Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): from Something Solid, The Nineties, "Defiance"

The road is slick with moisture. If they hydroplane,
you can say goodbye to my own future life. Rather
more distressingly, they’re both high, as she holds on
tight. Her long, slender arms make the necessary circle
around his ample waist; long, lank blonde hair blows
in the breeze. Yet she’s quiet at Penn Crest, stubbornly resistant to
attempts to draw her out. She’s his girl Friday more
than wife. Real marriage hovers in the future as
a homing beacon, against the ravages of too many
deal-related parties, intermediaries imploring her
to step back, climb on his loaded lap: her one & only.
Body/soul unity haunts her waking hours, a vision
inherited from the Renaissance shakes her dope-addled brain.
Statuesque, she carries a blown-glass bowl, rolling papers.

The most formal future comrade migrates from flat to flat,
the length of Manhattan; saved from school’s repetitive
rigors, yet awkward against others more normal. As is
often the New York spin, there is no getting close. Kids
come & go. She’s got the pluck, as is ascertained, to paint
what she wants. The most difficult forms (portal-ways, planar spaces)
flow easily out of her. She’s then a weird, worrisome windup
doll to defy the lightness of touch used to lighting up
the New York art firmament. She’s a gem for someplace else,
not dust-binned yet, but close. Half-noticing, she also
imposes a posture of defiance on her life— tiny, half-dyke.
Day-to-day, the grind is to take the advanced lights, find
somewhere to migrate with them. The vision behind is crystal.
I was destined to defy the motorbike with paper piles, marriages. Right?

© Adam Fieled 2024-2025