Word Choice features original works of fiction and poetry. Read one poem by Ben Pease, selected by Daniel Moysaenko.

Ben Pease, Chateau Wichman XIX. Courtesy of the artist.

Note from the poet and artist: Black and white images serve as frontispieces for each section of the poem. Before reading the poem, the reader must confront these ghostly images that stand somewhere between a constellation and a Rorschach test. Since the pre-ghost images relate to the poem in some way, the reader may visualize something different before and after reading. Recently, I have begun to make videos that incorporate a similar visual technique. You can watch the first three sections here.

Darkness embraced The Wichman
           a black nylon flesh
covered his own

the symbiote suit 
                 however maliciously it fed off 
             Spiderman’s adrenaline when he slept
at least provided the webslinger
      breathability and a fashionable wardrobe   

not so for the Wichman
            his sauna suit kept him 
in the dark
               a claustrophobic but all too familiar 
lack of light maintained itself for some time 

just as impatient as The Wichman 
             the darkness began expanding  
as one imagines pasta unfolding 
                                       from a pasta machine

luckily for The Wichman’s sanity
           the darkness didn’t go on for eternity 
     or make The Wichman feel like a ribosome
                              in the first cellular organism 
                                  to make its own food

thanks to a vague returning 
             omnipotence
             The Wichman knew 
         he was on a battlefield
near the Ardennes Mountains        
           hunkered down
in a foxhole wriggling his toes
           to get a little feeling back     
he hugged his rifle tight
           kicked his feet up 
and right where his boot touched 
                                   the edge of his 
                                depressed shelter    
a cigarette flared up a few miles off

The Wichman got on his radio about to say 
           Who The Fuck Ignored Light Discipline?
but it was too late

the batteries of German howitzers blasted
             The Wichman’s eardrums
and shook the ground

The Wichman tried to hum 
         that line from the 1812 Overture
             between blasts
but they came too quickly

instead of an explosion burnishing the night sky
           the flicker of light from the cigarette intensified

the howitzers’ salvo boomed 
           like an Atlas-sized luggage cart rolling
over the indents of a titanic walkway 

the shells continued their bombardment
          at the same precise location 
the bombastic light in a shrapnel formation 
          hurtled toward The Wichman

                  each fragment 
              upon entering The Wichman
         made him flinch
 though he felt not pain
             but the faint steadily increasing
motion of a vortex seizing upon him

tourbillion the French word for whirlwind
           occurred to The Wichman then
the battle thundered on moving inward
                       not dispensing injury
but strengthening The Wichman 
                each blow eradicating
what notions of the world 
                          he once held

The Wichman glowed like Han Solo 
            coming out of carbonite 
soldiers from both sides walked side by side
            speaking in a language 
he knew he nor anyone else
                      could understand

he reached and called out for them
             to help him

they came and peered into the vortex 
         twirling from the center of his chest 
                   and were consumed by it 

            the howitzers     the trees 
the mountains     the entire landscape 
The Katamarian Wichman in god mode 
            consumed whole countries 
whole continents whole worlds 
            whirling within him 

The Wichman floated in a river of dead trees 
the dead trees swirled around him and once more 
                         put on the garment of life

The Wichman reunited with everything of this universe
           above it beyond it and yet below it less than it

The Tourbillion Wichman spinning amid 10,000 others
           they spun around him he around them
       no center every point a center 
 The Wichman a boy a beast a girl a liquid bird
           a fiery sea not anything not nothing
he twirled over every space he could not be found
      beyond contentment and agitation  
   beyond male and female
          beyond joy and sorrow
             beyond Wich and Man
     beyond rock ’n roll and silence
            beyond love and melancholy
         beyond exploration and conquest
     beyond punting squads and quarterback sneaks 
           beyond waxing and waning 
            beyond iron and spice
     beyond bobble heads and fleur-de-lis
          beyond feint-within-a-feint and attack outright  
       beyond recoiling bark and lead-tipped arrows
           beyond unwanted fame and undeserved obscurity
         The Wichman spun

Ben Pease is a poet and visual artist with degrees from Emerson College and Columbia University. He hails from Ludlow, Massachusetts, the setting for his next book, Fugitives of Speech. He is an assistant professor at ASA College in New York City. A chapbook with selections from Chateau Wichman, Wichman Cometh, is available from Monk Books.