Karl Plank
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Viewfinder
—after Georgia O’Keeffe
Stripped of hide and flesh,
treasure appears undressed
as bare bone on canyon floor.
Don’t stoop to classify.
Observe: the texture of parched tissue
wrought by daedal downbeats of sun,
dry wind; the worn-smooth contour
of a shank curved in counter-symmetry,
dog-legged angles of horn and antler
mapping routes the eye might take
to the hollow holes of a skull
which bring what matters into view:
the world as shaped by form—
a trace of moon descending
on horizons of bending bone.
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Karl Plank is the author of The Grace of Falling Things: Poems (Grayson Books, 2024) and the critical volume, The Fact of the Cage: Reading and Redemption in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest (Routledge, 2021). His poetry has been featured on Poetry Daily and in journals such as Beloit Poetry Journal, Tahoma Literary Review, and Zone 3. A past winner of the Thomas Carter Prize (Shenandoah), he is the J.W. Cannon Professor of Religion, Emeritus, at Davidson College.