And a poem to complement the image.

I asked Chat to write a short poem about Jasper Johns’ Flag paintings in the style of Robert Creeley. It spat the thing out in a second flat. I suppose that’s standard, but I’d never tried this before. It’s clearly a new source of Bingian experimentation, but here’s the poem as Chat spat it:

Red, then red again—
white—(no, not)
space between noise,
blue’s
corner quiet.

You said a flag
is a thing,
a thing made—
I said:
what if it isn’t?

Stripes don’t wave
on canvas,
they press.
Held breath,
brush-stiff.

This is
not the country.
This is
what we saw
before we looked.

I didn’t upload the photo, but “Stripes don’t wave / on canvas / they press . . . brush-stiff” somehow embraces the image perfectly. It’s obviously very easy to parody Creeley’s style, but this photo, taken on a local walk today between thunderstorms, is indeed, “what we saw / before we looked.”