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 table.  
Some of the bits are torn triangular, some
circles, some into shapes 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