before burying my work
in the natural museum of history,
a grave I folded
between the 1890s and obscurity.

Shapes came to me
as verses to the prophet,
but I couldn’t eat what I made in pottery.

The functional world collapsed
into an architecture of folds.

I cast my babies,
coated them in strange electric glazes.

A thousand things went democrat:
mostly tragic fires,
but also the decorative mode,
which conspired to prove inadequate
my world of hands.

I dressed up as Father Time
and pointed abroad.

I closed my eyes,
tied my mustache in a knot.

Christopher DeWeese

Christopher DeWeese’s most recent collection is The Father of the Arrow Is the Thought (2015). He teaches at Wright State University, USA.