Wanted

By Frank Stanford 1948–1978 Frank Stanford

Luis Buñuel

A white bull, a cassock, an antique mirror

The famous ones have passed hours in front of,

A midnight blue tuxedo, a fainting couch, a key

To a box of lewd photographs, a swastika,

Twelve bales of hay, three grave plots, a statue

Of Christ holding a heart pierced by a dagger,

A black patch, all kinds of utensils for the sick—

Including thirty-nine feet of catheter tubing,

A houseboat, a dog, a baby grand, an oar

Said to have been carved from a lovely river

And a woman’s hat by Alfred Jarry, a mattress,

A shotgun, a diving helmet, an essay on The Art

Of Taxidermy and a clitoris mounted on a ring

Like quartz, a crescent wrench, a bulldozer.

Estate of Frank Stanford © C.D. Wright

Source: Automatic Co-Pilot (Unpublished Collection, )

Biography

Born in 1948, Stanford was a prolific poet known for his originality and ingenuity. He has been dubbed “a swamprat Rimbaud” by Lorenzo Thomas and “one of the great voices of death” by Franz Wright. He grew up in Mississippi, Tennessee, and then Arkansas, where he lived for most of his life and wrote many of his most powerful poems. He attended the University of Arkansas from 1967-9 and studied engineering while continuing to . . .

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