POSITION PAPER
Artist
The Alternative Press
Artist
Clayton Eshleman
Datec. 1993
MediumLetterpress on paper
DimensionsPaper Size: 8 × 11 in. (20.3 × 27.9 cm)
ClassificationsPrint
Credit LineGift of Gary Eleinko, 2023
Object numberUAC7451.12
DescriptionLetterpress printed poem by Clayton Eshleman, titled "POSITION PAPER".It is always daybreak,
an octopus with golden eyes.
You stand not on zero
but on the zerocity of being.
The lifewire is looped between desire
and fufillment here,
imperfect adumbration of day
breaking below.
From dragon jaws yawning
the hero is born to be beheaded
by an elder.
The elder's problem:
he had a father. Be father free. Be
daybreak. Wear this fissure
as Ptah wears falcon,
as an Aztec eagle warrior
looks out an open eagle beak.
I is not an other.
I is, in other. Rimbaud,
you erred!
You took off your caul bonnet,
you thought you could go it alone.
The man enchased in daybreak
is the sunyata in his parent's gyre. Being
runs clear, remains
unclear. Be verb, for they are ob-
and subject,
the frame
you mirror.
The Alternative Press, Issue Number Nineteen.
