​Christian Riese Lassen, by Melissa Tuckman

​Christian Riese Lassen
 
The anti-impressionist. Sequence
and depth. Repoussoir reefs, with flatly
 
vivid Moorish idols,
tubes, and tangs—a polychromatic
 
welter that draws back
as we "swim" forward, into the crystalline
 
nursery where dolphins
adore a humpback calf, or orcas glide,
 
dive, and roll, exposing
ventral patches to a sun
 
they seem to know. Fluke-trailing 
bubbles: legible propulsion. Breaching,
 
twisted individuals—look closely
for the catchlights, always present--
 
rip into the air, an honest signal
whose energetics field
 
zoologists are reckoning. Exactest
flux—the artist's ministry—as caustic
 
networks spread their crazed
glories over locomotive silk.

Melissa Tuckman

​Melissa Tuckman teaches in the English Department at Rowan University. She lives in Philadelphia.