Sarah Mattson-Fishman

SURVIVING THE ART OF FUTURISM

See how Boccioni's bronze man strides forward,
his pants sharp as spurs.
He flings open his figure to defeat
whatever surrounds it.
It's what I meant when I said
how quickly
I can run.
How quickly I can empty pockets
of loose coins,
of dollar bills held together by cellophane tape.
How quickly I can strip naked
of clothes that smell of sea and lightning,
of shoes that stepped
over men floating face-down,
of skin grown thick from weather,
too much handling.
Now, lacking the armor
of rank purpose,
my body no longer fits
the shape
of what the world wants to become.
Such monstrous ideas placed on plaster pedestals.
Notice how Boccioni's arms and eyes
gather up inside
himself.
Look how he shakes!
Such simultaneity of planes cannot hold.
Our fleshy parts need to fly away.

Sarah M Fishman is a poet, essayist, and engineer. She grew up a daughter of the American South but has lived and traveled all over the world including the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. Fishman graduated from Georgia Tech in 1989 with a bachelor's degree, and in 1997, she received a Masters in Business Administration from The University of California, Berkeley. Fishman now attends Bennington College where she is working on an MFA in Creative Writing. Her work has been published in Israel where she currently lives with her husband.