Adrian Piper, by John J. Trause

Adrian Piper
 
τυφλός τά τ᾽ ὦτα τόν τε νοῦν τά τ᾽ ὄμματ᾽ εἶ
                                                  Oedipus to Tiresias*
 
Adrian Piper, our Tiresias,
From age to age
From Thebes to Thebes
From Africa to Europe
To America
Tiresias of our time and all time.
 
You who were female
Are now male
And again a female
“a sweet young thing”.
 
You who were black
Now white, now black
Again, are black and white.
 
Our Tiresias Mediatrix,
What was it like?
Our Tiresias Metamatrix,
How did it feel?
Our Tiresias Meretrix--
No, you turn no tricks,
But tricks of the media,
Media tricks,
So turn again.
 
Daughter of Ham and Amon
And Dam of Hammon[s?]
Daughter of Man and Aton
And Man of Manhattan
Daughter of Isis and Osiris
Sister of Whorus  [?]
Beloved of Ra
Queen of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms
Of East and West
Of Midtown and Uptown
Of Nevada and Times Square
And of Nevada in Times Square
Lady of the corner and the  [lacuna]
Lady of columns and stepped pyramids
Of obelisks and stelae and amphitheatres
Sweet and low
 
                                           [lacuna] Canopi
 
Are you
A kinder, gentler Cleopatra,
Who trods around the pools of Canopus
At Canopus and Canopus of Tivoli,
Hadriana Auletes,
Daughter of Piper?
 
Hap(p)y were we who heard no evil
Hap(p)y were we who saw no evil
Hap(p)y were we who spoke no evil
 
Baboon-headed were we.
 
Are you the Pied Piper, the Colored Piper,
Piping, prodding, pushing? Pushing it?
Pipe up.
 
No, you are not.
 
You’re not pushy
You’re not sneaky
You’re not lazy
You’re not noisy
You’re not vulgar
You’re not rowdy
You’re not horny
You’re not scary
You’re not shiftless
You’re not crazy
You’re not servile
You’re not stupid
You’re not dirty
You’re not smelly
You’re not childish
You’re not evil
 
TURN   TURN   TURN  TURN
And turn again.
 
Adrian Piper, our Tiresias:
Tell us what it’s like,
What it is.

John J. Trause

*“You are blind in your ears and mind as well as in your eyes.” Sophocles. Oedipus Tyrannos, line 371.

“Adrian Piper” was previously published in John J. Trause’s Picture This: For Your Eyes and Ears (Dos Madres Press, 2016), and at Infinity's Kitchen.

John J. Trause, the Director of Oradell Public Library and formerly the Reference / Periodicals librarian at The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York, is the author of Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press, 2017), a book of traditional and experimental poems; Picture This: For Your Eyes and Ears (Dos Madres Press, 2016), a book of poems on art, film, and photography; Exercises in High Treason (great weather for MEDIA, 2016), a book of fictive translations, found poems, and manipulated texts; Eye Candy for Andy (13 Most Beautiful… Poems for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, Finishing Line Press, 2013); Inside Out, Upside Down, and Round and Round (Nirala Publications, 2012); Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007; rev. ed. 2014); and Latter-Day Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off Broadway.  His translations, poetry, and visual work appear internationally in many journals and anthologies, including The Antioch Review, the artists' periodical Crossings, the Dada journal Maintenant, the journal Offerta Speciale, the Great Weather for Media anthologies It’s Animal but Merciful(2012) and I Let Go of the Stars in My Hand (2014), and Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015).  Marymark Press has published his visual poetry and art as broadsides and sheets.  He is the subject of a 30-on-30-in-30 essay on The Operating System, written by Don Zirilli, and an author of an essay on Baroness Elsa at the same site, both in April 2016.  He has shared the stage with Steven Van Zandt, Anne Waldman, Karen Finley, Andrei Codrescu, and Jerome Rothenberg; the page with Billy Collins, Lita Hornick, William Carlos Williams, Woody Allen, Ted Kooser, Victor Buono, and Pope John Paul II; and the cage with the Cumaean Sibyl, Ezra Pound, Hannibal Lector, Andrei Chikatilo, and George “The Animal” Steele.  He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, N. J., and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.