This is a world

 
This is a world on the brink of collage:
a maker supplied with magazines and glue
and sticky fingers — enormous in proportion
to the images torn! Each hand may hold
a motorboat, a balcony, a quarter–acre of corn.
Wondrous to behold: the infinite possibilities
of scrap as here an eye is released from its locus,
here a pattern, once bound in the logic of camouflage,
stands alone, pure principle of novelty. 
Each bit is become a ragged island, deckle–edged
in the maker’s mark. You'd be surprised to see
how delicately our giant tears these pieces
freeing them to flutter, as they will, to a table.  
Some of the bits are torn triangular, some
circles, some into stars as yet unnamed.
But each is bright and realistic and nothing
is unprincipled: the fall of shards, the piling-up
of color into momentary meaning merely
improbable as an unassisted triple play.

First published in Homage, 2024
Homage Travel Stories & Essays | Poems | Contents at-a-Glance