{"id":5959,"date":"2020-12-28T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/floridareview.cah.ucf.edu\/?post_type=article&p=5959"},"modified":"2020-12-28T09:00:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T09:00:38","slug":"sun-air","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/sun-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Sun & Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/h3>\n

Sun<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Oregon once, the acolytes in saffron<\/p>\n

sweatshirts and idolatrous medallions<\/p>\n

made a vow to grow roots and change<\/p>\n

address, to elect the man with the sunset<\/p>\n

sport coat to serve as mayor and recast<\/p>\n

community codes, to pull a nail here,<\/p>\n

an ordinance there, the streets signs<\/p>\n

of their Christian neighbors taken down<\/p>\n

to make way for the Sanskrit of their master.<\/p>\n

At last, the real estate of consciousness<\/p>\n

was growing.\u00a0 Less in communal rapture<\/p>\n

and rage that climaxed in bewildered tears<\/p>\n

than the watchful stillness that came after.<\/p>\n

Surely there was nobility in this.<\/p>\n

The lotus of their suffering flush, effulgent.<\/p>\n

Somewhere a ribcage cools in a field,<\/p>\n

stoned on love, that kind that lifts the fog<\/p>\n

above its place on earth, but after that,<\/p>\n

what?\u00a0 The new human<\/em>, the archetype<\/p>\n

their teacher promised, what they were hoping<\/p>\n

to become, what they feared the locals<\/p>\n

in hunting gear and office would destroy?<\/p>\n

And can you blame them.\u00a0 Say a torch<\/p>\n

broke the glass of your hotel in Portland<\/p>\n

or a long sleeve poisoned the salad bars<\/p>\n

of your town caf\u00e9s.\u00a0 Who would not feel<\/p>\n

some shadow of their partisan nature fall<\/p>\n

into the arms of your frightened kind.<\/p>\n

I have been that child, that prideful victim<\/p>\n

of my own outrage.\u00a0 Call it the fitful<\/p>\n

cleansing of a birthmark, the forever<\/p>\n

failed extradition of histories of abuse.<\/p>\n

Call it shell-shock; or war; or call it<\/p>\n

what it is, salmonella and kerosene<\/p>\n

and the scarlet seam of the unclean<\/p>\n

lesion breaking, but do not call it new.<\/p>\n

Puritans of permission raise their cries<\/p>\n

as Christ does at the altar, disseminating<\/p>\n

wine with a bitter summons to forgive.<\/p>\n

Submission and refusal.\u00a0 How better<\/p>\n

to survive the next ice age or spiritual<\/p>\n

contagion: a thicker coat, warmer meal,<\/p>\n

a feast day between tribes; how better to live<\/p>\n

and let live than deep inside a system<\/p>\n

of guards to wave friends and family through.<\/p>\n

The body of the chosen is a body<\/p>\n

after all, and so in need of water, harbor,<\/p>\n

seasonal fire and the couriers of sleep.<\/p>\n

It shrouds itself in skin, as Bibles do,<\/p>\n

and great redwoods, and the new human<\/em><\/p>\n

laid beneath their limbs, a child of heaven<\/p>\n

awakened from a scare to find herself,<\/p>\n

transfixed, in a crystal of estrangement,<\/p>\n

christened in the amber of dusk and dawn.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Air<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

The holier the stone the more like stone<\/p>\n

the power and resolve that laid it, there,<\/p>\n

in the heart of the contested common.<\/p>\n

The last of the temple King Solomon built.<\/p>\n

So say the faithful in their signature black<\/p>\n

though doubtless they understand: to build<\/p>\n

a wall is no king\u2019s work, but that of servants<\/p>\n

who will go nameless, and if another god<\/p>\n

claims his prophet hitched here his horse<\/p>\n

with wings, there is little to say to make<\/p>\n

a god recant, revise, or otherwise move,<\/p>\n

to abandon a place like that.\u00a0 The prayer<\/p>\n

whispered or tucked into a hole in stone<\/p>\n

might be, in installments, one long prayer,<\/p>\n

incanted under the breath, and if it helps,<\/p>\n

it helps, it mortars, mends, transmogrifies<\/p>\n

the dullness of loss that makes a stone a stone,<\/p>\n

a holy land a calf whose gold is blood.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Every comic dies now and then, but then,<\/p>\n

if called, they rise, and folks remember best<\/p>\n

the deeply wounded ones who made them<\/p>\n

laugh like friends.\u00a0 I am thinking of you,<\/p>\n

Greg Giraldo, who told Joan Rivers once,<\/p>\n

You used to look your age, now you don\u2019t <\/em><\/p>\n

even look your species.<\/em>\u00a0 And then her face\u2014<\/p>\n

wounded, tightened, paralyzed, stitched,<\/p>\n

healed and babied with the finest lotions\u2014<\/p>\n

gave way, and I saw a little white light in<\/p>\n

her teeth, a bit of joy, however nervously<\/p>\n

touched, beyond the scalpel of this affront<\/p>\n

or that desire to be young, I saw her death<\/p>\n

in the arms of your addiction, the one<\/p>\n

that took you too damn soon, to sit in heaven<\/p>\n

and roast God, as your best friend put it,<\/p>\n

as if nothing were sacred where everything is,<\/p>\n

and each cold mask crumbles into laughter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When I think of idols that have died,<\/p>\n

I think of the toy my father saved from<\/p>\n

his childhood, how it reddened his shelf.<\/p>\n

Beside his picture with the governor,<\/p>\n

a small truck with no one in it.\u00a0 It served<\/p>\n

as proof of the boy I never met, never<\/p>\n

understood.\u00a0 He had so little child<\/p>\n

in him, let alone the sentimental kind.<\/p>\n

You should always keep one reminder,<\/p>\n

he said.\u00a0 I always did, always thought<\/p>\n

he loved me better when I was small.<\/p>\n

Look at me, said all the rusted places.<\/p>\n

And when he left us, they said it again,<\/p>\n

look, but what they revealed remained<\/p>\n

an empty promise.\u00a0 But I could see it,<\/p>\n

touch it.\u00a0 It had wheels.\u00a0 Hollow places.<\/p>\n

When I think of death, I think of this.<\/p>\n

And it flew into walls and drove right through.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The holier the stone the more like stone \/ the power and resolve that laid it, there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5965,"template":"","categories":[9,49,119],"tags":[1742,6,1743,201,1744],"class_list":["post-5959","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-literary-features","category-poetry","tag-air","tag-aquifer-the-florida-review-online","tag-bruce-bond","tag-poetry","tag-sun"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSun & Air - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/sun-air\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sun & Air - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The holier the stone the more like stone \/ the power and resolve that laid it, there.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/sun-air\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2020\/12\/9C96949F-C029-461A-BACE-1BA5A9CDB2F9.jpeg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"400\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"336\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/sun-air\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cah.ucf.edu\\\/floridareview\\\/article\\\/sun-air\\\/\",\"name\":\"Sun & Air - 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