The Art of Invisibility

I had a whole other poem planned, scribbled out in elaborate progression in my journal, but I couldn't get to the heart of it. As an artist AND a poet, this inability to SAY something about ART drove me crazy, to the point of stalling my writing. So, tonight, after a long day of teaching about Georgia O'Keefe and Henri Rousseau, I settled in bed with an art teaching book about stories in art. I stumbled on a painting by Marc Chagall called "Midsummer Night's Dream." All of a sudden, the woman in the painting started speaking to me. Thank goodness. I really needed a poem! Thank you Queen Titania!


The Art of Invisibility

If I hold my breath
I will fade into the distance.
Let the ass take center stage.

In my simple white gown
and veil, suckled up against
my lover’s brown fur face

and morning coat, what choice
do I have but to melt
like so much snow in Hell.

Melt like creamery butter
left out in mid-summer sun.
Already, my eyes are dissolving

in the artist’s titanium haze.
My face is a blur, my body flat
and boneless beneath this virgin robe.

Bottom, lover, man-donkey, is dark.
His strokes much deeper
than my own hesitant etchings.

We are complimentary, at best.
The heat of the ass’s red-orange gaze
melts my sallow oils, smears my cool

blue undertones. Make no mistake.
No red devil floating at my head,
no hair-faced donkey, no King of the Fairies

will smother my ghostly form.
I will take this blue fan, rub myself out,
off this fading canvas. I will become Queen

of enchanted nothing, bright as light
high in the green branches
of a pink stained tree.