On an Indiana Quarry in Watercolor
Capturing its historical, mechanized echoes must have required the artist returning often to the site. It’s limestone, obviously and obliviously gray, yet realizing the scale proved impossible— my megalophobia, sensitive even to video games and children’s artwork, remains untriggered. The reasons I’ve only visited once: various and amorphous, like those prohibiting swimming in the olive water. But they did in that movie, so they’ll jump over anyhow, four buddies out from football shedding their clothes, stashing ruddy boxers in the tailback’s jeep. They’d tried to kill me: a lie: I wasn’t there.
Audio: Doug Paul Case reads “On an Indiana Quarry in Watercolor”
Doug Paul Case is author of a book of poems, Americanitis (Ghost City Press, 2023), and editor of an anthology of contemporary Hoosier writing, A Flame Called Indiana (Indiana University Press, 2023). He lives in Bloomington and teaches at Indiana University.