were removed from Rockefellar Center. I love stretching my finger toward yours, may I touch you? I think this, as I brush the straying popcorn from your lap and offer to share our giant coke at the redacted redux of the Apocalyptic learning- how- to- love-the-war; I am the bomb, but what is that gooy goopy fluid pooling in the lap of my body. Is it indoctrination or entertainment, these still frozen moments of time, moving at twenty-four frames per second? If we speed it up, we can slow it down enough for the chrysalis of Africa to flutter across Europe. We depart our luxurious seats, groaning and regaining our full stature, saying nothing, tentatively we grasp hands some force being with us, aping no apnea. Good conquers all, but there’s a drought in Kenya, and forty-foot wide lions roar no more from the wall, light bursting forth and smothering us with dreams.

Love,

Jimxxxx