Lavar Munroe, A Kingdom of Ignorant Kings, 2018 (Artist Website)
Acrylic, antique fans, rope and spray paint on canvas
6’15” x 4’
There is a grassy kindness to what
soaks in the plump shade before
its unfortunate spotting, before
hands ram sticks—preadolescent
gods hammering their crossroad signs
into the ground. You own the brown
liver, spongy lungs, guts and blood—
a kaleidoscope emptied like a mother’s
purse. You didn’t have to take
the coach’s command in the huddle,
the others pumping one another up.
Back then, a cheer was the stirring
chirp of Descartes’s animal-machine
theory, but now through the pane
of your mind’s eye, you alter stone-
flower-stone around your dead thing,
anticipating the reader stitching threads
of compassion because someone
bigger just split, left you crushed—
or worse, charged at you. I’ve known men
who take icepicks to add notches to their
belts, men who think nothing of chasing
any body through a dark wood or down
the sun-lit path, so, you may be surprised
to learn that I see your gesture as earnest
with the turn to the soft landing, your exquisite
heart the shape of a Spike-thumb Frog.