Jeffrey
Grunthaner holds a BA from the CUNY Baccalaureate Program and lives and
writes in Manhattan. He is known to read at various venues in New York
City, where he is routinely showered with roses and violets. This poem
takes us, as the title says, into a landscape. So far into a landscape
that the mood and details bring the focus narrow instead of broad. It
suggests a bygone era even though it isn’t a history. Don’t you love
the line: “Embalmed in an amber of glycerin.”?
In a Landscape
By Jeffrey Grunthaner
I understand your approach to the world–
Which is the logic that guides you to an asphalt
Stream of sinuosity and derision.
You forge a platter for your head to rest on,
A single glass where your face can swim in suspension
Embalmed in an amber of glycerin.
But why the habit that takes centuries to cast away,
The Martian soil stuck to the soles of your shoes
Which have traveled only on the earth?
There’s a trap door in the floor, where the taps of a glass
Pianoforte hammer like the silence of erasure,
And a gloved hand ensues, closing the light of the room
Inside a box with darkness for a lid, leaving not a fingerprint,
Nor the slightest remainder on the wall, where the switch will flip down,
Casting the illusioned world in shadow.
