The Art of Reassembly

The Art of Reassembly

Tamara Nicholl-Smith

(Athens, Greece)

On the wide sidewalk
outside the Aristotle Bookshop
is a man –
bones covered in skin
leathered from the sun,
lying folded on a sooty blanket,
a white plastic leg clutched
to his side.
He asks for nothing.

At night,
the Parthenon gleams
atop the Acropolis.
He sees the same view as we do,
tourists two blocks away
sitting on a rooftop bar
sipping Negronis.

We angle our seats
captivated
by the distant caryatids
shining like angels
from the Erechtheion.

We float above the world
in a garden of tables
draped in white,
candles, lit and twinkling
like Orion.

In Athens,
museum after museum
is filled with fragments
expertly reassembled into vases,
clay tablets, time-eaten spears
of bronze, partial helmets of war,
and blemished marble statues –
some whole, many broken.

Lining up at the galleries
we see the legless,
the armless,
the scarred heroes remade
with tell-tale lines.

The plastic leg
is white
as marble.

Were it Doric,
were it bonded to him,
he, reassembled,
might stand atop the Acropolis
and hold the lintel sky.

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Tamara Nicholl-Smith
Poet & Community Builder

Tamara’s poetry has appeared on two Albuquerque city bus panels, one Albuquerque parking meter, various radio shows, a spoken-word classical piano fusion album, and in publications such as the Mutablis Press anthologies Enchantment of the Ordinary and Chaos, Dive, Reunion, Kyoto Journal, The Examined Life Journal, Catholic Arts Today and America.  She is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas in Houston. She enjoys puns and likes her bourbon neat. Visit her at www.tamaranichollsmith.com.

Photography by J. Knappitsch