Panopticon
What it is to be seen without relief, skin knows.
Glimpsing the face in corners, in a glass, on high—
from Bentham’s belief in self-correcting sin
the omniscient eye surveilles what the carapace does:
blink, sneeze, fumble after a spark. Within the myriad cells
we fear, hope to be watched. In the cloud
images are tinted to outlast oblivion; at the ocean’s edge
a circle was an idea traceable by a single stroke.
One can acquire everything in solitude except character.—
Stendhal. Try from the outside in, this cure
to test-taste only what is pure, eschewing rot
the body’s element. Something the lyric grasps instinctually
how to deadhead, prune. Of a desperation having no end.
We are raising a generation of snipers.—my mother-in-law.
Should the killer’s name go unread? No matter, it will lurk
close to the graves as it can get, like a necrosol
or inscrutable gland secreting its basic chemical,
which, disproportionate, wrecks a mind past fathoming.
Carol Alexander’s latest book, Blue Vivarium, was published in May 2024 by Glass Lyre Press. She is the author of three other poetry collections, including Fever and Bone and Environments (Dos Madres Press). With Stephen Massimilla, Alexander co-edited the award-winning anthology Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press, 2022). Her most recent publications can be found in Asheville Poetry Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Mudlark, One, RHINO Poetry, and New World Writing Quarterly.
Read Carol Alexander’s other Letter to America poem appearing in Terrain.org, “Blue Calling.”
