Arsenal 4
Cinders in clotted smoke stone of the war and its gleaming battle plans reduced to perfection the floors reappear in silent symphonic gestures, a folded paper calico window hung with tiger skins, knocking twice at night Jerusalem red lamps worn more as a garland than her smear turning trampled door breaking the fall scribbles under square jars, giants in long fits in hieroglyphics the painters weaned on bent reed pens drilled holes, blood ink of gorgons (violet) sample of the sirens hooked in delay over and underwater approaches replete faint bluish grey
Copyright © 2018 by Cedar sigo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 10, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
“I wanted condensed color in places then color degraded and bleeding out into other spots. In order to perform this poem successfully, I try to concentrate on skating only its silences. I break the line quickly to make it fall tall and thin, like the Watts Towers. This way I can identify the silences streaming through a little easier as I'm reading. My partner recently asked me to read this poem as I was preparing to perform, but he couldn't remember the title. When I asked him to describe it, he said, ‘You know, the poem where you describe all the colored gasses.’”
—Cedar Sigo
Cedar Sigo
Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest. He studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute.