"You Finally Go Back to LACMA to See BAND" by Chloe Martinez

You Finally Go Back to LACMA to See Band
Richard Serra, 2006, steel, LA County Museum of Art

Don’t be ashamed to cry
inside the Serra
the first time back after two years

of looking at the world from a safe
distance. You can soften here
beneath the leaning ochre walls, the narrow

canyon-entryways. Its texture like something
from nature and yet we know
it is human-made. Dry your eyes.

Walk clockwise, as when circumambulating a shrine.

Walk it like an outline of your own body.

Don’t touch it. Touch it in your mind.
Its tongue-rough surface: don’t lick it
with your own warm tongue. It won’t taste

like rust, like turmeric, like the skin
of a lover. Don’t run. Don’t lie down
and let it lean over you in many directions.

Don’t take a picture. Don’t blink.
Don’t get dizzy because the angles keep changing
and you yourself are a bit skewed.

Don’t write your name inside.
Don’t take it apart in your mind and put it back together.

It’s not a piece of ribbon candy, you’re not an ant.
Not a curl of bark, not a secret place. It’s a feeling.
You can let it come over you now, however it comes.

Chloe Martinez

Chloe Martinez is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press). Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Beloit Poetry Journal and elsewhere. See more at www.chloeAVmartinez.com.

Headshot: Chloe Martinez

Photo Credit: Jacob Abraham