Philip Kobylarz, The End of America, Photograph
Siphon
As the endless daylight routines
inscribe onto service workers
as the harsh rays of the warehouse clocks
sweep up every nook or cranny
as the nubs of yawning flowers
& fluorescence club the circumspect air,
the exoskeletal factories snicker
the silicone trills as the office desks
& delivery trucks destine for the block
beyond the coffee hung in the cup
& the morning that siphons off the dawn—
______________
Andrew Hanson
Review by David B. Prather
The sound work and unexpected modifiers work well in this piece. There is a push-pull balance of language and subject that seems to offer both tension and resolve in an extended breath.
Review by Massimo Fantuzzi
To syphon, to pump liquid upwards, by suction, and then down, to a lower level. Just like in the case of these poems – which kidnap and feed the flow of imagination and transport it elsewhere, spaces, textures, sounds, a turn of the wheel, the work shift, birds-eye view, and then flushed, back home. To syphon our spirit from the reservoir of the perceived, to lift it to the unexpected and, trustingly, to fountain it beyond that – precisely poetry.