FROM ANTIPHONY | ANTI-PHONEY
Ben Egerton
XXIV.
Two Flags, Jasper Johns, 1972
[flag one]
just down from here
not far
just behind [the] queenish zeuge
[at this] unlit edge
[of the] universe
(‘zeuge’: [also] German [for] ‘witness’)
miles beyond familiar identifiers
quiet off-turn
yes, here,
valley of some renown
a Jasper flag:
kite-ripple & yaw
& watery blur-chrome
pushes ’gainst an undercurrent
[of] vapid meteorology
nostalgia condenses
somewhere exospheric
[un]leashes vapour’s cleansing quality
[in] horizontal layers
[flag two]
Yale’s Jasper’s Old Glory (x2):
[a] k-flag exchange
semaphoric back-&-forth
over nautical distances
“I wish to dialogue with you”—
quite the exchange:
minds error-mirrored
critical ensigns
[of] partisan[/partial] America
union guide as knowledge:
knowledge is haul-raised
doubled
two layers seen
zoetropic image pulses
Zion’s notice twice repeated
exalted expression
[of] vexed pennants
Ben Egerton is a poet and education lecturer from Wellington, New Zealand. His most recent collection is The Seed Drill (Kelsay, 2023).