the house quiets itself, the TV off one child asleep the other upstairs at last the night has fallen to me and my slender peace tap tappety tap on the keys

as I write this

the dog, though, still not at rest partially blind from milk blue cataracts

and partially deaf

she waits, impatient oh yes, she waits old age, her crutch and I wait as well for what we both expect will come this winter, perhaps

cool breeze It's the translucent quality of the light, the delicate way it falls across the crib making shadow slats touch her infant face, her thumb in her mouth, the suck-suck- suck of sound that competes with the hum of the electric fan blowing the thin little hairs on her head, cooling her cheeks, rustling the folds of the blanket that bundles her warmth, keeps in her body's heat. She will wake to the restless urge of a mother picking her up, clutching her as if she might die in those arms; taut muscles which are painful to watch. The littlest cry is all her mother wants, but she is an obedient child, fills the room with her noise, unable to understand a mother's tears washing down into hers. Unaware, as well, that coffins come in every size, even XS for babies who suddenly die in their cribs, the heat slipping away from their tiny forms whether or not the fan was left on.

my pages, this poem here is a pome or a poem or whatever you choose to call what it does to your senses eyes, ears, nose, tongue, and lips and more than whatever those represent to you, dearest reader, or so i presume to name you dear,

but mean it affectionately, for we are a pair, the two of us, but who is the soldier, who is the leader can you answer me, do you dare say little reader? can we begin again, begin over, begin at the beginning

shall we start over? we shall pretend we are familiar, we shall dance and sing songs, stumble when we drink ourselves drunk, kiss and makeup after hardships long long after the sun sets over the arctic of your lamp,

an expansive time for kissing you, telling you i am the one that you must remember musk scented arms and damp and wet under

don't disappoint, keep reading me lover or should we fight, be enemies demons and derelicts, scum to be squashed by each other be eradicated, debilitated simply O! so simply depised and hated i could hate you if that's what you need me for hate you cold with a vengeance or hot with a fury or tepid and lukewarm with the fiercest indifference, painted white

like a movie screen but why not love me and i will love too, I will breathe cinnamon dreams to your lungs scale the alps, keep you young in the pages between my book on your nightstand, my pages, this poem, or whatever it is, just don't end me, keep reading and reading and reading of, for, about me and i'll write to you, write for you, write everything and we shall have

symmetry

three wishes what I want are simple, quiet noises like

the hum of a gnat's wings,

a baby bird's breath,

whatever else is underneath the range of my hearing, those thin vibrations across space pressing upon eardrums and not making

a sound, or the taste

of pleasant things in my mouth like mint ice cream with dark chocolate bits, lemon meringue pie, strawberries and fresh, whipped cream, too sugary for anyone else but me, maybe a juicy steak, nearly raw, its cold center and charbroiled black stripes the kind I can't make

for myself, maybe a dream of all my past lovers in bed but this time I'm doing it right, not giving them what they want, but taking from them all the stroking of hands, the rhythm of skin against skin, everything that I want for once, drowning in my own greed.

Memory pieced together with glue and paper What I can remember - He was too small, but had a perfect mouth - he used it like a technician, learned to love all my lips - His tongue was long, and flat and hard/soft/wet, and god came to me in threes, with his fingers in it. - he didn't know why I held him in my hand, felt soft harden every time the tube was on - He yelled when drunk, dance stomped a nasty tune but only with his words. - don't be like daddy is what I said - He didn't like my Barry White, but put up with it when we smoked weed and fucked. - I rode on top, held up by hands on freckled breasts, he said you're my white angel - He never liked to call me slut or rough me up when I asked. - wanted me to dominate and tie him up - I left that boy for Jay, my married man who did all the things I wanted but had never had. - an older man, he understood what danger is - He cried and threw that trashcan down the stairs but not at me. - its metal skin was dented, but I took it from him anyway - I wish I had him, some days.

