At the entrance the horse turns red, turns
left, and the flowers share her color. Beneath glass.
The museum is closed, but fast-forward
and I will tell you the exhibit underwhelms me, how on a streaming service
you can place the cursor over a later point in time
and see a still of what comes next
without committing—it's like that. There's no past or future
but the present and then the traces, indications, etc. Or it's like
when a single example is exceptional to the rest—I'm annoyed
but reinforced in my love of that exception.
In an early poem Adrienne Rich writes
”Time in the hand is not control of time,” and bless early poems
for their uncertain ends. What do we miss if we write only “after”?
The odds rise up like spider lilies, like each version
of a mark on paperwhite. I want to close my eyes
as I rise from the floor, possessed. I want to approach
each possible version of myself. Gimmick was once an anagram
of magic. Clouds move one skill to another, they are so heavy,
no really they weigh millions of pounds over the figure
standing with arms spread out like a landscape, like
from faraway, like a person standing in the middle of the line.

Published October 4th, 2020

S. Brook Corfman is the author of the poetry collections My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites, chosen by Cathy Park Hong for the Fordham POL Prize, and Luxury, Blue Lace, chosen by Richard Siken for the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize, as well as three chapbooks including Frames (Belladonna* Books). In 2019 they won the Tupelo Quarterly Open Prose Prize judged by Danielle Dutton, and in 2020 a scholarly essay was published in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. @sbrookcorfman & sbrookcorfman.com

Rachel Eulena Williams is a New York based artist from Miami. With a BFA from Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Williams has been an artist-in-residence at NY Studio Factory in Brooklyn, 68 Projects in Berlin, and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in Manhattan. Williams’ work has been shown in New York, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Canada, France, and Sweden. Her most recent exhibition with Cooper Cole Gallery, Hey Mars, can be viewed online. Williams’ piece ‘Water ring’ is available through Canada Gallery, with the proceeds going to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition.