MUSEUM TABLEAU

In the doorway of the Georgia O’Keeffe gallery an urn-shaped guard poses. Behind him, in the next room, a full-length portrait by Max Beckmann of a man with one leg bent and elevated, and an actual human seated and staring at the floor. The floor is notable: sturdy wood traversed by hundreds of shod feet daily. The wall on which the portrait hangs is of the faintest puce. The portrait looks sly, angular but feigning nothing. The seated man forms a silhouette, a slump of shoulder, a balding pate. The guard, though: at least three, four, or five dimensions focus in his neutral expression. He knows he’s being photographed, but considers himself as much an exhibit as the Beckmann painting. His black clothes render him serious. His ID tag, slung from his neck, empowers him to scan the crowd for thieves about to unframe and run off with masterworks. He tips his head to his right to focus better. He’s reserving his strength for the crisis, the moment all the competing dimensions slip away, leaving only a picture plane too flat to accommodate.

MAX AND SON

At Max and Son Meat Market
only beef and veal need apply.
I want the cruelest dinner possible,
short of roasting a tiny puppy,
so I should step inside and demand
a calf be slaughtered in my honor,
regardless of what the bible says.
But gazing at this blood-red storefront
with its aggressive stance I note
it also offers chicken and goat
for customers with weaker hearts.

In a second-floor window
a man with shaven head poses
in a blue muscle shirt. He lacks
the muscle, but strikes an attitude
that properly critiques the products
sold in the arrogant storefront.
The scrawny meat of which he’s made
shares its ongoing evolution
with the steers, calves, and chickens
slaughtered, dismembered, and sold
to cannibals browsing like me.

MARILYN REDUX

For sale: a photo-print wall hanging of Marilyn Monroe, unfolded and draped over a chain-link fence. Remember her in Some Like It Hot, a sultry but squeaky singer for an “all-girl” orchestra? Remember her in The Misfits, her cumulative moment of angst? Her aggressive blonde instincts empowered her with sine waves the male animal couldn’t plot or trace except through the crudest gestures. She ate men like air, but then the air thickened and effaced her. Note the blood lipstick, the bared teeth, the half-closed eyes. Note the high forehead, bracing a mind as big as a dirigible. She read her roles with the tip of her tongue showing. She sang a little off-key to reassure us. She expended nothing on the over-ripe men who married her. She learned how certain slopes and angles define the world. She saw how the camera absorbed and processed her. She didn’t know that she would become an example of third-rate textile art; but she knew how intimate and yet how cosmic the abrasion of torsos in dull summer heat, how indifferent the lowering sky.

William Doreski’s work has appeared in various e and print journals and in several collections, most recently A Black River, A Dark Fall (2019). 

© 2020