Model with Swan Decoy, 1987 by Joshua Garcia

after Philip Pearlstein 

How symbols lose their meaning: first, render them inanimate. Common. Made of wood, not marble or flesh. Give them empty eyes, faceless. The ancient Egyptians believed that a spirit could inhabit an image or object. Chiseling the nose off a living statue would render it breathless. Whether I am discontent or simply turned on by transformation, who’s to say? In a puddle on the sidewalk, cherry blossoms and trash. Plastic straw, cigarette butts, receipt paper. Wreckage fanned out at the hind of a swan. How do you walk away from a shapeshifting god? Painters strive to master the nuance rippling through the fabric, bedsheets peeling like the posters on subway walls. 

Joshua Garcia is the author of Pentimento (Black Lawrence Press 2024). His poetry has appeared in Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Passages North, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the College of Charleston and has received fellowships from Bucknell University and The Poetry Project. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

18 November 2024