E.E. Cummings Prize Honorable Mention, selected by Regie Gibson
Monet vs. the International Pop Art Exhibit
after Sir Thomas Wyatt
The plastic crucifix mounted on a model U.S. fighter-bomber did not
offend me; in fact, I was delighted to find
it was called Western Christian Civilization. Nor did I mind
the Stars and Stripes used as a tablecloth for cereal and canned peas. I’m not
one to hold such symbols sacred, not
precious about the Passion, the flag, nor Kellogg’s or Del Monte. I kind
of like to see them skewered by incisive collage. That kind
of art satisfies my itch to stick it to the Man, but that’s not
what you, Monet, seemed to crave:
you crept out quietly at three a.m. to capture light falling on haystacks, not
the haystacks themselves; to render fog obscuring the Seine, not
the Seine. You dared to thieve the fleeting, to have
the cheek to stick it to Time with a flick of your brush so fast,
that a rose wisp of cloud reflected at dawn in a water lily pond would last.
Don Hogle‘s poetry has appeared recently or is forthcoming in Apalachee Review, Atlanta Review, Carolina Quarterly, Chautauqua, Pilgrimage, South Florida Poetry Journal, and A3 Review and Shooter in the U.K. Among other awards, he won First Prize in the 2016 Hayden’s Ferry Review poetry contest. He lives in Manhattan.