“ . . . that gaze . . . one cannot look for long.”
-John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror

It’s a fixed point in a clear sky

at which a busy shopper on a city street

stops amid a passing crowd and looks up

at what she, or he, can’t quite fix their gaze on.

So, they stand there looking, staring up,

searching, while, for a time, other shoppers pass

on the sidewalk, ducking in and out of storefronts,

perhaps a little perturbed at having to step around

this crazy gentleman, or lady, standing still and staring

up at a clear sky until one curious shopper

wonders what the hell she, or he, is staring at.

So, they stop and look up to see for himself, or herself,

and then, others follow, such that, soon, a small group

of shoppers are standing in the middle of the sidewalk,

all staring up at a clear sky looking for some fixed point,

some not finding it, some thinking they’ve found it,

but all never finding the exact same spot in the sky, but all

forgetting for now about the four shopping days left before the holiday,

forgetting, for a time, the heavy bags in their hands laden with gifts—

some for people they don’t really care about but feel

obligated to—forgetting the fight one had with their spouse,

the STD that haunts another to this day from that affair

they had with their professor in college, forgetting

the mortgage and seven grand in damages to their Ram 1500

caused when that Lexus a week off the lot t-boned them

on the way home from the Lansing Symphony Orchestra,

forgetting it all, while they stretch their necks and tilt their heads

and point up, asking for and offering advice and discussing

with those next to them whether they see the fixed point,

where it is, and what exactly they are supposed to be looking at.

Artist Statement

As a poet, I look for what Seamus Heaney refers to as "the music of what happens" in anything I read or experience. I love playing around on the page, the freedom and childlike delight in forming the words and sounds, rearranging, molding like a sculptor realizing not necessarily the perfect form but a form, one of many possible ways given to wonder and reflect. Sometimes a poem will miraculously fall out of my head fully formed, and I'm grateful for that. But more often, poems for me are the result of countless versions of slapping words and thoughts on the page and then endlessly playing around with them, like a child in a sandbox, to see what happens.

Ken Damerow is a poet based in mid-Michigan whose work has appeared in Umbrella Factory Magazine, The Academy of the Heart and Mind, Penstricken, and The Rise Up Review. He edits Clockhouse Journal and holds an MFAW degree from Goddard College and a BA from Michigan State University.

“A Combination of Tenderness” by Ken Damerow

“Yellowjackets” by Bruce Morton