EKPHRASIS: Art & Poetry Edited by Liz Blood
Ekphrasis is an ongoing series joining verse and visual art. Here, poet Cameron Brewer responds to two images from Shane Brown’s “Life Out There” series, which explores the mythology of the Atomic Age in the cultural landscape of the Desert American West.
Extinction Level Events and Other Bargains And so I told the man, “I’d like to buy something that can end the world.” He replied “I only sell rocks here.” I make some witty comment about how he’s selling himself short, how rocks are the only thing that have ever ended the world. I tell him how millions of years ago, rocks fell from the sky and turned our planet into a dull, red hot mass of aching potential. Nothing should have been able to grow there, and yet, it did. I tell him how things settled down, how it rained until there was nothing but an ocean, how that ocean held new life in itself until the children decided to play upstairs. And this new life thrived and adapted and grew in this world of green and chance and wonder until, one day, a rock fell from the sky and killed most of them. The survivors endured millennia without light or heat, with air that burned to breathe. Nothing should have been alive after the dust settled, and yet, it was. More time and more change until, one day, some particularly smart apes decided beating each other with rocks would be easier than talking about their problems. And so they set to the task of devising increasingly efficient ways do so. Clubs then swords, cannons then guns. And then the smartest of the apes, inspired perhaps by some genetic memory of cosmic trauma, remembered that, once, rocks fell from the sky and destroyed everything. Now, a button and good intentions are the only things between us and a burning world. No one should be allowed to hold apocalypse in their hand, and yet, we do. So, how much does yours cost?
Cameron Brewer is an activist, poet, comedian, and writer in Oklahoma City. For nearly a decade, he has been writing and performing poetry addressing themes of race, pop culture, and American trauma. Shane Brown is a photographer and cinematographer living in Tulsa. “Life Out There” is one of his latest documentary photography projects.
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