POETS’ CORNER MEETS ART WALK: BRIDGER AT STRONGHOUSE STUDIOS

10 Dec POETS’ CORNER MEETS ART WALK: BRIDGER AT STRONGHOUSE STUDIOS

Editor’s Note: Kierstin Bridger is the 2011 winner of Telluride Arts’ Mark Fischer Poetry Prize and a regular contributor to Telluride Inside… and Out. Possibly the edgiest member of our family of fabulous writers/poets, including Word Woman Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer and “Feelasophy” major David Feela, Kierstin surprised us once again with this example of ekphratic poetry. (Poetry which complements and enhances the impact of work created by another artist in another medium.)

Telluride Arts has asked Kierstin to do readings throughout the evening at this special Holiday Art Walk at the newly renovated Stronghouse Studios. The event takes place Saturday, December 15.

Adrienne Lent, Work Is Play, Play is Work

Work is Play, Play is Work?

The work of a child doesn’t bother some
the deliberation of lining up the seams,
their strange inborn machinations
the configurations of talk and walk;
cherubic, bowlegged oblivion.

But we all love flawed children
even the boy who blew
all the Columbines away.
The man on the radio said this
defiantly, protectively, like a sleeve
on a double-cupped corporate coffee.

She may be blonde, star-blazed,
with black zig-zag eyelashes,
quick as a pup and whip smart
But she has flaws, she’s on the spectrum,
or tone deaf, can’t sit still.

Wouldn’t trade her
for the world though, would you?
And if they placed a funny looking squawker
in your hands, told you it was yours—
you know the love would start flowing
thick as apple butter in a chilled jar.
We stop it up though
so we don’t go picking up the strays.

Those kids have folks we say, can’t save ‘em all.
But under every pretty, cheap, cotton T you buy
someone’s flawed child pricked themselves
with the needle, sat for 20 cents a day
making the same pattern.

Look under the red shiny wagon
you know those wheels aren’t American made
by a mustached man
paying off his union dues
waiting for a Michelob break.

Every day we trade our tiny comforts
for sticky secrets, little angels
turning the wheel. Cold comfort,
in this innervated place.