(the curvilinear steel bridge
a reclining nude
Matisse’s line)
the first two drawings
simple graphite on ivory allure
a woman standing, nude
flesh captured not by marks
but by what is not marked
her calves
her arms
lines
slightly bent
but mass,
volume, not
desire, but
woman
just seeing that
the buses on Monroe
on Michigan Avenue
everywhere!
emblazoned
MATISSE
two silver-haired women
stand before Matisse
a woman in a shawl
”I don’t believe that sentence!”
she declares, “there’s no
intuition at all! I wonder
how she felt about this picture!”
in a film Matisse
draws a school boy
with one hand
while with his left
he touches the boy
as if he were divine,
as if he were reading Braille,
as if to guard himself
from the boy’s innocent fire
the woman reclining
in the studio
voluptuous line
among so many others,
that line is eros
two gold fish!
swimming
in a blue room!
floating in consciousness
they have been
swimming in your mind
behind your eyes
a lilac branch
like a peacock’s tail
some wonderful
language
spilling
from your lips. Chirps,
whistles, clicks, something
beyond the mind
all these people
so self-conscious, cold
reading words
and walls
ghosts waiting
for
something
something real
the words
the fish
the lilacs
to shimmer or speak
or blare out some Saint-Saens Marche Militaire Franchaise!
in Millennium Park
two copper mockingbirds
perch on a bench
and yelp out
their hillbilly calls
while skinny Russian girls
in pink slippers!
Slurp frappacinos
Oh Matisse!
everyone’s
snapping photographs
at the cloud gate,
the mercury-skinned bean
reflecting the cosmos,
a pulsar!
circumscribed by
the magnificent line!
Matisse’s nude bathers
inspect themselves
sure in their being
sure in their eros
after the show
people can no longer see
exhausted,
faces washed
they were somewhere
for a moment (open)
THAT
is radical invention
before they returned
the fish?
the line?
the blue?
and then
the words
MATISSE
MATISSE
MATISSE
from every
light pole
You see him
In those apples in a bowl!
those gold fish!
that lilac!
that woman’s leg
the words
you scribble
a line
before breakfast
in Tangier
consciousness
radical invention
unguarded / breathe
