MiPOesias Magazine

Jonah Winter

Jonah Winter is the author of two books of poems, Maine (Slope Editions) and Amnesia (Field Poetry Series). He is also the author/illustrator of several picture book biographies. When he is not writing poems or children’s books, Mr. Winter plays the clarinet at bat mitzvahs and yoga studios.

Mission Impossible

I know what you’re thinking:
Hey, the concept of “Modernism” in the visual arts
was first exhibited in the tiny, fragmented brush-strokes of the Impressionists
whose notion of divorcing the picture plane from pure narrative

while striking up a casual, non-monogamous pleasure-based relationship with
pure seeing certainly paved the way for Cezanne, Bonnard, Vuillard, Gaugin,
Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Kandinsky, Modigliani, Rousseau, Duchamp,
de Chirico, Gustav Klimt, Emil Nolde, Ensor, Magritte, Balthus,

Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning,
Diebenkorn, Lichtenstein, Larry Rivers, William Bailey, Stella,
the Cubists, the Futurists, the Fauves, the proto-Expressionists,
the Abstract Expressionists, the Minimalists and the Pre-Post-Modern Conceptualists

who in turn liberated the picture plane one step further
by forcing a messy ending to its romantic liaison
with pure seeing, considering it sentimental and banal, a thing to be replaced by
a totally Platonic friendship with 2-dimensional shapes, “pure forms,”

as it were – not images,
not a sideways glance from the mailman Sunday morning,
not a piece of fish someone’s grandmother might have offered OR
whatever finally did happen to Clark Wofford – but instead

an act of pure being, a kind of art
where representation plays little or no part,
where you might be sitting in a diner on a snowy night
or you might not.

The point is:
There is no point!
This has been a completely meaningless exercise in pedantry – and even,
perhaps, a waste of the time it takes to throw it into the garbage.

"The Elk"

"The Moose"

The elk/moose is standing there
in the grass of a field
with a confused look on his face
as if he’s trying to make a decision.

Things aren’t as easy as they seem
for an elk/moose.
Since he is not fully committed
to being either an elk or a moose,

life is hard.
The simplest question, like:
What do I want to eat?
becomes fraught with dietary complications:

The old moose-eat-blueberries vs.
elk-eat-raspberries problem:
Is it possible to be a moose
and an elk at the same time?

Let’s ask Honest Abe what he thinks:
Honest Abe, what do you think?
Well, being Honest Abe, I think
a number of things, to be quite honest, about

domestic economic policy,
campaign finance reform, AIDS,
states rights
vis a vis certain ongoing constitutional issues like “prayer in school”

Mr. Lincoln?
Yes.
Please try to stick to the point.
Okay, but – what’s my motivation as a character?

House of Frankenstein

So the vampire’s dead.
Now the problem remains of how to exit the burning building.
And then, assuming we survive (a big assumption),
what do we do after that?
How do we make sense of anything?
Dead monsters everywhere, car crashes,
big chunks of highway uprooted, dismantled,
pointing heavenward – how can we ever see the world again
as innocent?
Knowing what we know, how can we pretend
this never happened? Even if we move
to a cabin in the most remote, northern region
of Vermont, protected by hundreds of miles
of pine trees, even then
the memories would find us
curled up before the fire on a snowy night,
unsuspecting, calm, fully believing
everything is okay, we’re safe now
from The Past, from Satan’s Army
of Dark Thoughts – yeah that’s all gone now.
It’s then, precisely then,
the face of Frankenstein appears in the window:
He’s not dead! Not hardly!
And guess what – he hasn’t forgotten
how we pushed him off a cliff
in the trunk of a flaming vehicle.
The good news is: All’s forgiven.
The bad news is: He’s cold and hungry
and needs a place to stay for a while,
you know, just till he gets back on his feet.
Oh, by the way, he’s brought a friend, uhm,
the one outside who’s doing all that howling.
Do we mind…?
Do we mind?! Hell! –
what choice do we have!?