Scott Hightower
Rollerbladers cocooned
in earphones occupy the site.
A photographer busily shoots
a lanky, posing model
sporting a clear and extravagant
tattoo. I shoot them
from overhead; from the platform
where the Führer
and his industrious cronies stood
and spoke, were photographed.
A creative break from my own
taking in of the expansive scale.
Like miniature, the imagination
creates vastness. Millions
snapped their crisp salutes
like guillotines. The result
of the romantic
madness still hangs
profound and murderous
in the air: train cars, camps,
sequentialling tattoos, gas,
and reels of propaganda.
Swans glide and dip between
the dark silhouettes of trunks;
the sky and pond are
opalescent. Hardly concealed
systemic cruelty contains
the urban Turkish neighborhoods
not far away. Let the concrete edges
of this field continue to crumble.
We’re thirsty. Time to drive back
to the power station building—
Source of light, to make
transparent part of what it was
that was being ambitiously
designed, stoked, and rallied.
I will cajole someone to take
a series of photographs of me
posing outside the converted
plant. Me: sated, victorious
and mocking; a ridiculous,
cheesy pin-up model—
the latest to strut and plug
for the kingdom of fast food.