Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, ART HISTORY, by JANE MILLER


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

ART HISTORY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: This hidden hag whose face belies the young face in front
Last Line: Mosquitoes on her, a harvest; a ruin.


This hidden hag whose face belies the young face in front
is a shrine completely open
so it's possible to observe
the image of the goddess from any angle, this new day

a face torn off; features now bunched together, scattered over
the battleground, a melancholy of alterations
for which language has only physical
analogies -

her twist of mouth not so
dead that it cannot
(nothing spared) faceted, folded & twisted, hard like a wrench
not heal -

- We made it,
hurtling
out of indulgence & not the other way around,
tossed heads of gorged horses:

then we broke up;
the foreshortened depths
of the turns, & bit my nipple on the way out of her
life, the inside of a pleated bellow,
measured spans, slopes & hollows.

The gods had been busy on & off for days
when they asked a question of perspective as to whether
(strike the man entering the salon of a brothel with a faun, a chair, & a bowl
of fruit)
the beast in the lady is the back of her head
or her lover's hand.

It took everything to get her up in the morning
& out of the house
strewn urns, chairs, Japanese panels, & loosed
over the goddamn
desert floor
(put x-rated after)
the recumbent sleeper with both arms overslung,
the sleeper prone, belly to ground, cheek resting on arms,
a space filled with wonder, surety, desire, respect, daylight
& dark periods
such that everything exactly reversed
is unbelievable & true,

the female nude's double pomes,
buttons & clefts, my darling,
mosquitoes on her, a harvest; a ruin.





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