Poetry / Drew Krewer

:: Manufacturing Resilience In Tifton, GA ::

When we talk about dog 
years, we are discussing trajectories 
of death. Instead, let’s discuss 
a lawnmower that doesn’t shear 
but recreates wildlife in its wake. 
Mow down the world in an elaborate frenzy 
against the extinction 
of grass. Buried treasure crazed 
the neighborhood, taught children 
the art of extraction, of taking profit 
from the earth. Sometimes, I find myself 
inside empty supermarkets, with no aisles. 
I am small, sissy, pre-industrial; convenience 
has abandoned me––the tabloids, the candy— 
all of it, not here, not necessary. 
Everything echoing the emptiness 
of the year––the stroke of an impressionist 
leaving me with a suggestion 
of a face and conversations with decorative 
whispers. The portrait––don't remember me this way. 
Remember me as pixels, as wildflowers, 
as chihuahua. What is your earliest 
memory of a natural disaster? 
Was it close or far away? 
While the water is still here and clear, 
I want to wade through and dissolve 
like a vivid watercolor. Tell the dwarfed, 
frightened fish that the diatom has arrived, 
that it is durable and can handle 
this region of pain. We can only 
dive so many times to the beginning, 
where we correct the heart from hateful thresholds 
and not every tree takes in the same amount of light.

From the writer

:: Account ::

This poem comes from a fin­ished man­u­script I start­ed writ­ing in ear­ly 2015 just before elec­tion sea­son kicked into full force. As our coun­try unfold­ed in both star­tling and per­haps expect­ed ways, I found myself unable to iden­ti­fy and char­ac­ter­ize what I was feel­ing in my mind and body; how­ev­er, I knew I want­ed to find a way to access and explore these laten­cies. On Insta­gram, I found myself fol­low­ing sev­er­al dig­i­tal artists, and I real­ized the art was so com­pelling to me because it was pro­vid­ing an avenue to access what my body was try­ing to tell me. Soon there­after, I cre­at­ed a sec­ondary Insta­gram account, curat­ing a list of 100 dig­i­tal artists that some­how felt aligned with my vision. Explor­ing and cycling through mas­sive amounts of imagery from these accounts (over the course of four years) is what ulti­mate­ly cre­at­ed the fab­ric of these poems.

Drew Krew­er is author of the chap­book Ars Warholi­ca (Spork Press, 2010). His work has appeared or is forth­com­ing in Trou­bling the Line: Trans and Gen­derqueer Poet­ry and Poet­ics, Dia­gram, LIT, and Dream Pop, among oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. He holds an MFA in Poet­ry from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona and lives in the desert.