Mastodon
after seeing Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog
Do you agree we can convince ourselves
of anything & this is why we are a danger to others?
When I came upon a blue balloon dog the size
of a mastodon, I wanted to mount it like a horse.
Gallop it away to freedom. Knock down the museum
walls & send all the visitors running. Bring it back
to the giant child from whom it had been wrested.
Quickly, before it deflated from despair or popped
on purpose in a quixotic gesture of longing. But then
the little white rectangle on the wall spoke: mirror-
polished stainless steel. The air went out of me. This was
the materiel of bridges, of ships, of empire. A missile
in toy’s clothing. A Trojan dog. Death as party favor.
I hate you, late-stage capitalism. I’m yours.
Properties of a Sphere
ships whips
oceans trade gold chains
tobacco coffles rape cotton
hounds auctions war constitutions
law rights sugar coffee indemnities
rubber ivory amputations bantustan
literacy test poll tax sharecropping noose
convict leasing housing covenants crosses
riots redlining neighborhood groups
hurricanes drinking water pandemic
police bullets tasers prisons
drought boats liquid grave
carotid knee
Claire Jean Kim teaches at the University of California, Irvine. Her poems have been published in Rising Phoenix Review and Tiger Moth Review.
Header photo of Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog by Thomas Hawk, courtesy Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0 DEED.
