The Picture of Dorian Gray (at 16 frames per second) The sunlight

slipped over the polished leaves. In the grass, white daisies were tremulous.

The spray of lilac fell from his hand upon the gravel. A furry bee came

and buzzed round it for a moment. In the slanting beams that streamed

through the open doorway the dust danced and was golden. The heavy

scent of roses seemed to brood over everything. Some large blue china

jars and parrot tulips were ranged on the mantelshelf, and through the

small leaded panes of the window streamed the apricot-coloured light of

a summer day in London. The sunset had smitten into scarlet gold the

upper windows of the houses opposite. The panes glowed like plates of

heated metal. The sky above was like a faded rose. The tulip beds across

the road flamed like throbbing rings of fire. A white dust, tremulous cloud

of orris-root it seemed, hung in the panting air. The brightly-coloured

parasols danced like monstrous butterflies. The darkness lifted, and,

flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. Huge

carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty

street. The sky was pure opal now, and the roofs of the houses glistened

like silver against it. From some chimney opposite a thin wreath of smoke

was rising. It curled, a violet riband, through the nacre-coloured air.

—

This selection comes from Anne Lesley Selcer’s A Book of Poems On Beauty, available from Gazing Grain Press. Purchase your copy here!

Anne Lesley Selcer is a poet and art writer. In 2014 from A Book of Poems on Beauty was chosen by Dawn Lundy Martin for Gazing Grain press. A double chapbook with Lara Durbeck was recently published by Supersuperette press. In 2013 SFMoma commissioned her for a series of essays and she wrote on language and the moving image. The book Banlieusard was commissioned in 2005 by Artspeak gallery, and other writing has been anthologized in It’s night in San Francisco, but it’s sunny in Oakland, The Feeling is Mutual: A list of our fucking demands, NW Edge III: the end of reality, and The Physics of Context. Poems are forthcoming in Fence and Armed Cell and have appeared in Dusie, Where Eagles Dare, and The Clackamus Review, among others. Art writing can be found in catalogs or monographs for galleries such as Centre A, the Or and the Helen Pitt gallery, and TV Books / Deitch Projects as well as in magazines Fillip and Doppelganger magazines. In San Francisco, she was a member of the Nonsite Collective. In Vancouver she created and curated the Chroma Reading Series series for artists, poets and researchers. She is the current resident at Krowswork gallery.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

The eye must be sunlight

Ice caked, falling water, compression, clarity.
If colors are the deeds and sins of light, this is light caught sleeping.

Green abases to gold, red deepens to rouge,
a hillside becomes painterly, its grass turns ochre, expires into solidity.

A postcard series: the sky painted blue, the grass green,
the work is a machinery of distance and contact.

Conceptually based sequences, shot North, West, Northwest, Southeast.

Cold and colorful, red deepens to rouge, gold abases to green.
The mirror is the brightest color: the mirror strikes light.

—

This selection comes from Anne Lesley Selcer’s A Book of Poems On Beauty, available from Gazing Grain Press. Purchase your copy here!

Anne Lesley Selcer is a poet and art writer. In 2014 from A Book of Poems on Beauty was chosen by Dawn Lundy Martin for Gazing Grain press. A double chapbook with Lara Durbeck was recently published by Supersuperette press. In 2013 SFMoma commissioned her for a series of essays and she wrote on language and the moving image. The book Banlieusard was commissioned in 2005 by Artspeak gallery, and other writing has been anthologized in It’s night in San Francisco, but it’s sunny in Oakland, The Feeling is Mutual: A list of our fucking demands, NW Edge III: the end of reality, and The Physics of Context. Poems are forthcoming in Fence and Armed Cell and have appeared in Dusie, Where Eagles Dare, and The Clackamus Review, among others. Art writing can be found in catalogs or monographs for galleries such as Centre A, the Or and the Helen Pitt gallery, and TV Books / Deitch Projects as well as in magazines Fillip and Doppelganger magazines. In San Francisco, she was a member of the Nonsite Collective. In Vancouver she created and curated the Chroma Reading Series series for artists, poets and researchers. She is the current resident at Krowswork gallery.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

cutouts, opulence, piling, pooling at the bottom
heaven is a negative place
a holographic poem, a list
strung on fishing line, of irregularly cut shapes
when you say pleasure, it refers back to the subject/
beauty is private, the origin of beauty is private
an open umbrella rising up through sound
when you say sensation, it refers back to the object
a picture has no skin

—

This selection comes from Anne Lesley Selcer’s A Book of Poems On Beauty, available from Gazing Grain Press. Purchase your copy here!

