Poem Stripped of Artifice
Mark Lamoureux
New School Chapbook Series 2008

If it is a trap, why are we going?

Here is the first section in Mark Lamoureux's chapbook-length poem.

The telescope wobbles & collapses
On its 3rd leg, a landstrider felled.
A fissure mars the plate of its eye
& likewise the sky splits, another
fissure from which issues a mantis-
light. Get over it, my father says.
He is disappearing ahead of me, into
darkness. I remain in that spot:
lover's lane, clouds of breath, weak
little stars, unaided eyes.

It's important to read above as centered, narrowly justified text, left and right, with double spaces between the lines, since the poem maintains this alignment command in similarly 'fissured,' single columns through nine of its 11 sections. The poem is then punctured by and endures the blank of the paper it's printed on, adhering almost to the end to a marking time formation that implies a stationary position -- I remain in that spot -- but with steady knee and foot movement parallel to the ground, total control. This is control that will fall to pieces, as will Mark's specificity via poetic sleight -- landstrider, mantis-light. The discourse unravels around family members in a kind of process-conscious memoryscape: "I stole a / Legg's egg from my grandmother's / dresser ... How does it feel, my / wasting your time like this?" This from Section VI where there are a few more specifics, "I didn't / know there were pantyhose inside." But by Section XI the egg explodes as the columns give way to two-page-wide lines of prose, single-spaced. The sky seems truly split and the language goes to the South Pole.

Feeling is considered to be subjective & intuitive, "warm."
The organ that produces sentience has been objectively identified as the brain.

We find Mark in fairly airy, confessional, self-lecturing depression -- depression is one his terms, as are "heart death," anhedonia, Hell, and a few other place-holders that convey personal torment. The work concludes on a harrowing turn of events that may not be everyone's idea of a great time. It's not ironic. Not synthetic. It's upsetting. It's an antidote to Get over it.

Poem Stripped of Artifice
Mark Lamoureux
New School Chapbook Series 2008

Mark Lamoureux's chapbook-length poem begins:

The telescope wobbles & collapses
On its 3rd leg, a landstrider felled.
A fissure mars the plate of its eye
& likewise the sky splits, another
fissure from which issues a mantis-
light. Get over it, my father says.
He is disappearing ahead of me, into
darkness. I remain in that spot:
lover's lane, clouds of breath, weak
little stars, unaided eyes.