Artist Without a Brush

He paints her
Van Gogh like
Sometimes in Blue
Always in Red
Yellow swirls
Psychologists call it a Love Map
Destined to a certain mate

Red lines,
Purple lines,
chart her progress.

She wears his insults
Dark raiment
“You’re still a whore”
“Always been a whore”
an actress
a stripper
makes no difference
“At least half those men think you’re a whore”

He announces her role
she’s cast
biggest role she’ll ever play
loving girlfriend
dutiful wife
joyous mother
the house is grand
but the kitchen’s never clean enough
the dinner hour is silent
except for cries of “Omma?”
“Oppa?”

At night, he’s ready to create
Her eyes no longer see him
but she knows when he is close,
“Tell me,” she says
“Let me know when”,
like a lover preparing for the come.
He pulls her hair,
brings the gentle, small oval face towards his
“You did not let me know,” she says
and he draws his fist back again.
“You know better,” he says.
A hand traces her pale cheek
it grows dark
swollen like him
reddened
near-purple
plum-cheek
ripe
ready to pluck
he takes one,
then the other.

She explains
to the children
her colleagues
the neighbors
anyone who will listen
“It’s the new dog”
the cat
the door
youknowIcan’tseetoowell
it’sanasianthingyouwouldn’tunderstand.

There is no sun
the curtains are drawn
it’s quiet as he readies to paint
again.

**

What I Believe

I believe in tall women with long hair. I believe in science. Fried green tomatoes for lunch.
I believe in my father’s smoky voice, I hear it at night, when I’m alone.
My husband is away; he’s on a plane, and I believe he’ll still curse at me when he returns. He’ll tell me this is all foolish, that there is no point to this, but I believe poetry is the only point. It’s the bubbles in the pot, boiling, roiling…
I believe in my niece’s laughter; I remember how at 11, I saw her pirouetting—she was pirouetting to Eminem—and I thought, ”This is perfection. This is beauty.”
I believe in friends I’ve known for 20-plus years; I believe in God, for the first time in nearly 20 years….
I believe in physics, in Richard Feynman and wish I’d been able to go to strip clubs with him, and hear this physicist play his bongo drums.
I believe Shakespeare’s sonnets are aphrodisiacs, and so are fresh figs.
I believe love would be a lot easier, if only heterosexual men were gay.
I believe no matter what I write, or what you think you understand me to say, there’ll
still be a huge space between us. I believe that doesn’t matter. At all.
I believe that communion we all look for—at church, at the theatre, it’s here, for the taking—this communion with each other….
I believe my husband understands. Sometimes.
Other times, I’m alone. That saying, “Being alone is not the same as being lonely” is true.
I love walking in museums alone. That’s where I went, what I did. When everyone else went to their houses of worship, I prayed there—after 9/11, I saw more art, went to more plays, read more poetry, wrote more poetry….
I believe in all those female singers—in the 1970’s, they called them folk singers.
I believe in Joan Baez’s “Diamonds and Rust”.
And, if you don’t know it, we can never be intimate.
I believe in only dating a man who has at least one sister; I believe in dating women who are confident, literate, beautiful. I think there are very few men who are all of that.
There are many animals I believe should be pets. Pigs, because they’re smart—they have the mentality of a three-year-old child. Rabbits—just because they’re cute.
I believe I need to live to be 100, or so, because I have a lot of things I still want to do.