In today’s poem, the Filipino poet Alfred “Krip” Yuson uses humor, juxtaposition, and some brilliant line breaks to celebrate aspects of Pop aesthetics while simultaneously imagining the patronizing that Andy Warhol’s (real-life) Filipina maids endured.
Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, a new generation of “help” continue to serve Warhol and his definitions of “art” to this day.
Enjoy.
Ellen
Art, my dears, is not cleaning up
after the act. Neither is it washing off
grime with the soap of fact. In fact
and in truth, my dears, art is dead
center, between meals, amid spices
and spoilage. Fills up the whitebread
sweep of life’s obedient slices.
Art is the letters you send home
about the man you serve. Or the salad
you bring in to my parlor of elites.
While Manhattan stares down at the soup
of our affinities. And we hear talk of coup
in your islands. There they copy love
the way I do, as how I arrive over and over
again at art. Perhaps too it is the time
marked by the sand in your shoes, spilling
softly like rumor. After your hearts I lust.
In our God you trust. And it’s your day off.