White Rose in a Tumbler

White Rose in a Tumbler by Piet Mondrian

i. glass Oceans spawned intentions of silica Messy grains of crumpled cyrstals Make me missile, make me fissile! Making ripples with our submarinal whines! And we took them and we shook them and we rolled them around! Our scraping surfing churned into salinity ground! Liquid bowels that blew us out sputtering we stuttered our mouths, roasted in the light and infinitely alone with our fellows, the good hearted brethren, the sisterhood the old men and women, all of their souls ripe and beatified all saints that filled the heavens unsatisfied, waiting and waiting . . . Thank-God we were found! Delivered, crushed and bled bones rarified, sifted, transformed, reborn into fire the smelter merged and joined the holy union the bliss bubbling us together We are no more but I am. I drift, awaiting my mold, a purpose, a verb, a process a cooling down from halide hot waxing a fever, the flippering fade that shivers me cold and no longer formless. Cold, but not hopeless Cold and asleep to the sound I will make. When I find what I seek. I won’t be broken. Cold, stiff and rigid and fearless - not heartless, but patient and certain - and destined for something to save, to preserve. I am arrogant with the touch I was given, the souls that were driven hot and now frozen, and relentlessly, translucently shown to behold, but in submission humbly, humbly, humbly I pray for my renown. I pray for my resurrection. I pray, but I also listen for my renown to become to end to be crystallized again. ii. rosebushes in the garden We spike, a hundred poles shorn; thorn mesas that bled, that were freed, that were led to our grief. The air once warm, now a frost dying. We are dead now in all but name. Lost are the virtues that fed us, that entertained the mystery of sustenance. A wet spirit drenching us, blessed with sun and the big blue and the ball that we worshipped, now occluded gone in the grayness, gone in the cold damp wet that buries our misery with winter’s mist, clouds sanity with solitude. We weep, anxious and still hearing the last of our children’s cries at the cutting, the separation, the end of creation. We weep without blood, without tears, at the evil we fear, the devastation of growth. iii. tap water warm energy flows into me and then is stopped filling me incompletely with your fluid touch now but ripples across my bare red blotches my ribs pressed under your heaviness our raspy breathing the sound and feeling each single drip drip drip from the end of your tap iv. artist in the moment not white not white not white but white not white but white and brown mustard brown mustard brown mustard background but not white not silver not white not silver but LAVENDER!!! i am a genius but you LORD you did that you made me elite yes the elite the genius yes lavender lavender lavender but white call it white though call it that call it white

Scene at Ithaca i. Alone at the loom, she has no attendants dressed in bright colored fabrics, no voices chirping sweet, utter nonsense. Only a loom, battered and shining with the oil from her hands, and the smell of raw wool constantly present. ii. Each day, she weaves the threads, the beautiful reds, the rib ache of her blues and her purples, gold, silver, and ochre, and the rust brown that comes after small cuts on her fingers. iii. Each night, as colors fade in the torchlight, she devastates her handiwork

with meticulous care, reassembles the wool into skeins for her morning’s work. iv. She barely sleeps, doesn’t eat, doesn’t drink, the skin under her eyes the color of wine in the evening. v. Prays to the gods each sunrise to stop herself, to walk away from the weaving, to shatter the loom, burn the wood, send the room up in the flames, and dance circling the heat of its yellows and oranges and the gray ashes before her,

while feeding the fire's insatiable appetite, burning her reason, pungent as incense. vi. At sunset she pleads again to keep her hands from her loom, for the sweet paralysis of apathy, to let her creation evolve out of its misery, to say: I am finished. To say: It is done. To shout to the hangers on, the myriad of drunken men:

Here’s the damned tapestry! vii. The gods do not answer (when have they ever?) and she is compelled to follow their litany, a slave to a plot that makes her the sacrifice. viii. She imagines the poet’s voice,

the tale teller’s eyes looking at empty space,

wonders why he takes delight

in her dread monotony? Over and under,

under and through, day

after night after day

the same light, the same pinpricks of stars in the night mocking her - ix. It is not the husband she wants - husbands are failures. She cannot remember him even to fantasize, even in the poet’s mind he is dead to her, dead as the dried husk of her sex, her menopausal seizures,

dead as leaves on the olive trees in winter’s cold atmosphere,

dead as her breasts that point down to a stone floor. x. In her deepest thought, discovered over and over, she dreams

of her son as her savior,

dreams the warmth of a boy’s skin, the curve of his hips in her hands, his face hairless and smooth without razors, the sweet odor of breath when he speaks, his eyes, the pout of his lips, his kiss on her shoulder -

A son is all to a mother, xi. dependent and rescuer, she wants him beside her naked and softer than fathers,

wants to masturbate his flesh into hers, bring the white milk to the top of his tower, drench herself in its lather,

forget the shame of her nightly destruction, make a new king to sit on her throne, depose the absent deceiver. xii. But this is impossible, she knows her son is no monster, it isn't the woman he wants, only the form of a mother. Merest boy, passively loyal, not the wolf she desires,

and she is the savior,

she barters for time, barters for men, her own bastards. xiii. The poet is another man to bargain with, another man with a future

where she is a stage prop, a mere chorus of praise for masculine sagas. xiv.

She would be a killer, plot murders, hatch schemes that billow in scarlet, dry into rust in the dirt at her feet,

coagulate as her choices. Instead, she waits

to hear xv. the birds sing the same songs each day, the old dog moan in his sleep each night the same, teeth stained and weak unable to chew bones, unable to rest peacefully. xvi. It is madness, her compulsive insanity. The madwoman weaving, unweaving her tapestry. She curses her son, her name, the old dog as it sleeps. Curses her odyssey.

