By Merrill Cole
webpage: poeticdiversity
Art by Ester Hernandez
Objective Correlative
The male me, the one with
the bushy blond hair,
swaggers across the sidewalk, bopping to
his huge ear-pad headphones.
Self-satisfaction surrounds him
like a halo.
Anyone could see it.
It’s an automatic thumbs-up.
Just at the right moment,
my female side dances in, from
the opposite direction,
her healthy chestnut tresses
bouncing to quite a different beat.
She’s American as the Sun Maid raisin girl,
a sweet fib
about backbreaking labor, oblivious
behind her own ear pads, a hymn
to joy.
The collision is destiny, the promise
that mutual attraction
of the approved sort
begins with arbitrary violence.
Hey,
it’s a natural process, even if
initially misunderstood:
“You got
your politics in my poetry!”
“You got your poetry
on my politics!”
Deus ex machina, a shop clerk in an apron
hands the indignant pair
a tasty compromise formation.
You go,
polyglycerol polyricinoleate!
Let the dance begin, tertiary
butyl hydroquinone!
All this makes 1-800-SueU4Pain superfluous,
but
thank you for your concern.
Alas, it’s not the 80s anymore.
The tv, flat
as an underwear model’s abdomen,
has burnt through its toxins.
No pain, no gain.
Two great tastes that taste
great together: the bald propaganda
I couldn’t write, muscular, handsome,
so retro in his black Doc Martens,
and a pretty little peanut butter cup,
actually a prophecy, yes, an infinitely gentle,
infinitely suffering thing.
Sun Mad graphic by Ester Hernandez, 1982, subverts the figure of the Sun Maid that still circulates on commercial raisin packaging. The print relays the artist’s dismay after discovering her family’s exposure to water pollution in her hometown of Dinuba, California. Her skeletal maiden embodies policies that rendered grapes harmful to the workers who grew them and the consumers who ate them.
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