Jory Mickelson

Warhol dreams of the seven of cups

which of course, as a portent means
he is arguing about directions,
I mean directing 

a film in which the screen
only shows a man’s face.
What the camera can’t convey: 

scent of burnt coffee,
recently peeled orange,
garbage, sweat, 

damp plaster sticking to the brick
behind the subject’s head.
Can a camera 

reveal the actor’s mind
across thirty-six minutes
of film? His boredom, 

his pleasure, his remembering
moonlight hanging in the treetops
of the park, 

[the audience imagines] a breeze
among the leaves, the raw light
across his face. 

In shadow, his visage revealing
the skull beneath. The seven
of cups warns 

between choice and illusion.
Return to the dream where
Andy argues with 

himself recurrently,
a loop repeating, a clip
replayed. The film 

like tinny music through department store
speakers, variations on a theme.
Warhol begins 

to question Warhol: who’s the watcher,
who turns away, who
is seen?

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Jory Mickelson (they/he) is a queer, non-binary writer whose first book, WILDERNESS//KINGDOM, is the inaugural winner of the Evergreen Award Tour from Floating Bridge Press and winner of the 2020 High Plains Book Award in Poetry. Their publications include Court Green, Painted Bride Quarterly, Jubilat, Sixth Finch, Diode and The Rumpus. They are the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize and were awarded fellowships from the Lambda Literary Foundation, Winter Tangerine and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico. They are a 2022 Jack Straw Writer in Seattle, Washington.