Poem by Kelli Anne Noftle

Your Modern Face Scans the Surprise Ending
                           after the time I met Jenny Holzer



Polaroids too 
large to shake
hang from clothespins 
            and Jenny 
 
smooths even 
horses into her 
long dark hairline 
ancestry ripples 
muscle memory
           running in full 
grown mythos
 
all the while
 
my mouth is foul folly filled it 
misspeaks
a parched 
introduction:
 
I'm yours
a follower
this want 
to stretch the text
but eyes can’t elope or seize the ceiling
she reaches heaven-
              ward to bend
 
some sunlight resizing the room to remind 
us the face 
demands
what cannot be
expressed in 

the afterworld shock 
of snow on oak 
planks
 
narrows to 
her studio attic 
she says 
without utterance
            someone opened 


            this tiny window—  
 
slipping between 
large wet squares still
            waiting for light 
 
to spill from 
foreground punctures pores so 
                              close they
draw canyons 
 
saying the image grows
indelible as 
our future 
I follow a prediction

Kelli Anne Noftle is a poet, musician, and business manager who lives in San Diego with her husband and 60 year-old Sulcata tortoise.  Her first collection of poems, I Was There For Your Somniloquy, was selected by Rae Armantrout for the 2010 Omnidawn Book Prize. Her new book of poems, Adam Cannot Be Adam, is now out from Omnidawn Publishing.

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