Anne Lesley Selcer is a poet and art writer. In 2014 from A Book of Poems on Beauty was chosen by Dawn Lundy Martin for Gazing Grain press. A double chapbook with Lara Durbeck was recently published by Supersuperette press. In 2013 SFMoma commissioned her for a series of essays and she wrote on language and the moving image. The book Banlieusard was commissioned in 2005 by Artspeak gallery, and other writing has been anthologized in It’s night in San Francisco, but it’s sunny in Oakland, The Feeling is Mutual: A list of our fucking demands, NW Edge III: the end of reality, and The Physics of Context. Poems are forthcoming in Fence and Armed Cell and have appeared in Dusie, Where Eagles Dare, and The Clackamus Review, among others. Art writing can be found in catalogs or monographs for galleries such as Centre A, the Or and the Helen Pitt gallery, and TV Books / Deitch Projects as well as in magazines Fillip and Doppelganger magazines. In San Francisco, she was a member of the Nonsite Collective. In Vancouver she created and curated the Chroma Reading Series series for artists, poets and researchers. She is the current resident at Krowswork gallery.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

One unrolling bolt of ice cream silk …grape-sized globes

of lapis lazuli and goldvein grouped and reposing in the

corners…a fountain or a chandelier…a set of gold combs

scalloped in black pearl…a stretched suede book that knocks

as soft as a little girl…hautly arched whalebone stilettos…

fat, well-behaved chairs…paintings on every inch of ceiling…

tiny crystal pots containing not ions of mashed l i me, birdbath

water, temporin and pearl…a leat her up of heron quills…two

rocaille tiaras…a Zouave jacket woven f rom cr ushed leaves

and gold…the extended family of an orchid…a bracelet made

of tombstone…a wig culled from Reykví kingur towheads…a

lunar astrolabe…a millefiori flower bed…a set of handwritten

encyclopedias…a comprehensive book of cloud typology…a slice

of wedding cake crystallized into chalcedony…a Cherry Plum,

Clematis, and Honeysuckle cure…a fine and tiny typewriter…

porcelain nails in a bell china box…flowers floating in a cabinet

vivarium…a perfume of Fiji nectars…a box of San Franciscos…

—

This selection comes from Anne Lesley Selcer’s A Book of Poems On Beauty, available from Gazing Grain Press. Purchase your copy here!

Anne Lesley Selcer is a poet and art writer. In 2014 from A Book of Poems on Beauty was chosen by Dawn Lundy Martin for Gazing Grain press. A double chapbook with Lara Durbeck was recently published by Supersuperette press. In 2013 SFMoma commissioned her for a series of essays and she wrote on language and the moving image. The book Banlieusard was commissioned in 2005 by Artspeak gallery, and other writing has been anthologized in It’s night in San Francisco, but it’s sunny in Oakland, The Feeling is Mutual: A list of our fucking demands, NW Edge III: the end of reality, and The Physics of Context. Poems are forthcoming in Fence and Armed Cell and have appeared in Dusie, Where Eagles Dare, and The Clackamus Review, among others. Art writing can be found in catalogs or monographs for galleries such as Centre A, the Or and the Helen Pitt gallery, and TV Books / Deitch Projects as well as in magazines Fillip and Doppelganger magazines. In San Francisco, she was a member of the Nonsite Collective. In Vancouver she created and curated the Chroma Reading Series series for artists, poets and researchers. She is the current resident at Krowswork gallery.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

When I was the beautiful girl
the fireflies signified:

I was trapped in amber.
In a sudden Midwest rain.

I sat on the curb with kids.
Eye shining, in rips and scuffs.

I held fast like an Indian
in a box of dead differences.

Stunned still.
A moth in a jar.
The ethics of the I, ignored.

When I was a beautiful girl,
in a system of ons and offs,
in the silent language of lighthouses,
in an inconsequential, feminine swarm,
the fireflies signified:

—

This selection comes from Anne Lesley Selcer’s A Book of Poems On Beauty, available from Gazing Grain Press. Purchase your copy here!

Anne Lesley Selcer is a poet and art writer. In 2014 from A Book of Poems on Beauty was chosen by Dawn Lundy Martin for Gazing Grain press. A double chapbook with Lara Durbeck was recently published by Supersuperette press. In 2013 SFMoma commissioned her for a series of essays and she wrote on language and the moving image. The book Banlieusard was commissioned in 2005 by Artspeak gallery, and other writing has been anthologized in It’s night in San Francisco, but it’s sunny in Oakland, The Feeling is Mutual: A list of our fucking demands, NW Edge III: the end of reality, and The Physics of Context. Poems are forthcoming in Fence and Armed Cell and have appeared in Dusie, Where Eagles Dare, and The Clackamus Review, among others. Art writing can be found in catalogs or monographs for galleries such as Centre A, the Or and the Helen Pitt gallery, and TV Books / Deitch Projects as well as in magazines Fillip and Doppelganger magazines. In San Francisco, she was a member of the Nonsite Collective. In Vancouver she created and curated the Chroma Reading Series series for artists, poets and researchers. She is the current resident at Krowswork gallery.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.