Adam Fieled


Cabinet

The painter’s brain seeks the transcendental 
in sensuality; once it’s achieved, does the routine 
maintenance work of holding it, conserving it, 
memorizing it, filing it away in the special cabinet 
for what makes human life, in all of its squalor, 
worth living. It was taken for granted, when we 
were good, that we could give each other such a life. 
This marked place, I have a cabinet for, too. 
The places are all marked: Logan Square, for one, 
as the sunset appeared from bay windows; Liberty Place Towers 
to the right, due south; the Franklin Institute due 
north, courtyard full of curiosities. It is understood 
that these are what make up your brain: colors, 
forms, tableaus— a succession that was me for you, too.

Sultry nights in West Philadelphia were another
vocabulary for us— grass plots dotted the concrete 
yard beneath your window, wood-paneled floor, wooden
dresser taking our tripped-out trysts, making them
rustic. A poet’s brain transcendentalizes language &
philosophy— I always trusted as secure, what
started with you & sense. Grounded in sense,
right there on Baltimore Avenue, was an implicit
engagement with taking what was banal in
the script of our consciousness, shaking it loose. 
It’s all in my own cabinet now, about shock, spark.
No one ever gave me a better life— pathways
from sense to oversoul-level awareness, fastening
color to what could remain uncolored. Passions. 

Adam Fieled is a poet based in Philadelphia. His latest book, Volo: A Chapbook, the fourth installment of the Posit series, was released by Funtime Press in 2023.

 
 

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