You are reading Fiddleblack #9
Biblical figures fade
beneath pale rose spheres.
Past obscured, then lightened, briefly,
as lands empty out beneath
Women sulk behind their graphics
monks bleached almost to negatives
of photographs
of how they were once captured by the Masters,
Or to clouds—forgotten
details of past attempts at art:
revolution–provocation
(now remembered),
between circles of light and pale pastel
paint marks.
Virtual reality nostalgic for
all it is obliterating:
compelled idea, tempting canvas.
beauty and death, at endless play,
recreated on spent card.
Computers and Old Masters’
pornographic off-prints with delicate graphics—
a coup, of a kind.
New voice and light to near-dusted subjects,
blank spaces, lost titles—
“dying artist defeats another’s” past by
painting over it:
old prayers in pastel,
crucifixions, disembodied and
transcendent. I am lost, in these moments.
Viewer, judger, Saint:
be taken in and pushed aside
by pattern obscuring
all’s that’s near-been taken down.
Christiana’s third book, Death of a Ladies’ Man, was published by 3:AM Press in autumn 2012, having previously been serialized in 3:AM Magazine in spring and summer 2012. Christiana is also the author of The Wrecking Ball (Beautiful Books UK, and Harper Perennial USA, 2008) and the graphic novel The Socialite Manifesto (Beautiful Books, 2009). She graduated from Cambridge in 2011.