Eszter Takacs
On November 11th Vanity Fair released “The Oracle of Britney”
and your divinatory poetics became static and statis. Your face
in the background, on the news, a hope while I conferenced
with students about the partisanship of poetics, about grief that sparks joy.
My mother’s bitterness at stardom reflected
in the landscape of your Insta, a mythos
in the sheen of your capture by Paris’ arm, green dress,
a triad of silver rings in the darling ether of 2006, Hollywood Hills.
Hayley Phelan writes: In one video, Spears walks back and forth
nine times, obviously morse code for SOS. And then of course
there were here eyelashes. I’m taken back into the wild dark of
Britney Newell’s philosophy against Paris’ body, a morse code
of dark against spark: the manual of other undead things.
Oh the punch: yesterday you posted a workout sped up, assured
us of sweat and safe execution: no spread. A Zion of fans replied:
stronger than yesterday, fight for your freedom.
I tried to talk your spirit up to my mom. She called you a whore
and I felt defeated. Dance, fantasy, upside down and glory:
captives in the ocean of your periphery, like toxic luck
but more like insta-grat, like a wish-hope. I bought my second
crop top this week. I hope that we can begin to be friends.
I hope that my mother accepts your body as the arc, a hurricane lifted up.
Author Bio
Eszter Takacs is a doctoral candidate at the University of Denver. She has taught writing at the University of Denver, CU Boulder, Red Rocks Community College, the University of Arkansas and Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. She is the author of two chapbooks: The Spectacular Crash (H_NGM_N Books) and Together We Will Talk Right Down to Earth (The New Megaphone). Her individual poems have appeared in Yalabousha Review, Soft Blow, Hobart, Apartment Poetry, Alice Blue Review, Nightblock and elsewhere. Eszter also loves painting, roller skating and can be found posting cat porn on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/lemoneszter. Her completed dissertation will serve to examine the plight of the American pop star as a hostage of capitalist greed.