Visions of an expatriate woman in various media Some Prefatory Remarks from the Museum’s Curator: Despite the rumors in certain newspapers, the paintings in this exhibit do not depict the story of one woman's life. It cannot be denied the artist has repeatedly stated that “D” (so designated here at the artist's request) was the subject of these works. I question, however, whether those statements alone can be taken as prima facie proof of the supposition that the artwork now on display was intended to present a biographical mise en scène. Though it may be tempting to view the exhibition as one which employs a cohesive and all encompassing schema (admittedly, a claim the artist has off-handedly made on occasion), in my opinion such an interpretation would ultimately prove misleading to all those who come to view this exhibit. For that reason, I want to warn anyone, who may have some preconception to the contrary, that this particular arrangement of the artist's work was more my doing, and that of my assistants, constrained as we were by budgetary and space limitations. Instead, I believe that these paintings properly should be seen as independent fragments connected only by the artist's desire to use D's life, her beliefs, ambitions, politics and personal tragedies, as a metaphor, a means of creating a higher mimesis than realism allows. One may freely surmise that certain elements of her life are presented here, but what those elements might be is best left to her future biographers, if any. We begin the exhibit with the artist's presentation of an expression of regret. In particular, note the subdued color palette which is often at odds with the strong confident lines and spare brushwork the artist employed here. 1st painting Title: She is a good girl because her daddy was a bad boy. She is speaking of emotional things, dangerous, simple and incomplete. Where she stayed when he left, times that she heard second-hand of his craziness, the laughter he shared then destroyed, the unknown quality of his face, tender in love one second and then fierce, heedless of others, heedless of his disgraces, confounding . . . And yes it’s futile, this recollection of the god of her empty places, the herald for the juxtaposition of a daughter’s love and hate and fear and pain. All the things she tried to tell him in the calm sedated times when hope felt like a possibility, not like the sour irony of his last leaving to his one and only resting place. Twenty years she still speaks of him to herself, speaks to him in the silent times when he comes back into her thoughts, and takes her away from the moments that seem like joy, and back to the only broken man who she can never release. Always she asks herself: Why couldn't he ever come home sane to us? Curator’s note on the second painting: The political undertones of this work are clearly established by the artist’s decision to adopt the style of the New Soviet Realism, with occasional surrealistic elements which add an absurdist touch. The depiction of the dictator here is not ambiguous, and one could perhaps say this best reflects D’s personal attitude. Clearly her influence on the artist can be seen in this decision, even though nothing about the finished piece hints at any specific biographical details. 2nd Painting Title: Attila prepares to go back to the spirit in the sky. He sits as a fat bug sits, fat with success and with his big cigars to which his women (he calls them his) never voice their objections. He smiles, always the smile shows, though weaker now and fading beneath the hair like Islam still jutting with pride from his chin. Old, far older than any others left in positions of power, or in opposition, he watches himself unfold each day like a movie, a frame at a time but too fast to prevent the smear that he makes on his time and his people. His people, all his, even the departed ones, he asserts like a child calling out to the world at large its whiny demands, not comprehending the difference between mine and yours. I understand he has long slender fingers that still maintain his spidery grip on the island. Does he look at them when the lights turn low and the movie enters an irresolute phase? He has always been clever and charming in his outward appearances, but what is he thinking so near to hearing the cheers, the “Oles!” that will arise at his death? Curator’s note on the 3rd painting: This is the most seriously flawed work in the exhibit and is only presented here at the insistence of the artist. Still, it has parts that some may find of interest, even if as a whole it can only be seen as a failure. 3rd Painting Title: Bad Hair and the Art of Creativity Maintenance. Nevermind, never ever does it matter, no more melancholia overit cause who cares, it's the thrill of the fall down the hole. It's building, light and airy and messed up conduction, like paper torn into pizzas, like glue on crayolas, it's new. it is WHat it is CanNot be KnoWn until we are Threw! UP UP UP and away in the sky it goes "It'll never fly" they suppose (and their right, cause it sinks, its sublimpable, it gets inside, it gets You would'nt under_stand Itt eye tell u hit's trooly incredulousable! IHATEIT ILUVIT ITMAKESMETURNBLUE!!!! BUt Somehow just Somehow, someONE just might get what you do & if they don't Nevermind, never ever does it matter, no more melancholia overit cause who cares, it's the thrill of the N E T that makes it all true. Curator’s note on the fourth painting: Aware of the controversy generated by some of the groups opposed to the exhibition of this work especially, let me assure you that nothing of a sexual nature is depicted. Nonetheless, some may find the artist’s rendering of traditional Christian beliefs and traditions objectionable. 4th Painting Title: Christ figures it out. God said Yehosha, you are my son but he wasn't listening back then, he just looked at the girl, what was her name? oh yeah - Mary (it's always a Mary) Magdalene (not a whore, just a groupie) the cute one, the one with the money. I mean he was a man, wasn't he? All man, human feelings maybe, even those itchy ones, like maybe for Mary? But you know fathers they keep with the lectures, they never stop talking, and well, eventually even a boy has to listen (maybe after an all night out drinking?) well, so they tell me - hey, it happens. And its hard not to hear with a head that keeps pounding until finally, finally that son word sunk in. But what does it all mean (this to the father) Well, he got the whole answer and he liked the part where he lives for forever. But what is this cross bearing thing have to do with that and Dad must have smiled when he said Nevermind - you''ll understand when you come to it (fathers are funny like that) The next time Christ comes though - just a thought, call me crazy, but I bet he sticks with the ladies.