five

Flag, 1954-55 (I)
Encaustic, oil & collage on fabric mounted on wood (3 panels)
41� x 60� inches

to read a painting     to read a page    is to live overlapping moments    flattened on a plane

a site of love & aggression     every object of study     a fantasy object     that survives

the inevitable     reader who says hello    dear other    i destroyed you    i love you

a technique     of individuation    & an inescapable condition    of cultural production

to paint a flag      means design�s taken care of     johns says in 1959     it gives me room

to work on other levels      which other levels     does he mean ?      critics ask for decades

the commonplace as a painting     its affect flat as a slap     it�s the military application

of visual techniques      for focusing desire    or aggression    an affront to certain histories

of art     graphic design    nationhood    & aren�t there other    other levels ?     i ask the flag

as i pull back     the bedsheet beneath    layers of newspaper    & tinted wax       & lie down

not really collage     a critic says     not really encaustic     the dream of a former soldier

with a new boyfriend      & an estranged alcoholic father      dead the day before his first show

the flag�s a fantasy       of love & destruction    emblem of everything     conflicted inside him

the flag�s an affect     wide as migraine     debilitating & interesting     to lie down inside

White Flag, 1955
Encaustic, oil & collage on fabric (3 panels)
78� x 120� inches

for Lauren Berlant

the flag�s an affect     white as migraine     debilitating & interesting     to lie down inside

the surface churn of pigment & wax     & figure how i feel     beginning with structure

a layer of paper & cloth collage     over stretched sateen     sensual     bedclothes of a rough fuck

paramnesia streaked with semen     the way sexuality hooks up with national fantasy     queer

& visited by crippling symptoms     in the visual field of citizenship     i�ve been here before

as a boy i earn a badge of merit     learning to handle the flag correctly     it takes a long time

to remember all the rules     to fold & store it properly     it�s the gentlest i have seen

the white fathers who teach us     who take more care with that fabric than they do with

a sissy     afraid of their cold war masculinity     indifferent to their curriculum of flags

targets & maps     i fashion a passionate impassivity     in the locker room a lot

like jasper johns     his ready-made images     i like about them, that they come that way

he says     i am very stupid, politically, actually     he says     pretty much like a jock strap

holding state knowledge     a site of the full coming together of violence & reason

dear johns     thank you for the headache     i hate your archive     a faggot has no true flag

Flag, 1954�55 (II)
Encaustic, oil & collage on fabric mounted on wood (3 panels)
41 1/4 � 60 3/4 inches

to johns i write     a faggot has no true flag     as if his painting     a simulacrum

on a bedsheet     in layers of newspaper     dipped in hot wax     could be a true flag

i know it�s not     + not not a flag     the way a faggot�s not a man     + not not a man

i hate his archive     but i like this snapshot of him   just two years out of the army

crouching beneath this painting     in 1955    pale & boyish     former soldier

the historian calls     a docile body    object & target of power    johns says he dreamt

of painting this      a fact art critics repeat    without asking why    the historian

calls the soldier�s body     a fragment of mobile space    as if war were just collage

soldier cut out of context      pasted into another     like time�s man of the year

in 1951     �name: american�   �occupation: fighting man�     johns is drafted

works on graphic design in japan     while soldiers & civilians     millions     die

in korea     & now here he is     in a new york loft      his boyfriend behind the camera

saucepans & hot plate on the floor     white mound of beeswax     to make encaustic

for eight more stars     each detail    part of a political anatomy    still unfinished

Flag above White with Collage, 1955
Encaustic & collage on canvas
22 � 19 inches

forty-eight scars     part of a political anatomy    still unfinished    in the 1950s

the critic writes    modern art keeps getting entangled    in america�s contradictions

but what doesn�t     in any american era    i�m an analysand    in my anxiety dream

about the flag paintings     the analyst says don�t worry     paintings also have an unconscious

structured as a language     produced in the social field    out of a historical situation

some read his deadpan flags     as �decadent� rejections   of the �heroic� AbEx paintings

the CIA sends around the globe     to combat socialist realism     i intuitively like to paint flags

johns tells newsweek in �58      i have no ideas    about what the paintings      imply about the world

_{EVERY AMERICAN FLAG}     writes navajo artist demian din�yazh�    _{IS A WARNING SIGN}

from 1958-59    this painting tours the country     in a show called    collage in america

in it a white man     in a strip of photo-booth pictures    johns finds on the street

looks out from behind stripes     stretching past an uneven field     of battered stars

i imagine him     in davenport    nashville    tallahassee    laramie     poughkeepsie

a stranger     a watchman    passing through    his looking    looks back at our looking

Flag, 1960
Sculp-metal & collage on canvas with Sculp-metal on wood frame
13⅛ x 11� inches

a stranger     a watchman    i pass through    my looking looks back     over this flag for R

a gift johns promises ca. 1957    & only delivers     the year before they break up     gray

not just as a color     that avoids a color situation    gray as idea    condition     material

gray as an attachment broken     at the point of most intimate contact     so the mind hides it

from itself     to preserve it    in a fiction     that avoids the emotional      dramatic qualities

of saying goodbye     the gray johns says is a literal quality     unmoved & unmovable

here has the force     of a passion that causes pain    denied & stifled      a self that can�t be

revealed or spoken of     R keeps it until his death    unfrightened of the affection

beginning with structure     the division of the whole into parts     the painting of a flag

john cage writes     has its precedent in the sonnet    the grand division of fourteen lines

into eight & six     cage doesn�t suggest   this makes johns a poet     & this flag a love poem

the kind only johns can write     to glimpse what joys or pains     our eyes can share

or answer     to quote hart crane    a deflection     the way i too here throw my voice

still unable to give R     the one unbetrayable reply    whose accent no farewell can know