I say

“I love the way—”

You grab my wrist:

“Don’t put it into

words, don’t get it

twisted,

It just needs to exist.”

So here I am, unmoored at the

museum,

Squinting at shapes arising in my vision

Like clifftops in the mist,

My eyes unlensed, imbibing the horizons

Of oddly-lighted rooms.

Of wire looms festooned with metal scraps,

Of dangled circuits lapsing into lassos,

Of crosshatched gray and black,

Of persons in long jackets

who murmur words like “angular” at the Picassos,

Trying to stop my words

From tangling round the things before I see them—

Their imprecision, their syllabic gallop,

The sleaze of them, like greasy bacon wrapped around a scallop,

Negating what they promise to enhance

With appetizer’s, advertiser’s, ease:

The cunning of them, running interference

Between the naked eye and the appearance,

Subtracting the refraction of a glance.

(Read this, and then judge whether I succeeded

In drinking that museum to the lees.)

Clair, you were truly christened;

Your vision has no filter. You see clearly,

Whereas I see through silt. The verbs and tenses

Swim in my hazy lens. You, girl of pictures,

Work in a wordless place,

Draw comic strips and add the captions later,

At sage’s pace.

*lines 1-27 published first in ONE ART*