Modernity is an apocalypse
for the miraculous: a camera
in every pocket, proof positive
that all the things we were so
positive we saw were perhaps
perfectly made in our brains. No
bigfoot, no ghosts, no
flying saucers. Not lies—just
tired eyes yearning to be
part of something fantastic,
with our elastic minds
stretching to pull the impossible
from the dark. One night, years
ago, I was driving down a lonely
road when I saw dart above
three bright lights that hovered
just above the trees. I didn’t
breathe. Just knew that 1999
would be the last of me: a beam,
to be sure, would pull me up
into the many-fingered hands of
a band of creatures that traveled
across the universe hoping to grab
a teenager. Instead, they sped away,
better prey than me elsewhere,
somehow—now, I know that nine
billion cellphones and not
one to say look here means that we
are all so very alone: that
our home, a fluke, might
be all there could be. But
then I remember how it felt,
my shaking hands clutching
the well-lit wheel: sure, theirs are
all fake. But mine was real.
Unidentified Lying Object
B.A. Van Sise is an author and photographic artist with three monographs: the visual poetry anthology Children of Grass with Mary-Louise Parker, Invited to Life with Sabrina Orah Mark, and On the National Language with DeLanna Studi. He is a two-time winner of the Independent Book Publishers Awards gold medal, a two-time Prix de la Photographie Paris winner, an Anthem Award winner for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, a finalist for the Rattle Poetry Prize and Kenyon Poetry Prize, and a winner of the Lascaux Prize for Nonfiction.