Oh Guston, by David Duer

Ramp, by Philip Guston (USA, b. Canada) 1979

Oh Guston
 
Your red six-lane ramp
Rising into a blue sky tinged
 
Pink with sunset
And the nude descending that ramp
 
What was on your mind in 1979
Metallic shields and Frisbees
 
Some bleary as graveyard shift eyeballs
Menstrual pads and cheese graters
 
Orange and red and blue phalli (or dildos)
Billy clubs truncheons switchblades all
 
Protruding from atop this entourage
This invincible cacophony
 
And at its centre a red ear
Listening intently to America

David Duer
 
David Duer is currently a docent guide at the University of Iowa's Stanley Museum of Art and the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, where he’s come to know the works he writes about intimately. His work has been published in Ascent, Exquisite Corpse, Milkweed Chronicle, North American Review, and Poetry, among others.