Andrew Kuhn | Plains Weather

“The cylinder, made of the same brick as the platform
from which it springs,
forming the main motif of the house,
was not derived from Mies,
but rather from a burned-out wooden village I saw once
where nothing was left
but the foundations and chimneys of brick.”
—Phillip Johnson

On the springtime coverlet of a little Eden just after sunset

the box of glass floats

and the master builder, alone,

bored with empire, bored with excess, bored

with getting away with it,

imagines himself a prince, back-lit, disrobing,

teasing his subjects

who crouch in the bush like refugees.

This land is my land.

Somewhere out in the dark the family tree blossoms

laddered with shrewd poltroons

who pitched Mannahattas off the Palisades.

Old money new money

money accruing it

never stopped . . .

In the massive, shuttered childhood homes

the Daughters of the American Revolution

passed for parvenus.

Now the prince sheds veils that shimmer of abalone,

tarpon scales skimming in moonlit pools.

This land is my land

Not all of the pure products of America go crazy . . .

Some live forever

and grow rich, grow richer, praised to the skies.

Before his pampered chin grew whiskers

aluminum made him a jazz-age Croesus,

the protean century’s chosen element

shiny ubiquitous light fantastical

spinnable as silk, spun worldwide into

safety razors, throwaway cans

fighter jets, shining skyscrapers.

Rich as Proteus the god

he grew, immune to limits

the Depression for instance

and ordinary life

transcending pedestrian rights

or wrongs, free to float

an ecstatic excursion descending on Poland

in the blitzkrieg’s vanguard

burning villages

thrilling the night

This land too

This land is my land

Then home to celebrate the ruination of the Jews—

print panting tributes to Mein Kampf,

throw bricks of cash at Huey Long and Father Coughlin

avatars of radio hate scouring American prairies and hollows

and trick out muscled Nazi squads in custom fitted uniforms

swooning to witness their strutting marches

erect through the squares of Homeland hometowns.

The money flowed and bore him up.

He stockpiled weapons and flirted with learning

to shoot

When it became more widely noticed that these enthusiasms

stank of treason

the money served and the talent too

to float him up and out of harm’s way

the postwar Proteus morphing into—

no architect, merely—but more

and more the transcendent hero of material culture

the One to decree to each new generation

what is to be

the next Big Thing.

As the impudent mandarin

forgives himself everything

the new Canaan in need of mandarins

forgets the unforgiveable—

celebrating the brilliant Glass House,

his see-through palace

great wink at the world

the joke nobody wants to get . . .

This land is my land

But entranced this soft summer night

all alone in his gorgeous deceptions

the great man

is suddenly spooked:

naked and still, in view of the trees.

Now gather shifting mobs

of shadow.

And he hears behind the mosquito whine,

tree-frog racket, suburban cough

of a car turning over

the click and whisper

of baffles and dampers:

history, not entirely hushed.

He slides open a panel in the façade,

flees the crouched and listening world.

Before him squats the cylinder of brick

like a factory smokestack sheared by a tank round.

Light startles a brilliant frame

through which he slips

and disappears.

On the chimney’s far side

a hearth is blazing.

To the ghosts on the lawn it looks as if

at last he too

has walked into

an oven

Plains Weather

When you wake up

if you wake up

will you see the ceiling has flown far away

or maybe just into the muck pond

down the road where cattle cool their shanks

and switch away the flies, except

the pond’s been sucked up to the sky

as well?

The threads that came from Hong Kong or the new place

they now make the shirts that celebrate

your everlasting Oklahoma City Thunder—

will they come apart in shreds as fine

as sphagnum moss

and flutter on the updraft high enough

to find their ways back home?

Oh gosh I hope so.

Had about enough of you,

and this heat.

Andrew Kuhn is a psychologist in New York City and the Hudson Valley. His poems have appeared in Common Ground, Conclave, The Mailer Review, Vending Machine Press, So Be It, The Ghazal Page and other venues. His collection of interviews with 21 eminent poets, How A Poem Can Happen, came out in 2017.