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ED ASNER

1970 –

“...style...”

Grind me Nautica, Vic Tayback.

Line chef para Alice arm hair,

fore-sausage & anchor tat,

snatch, a silvered chest, V-

neck, sleep hard Weezy—

Zebra-Jive-Turkey.

As in how do you do that?

Glimpse, a tad, pecking

the surface glaze, or Dove

Men+Care. iNot be puppy breath,

tan streak down the cheek, scar,

or Bowie’s bass: VANILLA ICE

tricks a pompadour. Jim Carrey

a detour, when slips the tongue.

Airborne pellet in seltzer fizz. ED—

father had a junk business...barrels

of jimmied pistols...they wouldn’t fire

...but they were good for kids.

Ronaldo V. Wilson is an interdisciplinary artist, poet and scholar. He is the author of Carmelina: Figures (Wendy’s Subway, 2021). He is Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at UC Santa Cruz, serving on the core faculty of the Creative Critical PhD Program and principal faculty of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies.

About Ronaldo V. Wilson

Occasion

Themes

About this Poem

"‘Ed Asner’ is from a cycle of poems that explores a kind of quotidian whiteness, as expressed through North American (U.S.) 70s televisual and current pop iconography as influence. The poems are intended to act as sonic, sculpted responses to questions of memory and desire. Between modes of critique and play, I enact this work as a means to explore race, gender, power, and representation.”

—Ronaldo V. Wilson

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UPON Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, New Museum, New York, 2021. / DOUBLE SONNET after A.J., C.S.D., C.G., J.B., D.R., P.C., M.B., K.G., K.W., M.E., K.B., E.G., M.D. & R.S.

^{for Okwui Enwezor}

Firehose blast pummels. Torqued silhouettes.
Teach me how to Dougie…We don’t succumb.
Everything that stood in their way…ruthless
destruction…for which tool brazen Diamond

Ronaldo V. Wilson

2021

71. Realizing Lucy

At the top of the hill, before the light gives way to the pine
that fractures across the sky,
and the farmhouse, opens its door to shadow, there is a
signal.

It is not the dead bird, lying out flat and face down in the
middle of the street, its brown
belly on the pavement, cooled by the wind.

It is not in my chest, which opens up into sections as I
breathe in the air that almost
shocks me into falling face down as I climb the hill.

Ronaldo V. Wilson

2016

Post-Dissertation-Intervention (i.)

I always tell my dancers. You are not defined by your fingertips, or the top of your head, or the 
bottom of your feet. You are defined by you. You are the expanse. You are the infinity. 

—Judith Jameson
 

Elizabeth Alexander in The Black Interior writes about beauty, and how black artists 
resist monstrousness by their own self-definitions.  

I’m interested in this repair, too, but find comfort in the ugly.  I love monsters.
We both consider Brooks.

Ronaldo V. Wilson

2014

Poems

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ED ASNER

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