Kirsten Brady
“Poly Glyphs”
14″ x 17″ Graphite on paper
Response

Site Specific
By Worthy Evans
Inspiration piece

Absence would be a way
of cottoning to its significance.
A field photograph
of close-cut wheat, an officer shown
troubling for an aide to bring up
the unknown soldier from the front.

The rest is conjecture: No request
for a smoke or a drink
of hot alcohol from a tin cup.
Here it was, and that was it.
Not a blindfold, not a wall or a pole
to hold a body up against.
In this area where an army happened upon
one day before, a pen was built
to hold livestock
that would otherwise interfere
with the process that armies keep
to ensure their existence.

Not a drum, not a hankie, not an open command to do it.
Just a hand, a trigger, a bullet, a man on his knees.

Not a rope on him, not an awkward speech,
not a declaration of execution, not a signal.

At this place some years ago
a gun fired one round at a downward angle.
A water tower marks the spot
of the execution,
in what is now a tangled wood.

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Kirsten Brady
“Michelangelo’s Motor”
Response

A Visit to the Sistine Chapel, 1511
By Helen Lewis
Inspiration piece

You’ll find my master on the scaffold there:
Flat on his back, with paint streaks in his hair.
This labour’s how he earns his daily bread;
A marriage of convenience. He’s been wed
For three long winters to this shrewish wife,
Who’s had ten thousand hours of his life.
But every dusk, as night crowds out the day,
And steals all colour, leaving dregs of grey,
He keeps a moonlit tryst with mistress stone,
The only passion that he’s ever known,
Whose skin is smooth and white, whose touch is cold.
Inspired by ageless beauty, he grows old.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.