Kenward Elmslie

 

Alex Katz, Kenward Elmslie, 1978

Aquatint in six colors
Sheet: 14 1/2 x 19 inches
Plate (max.): 6 x 6 1/8 inches (printing plates cut along the contour)
Edition: 25
Artist Proofs: 9
J. Green HP paper
Printed by Prawat Laucheron, New York
Co-published by Brooke Alexander, Inc., New York, and Marlborough Graphics, Inc., New York
Portfolio: Face of the Poet

Elegy for Loosha

Ambidextrous eliminators, langorous Elvises,
get roughed up bad by soused chimpanzees
notating your daily round. Like me, all Elvises
are riveted by visceral effluvia: human ashes
sifting down from a huggable blue bowl—

[zenith of a prairie sky.

A recurrent street screech exacerbates my stage-fright
at windows of, building opposite—starer-outers,
lotus-eaters flogging their dot.com wounds.
Dead skin spin-offs flake onto a wondrous panoply,
similar to my dreams of a fertile nation
of miscreant beloveds who can replicate,
post-impact, Vanilla Conga, back aways

[a flame dance, so they say.