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Nike of Samothrace

—Her fish scales, her chains, the woman’s headless
wings and blown

tunic of Parian marble. —The wet-see-thru
camisole. By sea she’s

arrived, lighting on the ship’s prow. One leg
thrust forward, the draped sails

of robes. (Somewhere near, between defeat and prayer, a drive-by
shooting. —The candy thrown around the body, the ambulance. They stole

the dead girl’s dog, while far away outside Jakarta
in sweatshops some work for 20 cents an hour, and there’s

one with his mouth taped shut in sunlight.) From a sanctuary
she was unearthed and taken to the Louvre

where on the grand Daru staircase she stands, stolen, moving
in several directions at once.

Mark Irwin is the author of A Passion According to Green (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2017). He lives in Colorado and Los Angeles.

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About this Poem

“Nike of Samothrace, one of the most captivating works of art in the Louvre Museum, also presents the goddess of Victory as captive, a sad reminder of colonialism. Originally excavated in 1863 on the Greek island of Samothrace by the French vice-consul and amateur archaeologist Charles Champoiseau, she now rests atop the museum’s Daru Staircase, as if just alighted there, elegantly windswept, and headless—a metaphor whose terrifying irony suggests that beauty may make us temporarily forget, but cannot hide the violence and dark secrets of history, secrets no different from the exploitations of capitalism, where chic athletic shoes are assembled in foreign sweatshops. I originally drafted this poem in Paris.”
—Mark Irwin

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In Autumn

When within ourselves in autumn we feel the autumn

I become very still, a kind of singing, and try to move

like all things green, in one direction, when within ourselves

the autumn moves, thickening like honey, that light we smear

on faces and hands, then touch the far within one another,

something like autumn, and I think when those who knew

the dead, when they fall asleep, then what, then what in autumn

when I always feel I’m writing in red pencil on a piece

of paper growing in thickness the way a

Mark Irwin

2017

Toward Where We Are

Now light turns the room a deep orange at dusk and you

think you are floating, but in truth you are falling, and the fall

is so slow, yet precise, like climbing a ladder of straw. Now

leaning forward, you open your hands that keep opening. Is

this what Yes feels like? Making a shore where no water was?

Mark Irwin

2017

Voyage

When we could no longer walk or explore, we decided to wear

the maps and would sit talking, pointing to places, sometimes

touching mountains, canyons, deserts on each other’s body,

and that was how we fell in love again, sitting next to

each other in the home that was not our home, writing letters

with crooked words, crooked lines we handed back and forth,

the huge hours and spaces between us growing smaller and smaller.

Mark Irwin

2017

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Nike of Samothrace

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