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# "Alter(n)ations #27" by Matt Shears
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/alternations-27-by-matt-shears/
- Published: 2013-08-10T02:10:25.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:45:11.000Z
- Description: Our poetry editor, Joe Pan, has selected a poem by Matt Shears for the latest in a monthly series that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.
- Author: Matt Shears
- Tags: Poetry, Hyperallergic Poetry, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:59 (2012, 2013, part 2)

*Our poetry editor,* [*Joe Pan*](http://joepan.org/?ref=hyperallergic.com)*, has selected a poem by Matt Shears for the latest in a* [*monthly series*](http://hyperallergic.com/tag/hyperallergic-poetry/) *that brings original poetry to the screens of Hyperallergic readers.*

\* \* \*

![Quinn Dombrowski, "Allegory for the Modern Age" (2012) (via Flickr)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/08/8107606569_13267e76bf_z.jpg)

Quinn Dombrowski, “Allegory for the Modern Age” (2012) (via Flickr.com/quinnanya)

& the engines swam against the gleaming  
slipstreamed horses  
& the undreamt feathers winged forth, bodiless,  
sketched amidst perfunctory clouds  
the canvassed canvas clothed my essence,  
the Blessed again, shrouded, immovable—

I post-scripted into History (riding gallantly, egalitarianly)  
that Allegory, that unprovable object—  
How those soldiers loved my finicky linens,  
my rosepetalled metal,  
the smelted whoop of a castiron charge  
recharging in the lounge over at Central Command.

& the rocketships of the few erected the nightsky  
& we silhouetted the by&by in those forbidden landscapes  
architected by impetuous philosophes  
& technical technocrats.  
How the autodidacts soapboxed the masses  
& the lathered latherer cleanly foamed.

Our disabled system radioed some future self:  
Beware! Be war! Bear! Bear!  
Brr!  
& the Automatic Pilot hurried back  
from his dystopian phantasy  
to the widened seats of the Business Elect:

‘O scattered matrices of my flitted flight pattern!  
Splattered chapters of my lifestory  
(post-migratory, post-post-history),  
whither shall I wither now?  
In which hypoallergenic sun?  
Dear Valued Members: My tale has spun.’

& so the Riot Police teargassed the Innocent  
& we wept for our Mythologies  
(indecently, obligingly)  
& the Caretakers arrived at the fair Fairgrounds  
restoring what ontology could be restored:  
some oversized pumpkins, a funnelcake, & a Model A Ford.

& what should we tell the Inquisitors, I asked  
the Forms of liquefied livestock  
braying & baaing & mooing & clucking over the loudspeaker—  
What airbrush remains? What face paint? What Fortune Wheel?  
Which carousel horse shall now I ride  
into these immaculate pastures of the Infranational?