A Poem by Michael D. Snediker

The Golden Bowl / Felix Gonzalez-Torres

There was no other
consideration except

I wanted to make
art work that could

disappear that never
existed and it was a

metaphor for when
Ross was dying it

was a metaphor that
I would abandon

this work before
the work abandoned

me I would destroy
it before it destroyed

this was my little
amount of power

from the very beg-
ginning it was not

even there I made
something that does

not exist I control
the pain.

Michael D. Snediker is the author of The New York Editions, The Apartment of Tragic Appliances, and Queer Optimism: Lyric Personhood and Other Felicitous Persuasions, as well as two two chapbooks, Nervous Pastoral and Bourdon. He’s an Associate Professor of American Literature and Poetics at the University of Houston.

The Poetry Section is edited by Mark Bibbins.