Three Poems After Andy Warhol, by Jessica Mattox

Elvis 11 Times, by Andy Warhol (USA) 1963. Photo by author.

Fading Glory 

“Saving the world, everyone wants to; men think they can do it with guns, women with their bodies, love conquers all, conquerors love all, mirages raised by worlds.”
Margaret Atwood, Surfacing
 
I dream in
silkscreen, against
which your facsimile
fades,
becomes delicate, over
time and space. In the first
hour, the darkness
obscures
you and the gun,
but I see you there, your legs
strong, stout, and ready. The belt
and the holster astride your
waist, pleading your case
to protect, avenge,
exact natural justice.   
 
Second, third, and fourth hours
pass into the light and back
out again. Cuffed shirt
open, chest barely bared, your eyes
sliding up.
The barrel aimed at me,
you take a
publicity shot
before playing hero
on the silver screen.
 
In and out of consciousness you go
in hours five, six, and seven.
Hours eight, nine, and ten
your simulacrum drifts into
copies of copies,
a palimpsest
on which
I write my own
salvation.
 
Who are you at hour eleven but a vapor?
 

Diamond Dust Shoes, by Andy Warhol (USA) 1980. Photo by author.

​Fantasy
 
A fantasy dances
with cerulean hope,
burns with crimson fire 
and dollops a white-hot flame
on top. It cools the floor with
teal, suggests
suggestion with hot pink.
The fantasy
takes turns with the spectral
spectrum, asks for a new partner
each night, with no regard for  
the ache of high arches.
 
A close-knit matrix
does fantasy construct
in patterned heels clicking
against the black
background of
patriarchal night-dreams,
 
gazes not our own,
but its own.
 
We catch stars
in the same shoes,
night after night,
always thinking
it’s a shoe of
a different colour.
 
Fantasy calls us to
synthesize our style
into a synthetic aesthetic,
a visceral glisten of social
capital. We leave
altruism in the diamond-dust
of our last transaction.
 
Fantasy fits
in,
a stealth agent
dressed in glittering night stars,
shoe-boxed into freedom, asks you
to purchase a pronoun at your
leisure:
 
she/he/they/ze/who/it.
 
Who wins?
                                                
The eyes have it.
 
A bright subtext;
                                                
a soulless sole.

New York Post (Madonna: I'm Not Ashamed), by Andy Warhol (USA) 1985. Photo by author.

Let the Body Be and the Mind Will Follow
 
“I recall the feeling, puzzled, baffled, when I found out some words were dirty and the rest were clean…the worst ones in any language were what they were most afraid of, and in English it was the body, that was even scarier than God.”
​Margaret Atwood, Surfacing
 
Let 
the body be
under scrutiny, the mind
a scalpel,
indexing iconography. Let
the body be
 
broken on an altar,
a sacrifice to
the mind proper,
separate
 
from
the unspoken parts--
 
fashion
a whole temple
with no holes.
 
Let the body
be a map
with compass
roses in its hair,
charting a course
the mind
cannot follow.
 
Let the
bodies coalesce
into complete
consciousness,
a space
where no shame
is inscribed.
 
Let the body
of Christ unite
us, and the
mind will follow
where the Spirit
leads, but--
 
Even a whisper
is too loud. Even
demurring is not
enough, even
the suggestion
will go to print--
the idea
a precursor to touch.
 
A headline:

“Reveal the body and the mind will fill it.”
 
Jessica Mattox

Jessica Mattox is an adjunct English professor who is passionate about the teaching and learning of writing in higher education. Her poetry has appeared in The Amethyst Review and Last Leaves Magazine. She lives in Virginia with her husband and two cats in their 1890s Victorian home.