Geoffrey Detrani's poem "Cursed Gist" has been paired with an outfit from Rick Owens' Spring/Summer 2019 "Babel" show. Inspired by the Tower of Babel and Vladimir Tatlin's never-built 1,300 foot constructivist monument (Tatlin's Tower), this specific Owens piece is comprised of a cuboid cage constructed from collapsable aluminum tent poles, silk gazar, and wide-legged snapaway pants of black nylon satin. Constellation-like, Owens' architectonic garment "jut[s]" forward and away from the body with "brutal" sharpness and brutalist geometric angles. Similarly, in the ruinous scaffolding of Detrani's "Cursed Gist," not only do the dead accumulate, but the poet brings our attention to the "burnings-leavings" of a landscape vibrating with metal, plastic, and "luminous chime."

​​​— Paul Cunningham, Editor


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​Cursed Gist


Replaced 
Day and day and only in million-hole cut
Replaced charred woods equal of  
Burnings-leavings 
Laid publica dioramic and cursed gist
Scaffold 
Locate the high chapel 
Pyrrhic
The dead add on 
A thing of metal solvent luster plastic silken shatter
A thing to attack 
A river
Putative
Purely alive       
 
Bathed in sunflower light
And bitter almond tassel
A scan of luminous chime 
In so far as the mannerism is earthly 
An asterism like little linked wings 
To jut with a brutal disproportion  







Geoffrey Detrani is a visual artist and writer. His poems have been included in Fence, Aufgabe, Action, Yes, New Orleans Review, Black Warrior Review, Diagram, Parthenon West Review, Grotto, Crowd, Broken Antler, Community Mausoleum, Antiphony Press, and Ballast among other publications. New work is forthcoming in: Mercury Firs, A Common Well, and Petrichor. You can view some of his visual work here: @geoffreydetrani