In the garden, a mirror ball, and: Cosmos., and: The Room, With the Woman

Abstract

In the garden, a mirror ball hints from afar like rescue fire, draws Gauls to her atomic lens, sucks our heads to earth's contents. Flings car fenders – bought, beaten – moonward. Rips up, remanufactures pondering, makes insomniac pools of the treetops, makes of us surface swimmers. We flow out of skirts, pants, our skin spooned up. And we can't break her ecstasy – spending tearing rotating – we can't, though she is thin as helium – she spits us [mouthful of pins] Cosmos. Giddy-stemmed, stupid, slaking forward anyway (anyway being into the sun). Their seedy speed, their movement in wind, their ripped lace and burnt pits, their many-budded openness, spillage. and spin, their portcullis of stem. And the poke up any madness of color: a chorus-likeness, clean flats. Fists of not-bloom, not yet. Almost-readiness of a pincushion. [End Page 109] The Room, With the Woman Helena Rubenstein in her Ile St.-Louis apartment (photograph by Dora Maar) How the statues recede; how all bows to her; how her hand, on a case – how she owns (pretends to own). The story becomes her own. The rug apart from the chair, alone . . . How the song stops. But I must stop and talk about the folds of her skirt. How I notice that her skirt has – I must think that she has chosen this vase and wonder about the choosing of it. She barges on. How much smaller grows the room. How she becomes the moral, the perishable pinpoint. How her story must be told – no. Every glass of rum, every mask and sword were here without her.