1. The Spectator
Sitting next to the bearded train conductor
and his chicken-fried steak at the long
hotel bar in Van Horn, I look away
from the NBA finals to think
a little of Matisse. “A beast,”
the conductor shouts and pounds
the chest of his engineer pal
who can’t quite finish that
third shrimp cocktail. They’re talking
about Serge Ibaka who just keeps
blocking everything the Spurs put up.
When Duncan finally gets fouled,
the crowd waves white foam sticks
that from this distance look
like determined sperm. All day I drove
my new blue diesel and listened
to reports of the sick kid who gunned down
sorority girls who didn’t love him exactly
the way he wanted. “Well,” my husband said,
closing the trunk, “If you’re really gonna leave me,
you can at least get good gas mileage.”
Nothing loves us exactly the way we want.
Not Southern California and not Serge Ibaka,
or even his father Desire, Desire Ibaka.
Delacroix thought you should be able to
draw a body falling before it hits the ground.
Matisse shook his head, insisting
imagination remain in motion.
The engineer leans in closer to show me pictures
of his grandkids dressed up like Maverick
and Goose from Top Gun. I always love
the part when the tragic blond watches
her man bang on the piano then yells
take me to bed, or lose me forever.
Some of the men I watch have been bought
for their athleticism. Some have season tickets
and will soon buy me another domestic beer.
One decorated the women on the couch
in exotic textiles. One texts again to ask
if it’s really too late to turn around.
2. Perspective
Children’s drawings become us,
because they are
so conceptual, eyes big as they
felt watching
a mountain, a mouth when it
starts saying no.
It takes years to grasp the problem
with hands,
how we can’t quite see contours of
our reaching clearly,
so we make a manageable
frame around our subject,
the place in the road, once when
the sky was both
that small and that close.
3. Blue Sapphics
Music says a motive is what returns like
sweet-mouthed night it comes the tender notes getting
played on backs of upside down women who became
of the painters’ minds.
This the summer Babylon plays each time we
turn the wheel in search of a more familiar
sea to tune our landscapes to, every
line on our faces.
Waits the sun that walks on in time with watching
now that maps are made of some softer flow to
morning songs we hung on the empty glass that
called itself water.
Who is walking who? The invisible can
make a cheesy joke too as rusty razors
decorate the dust. You can translate any
life as tail, wagging.
Even with our wind seeming sick of feathers
I became a slave of the pose, sick of air.
Even with it shoving through open windows
that was our nature.
4. No One Who Creates is Blameless
Putting horns on people suggests
strength or weakness, depending
on which way they curve.
Two circles mean you
may have to look harder.
Creator, I could say I was
minding my own regrets,
watching ants bury all
their dead together. I could
say it was an honor
to have been your cloud,
to have your knuckles bruise
my backbone, your watery
voice drop like handfuls
of clean dimes. Two lines
carved on the boulder
could mean empty or lost,
but I’m still writing this
for whoever made the blurry
butterfly tattoo launched
across the lower back of that
woman who with unlit cigarette
and glowing Bluetooth squats
to chisel off chunks of ancient
crystal wall. She did not,
like that yoga teacher
back in town, ask if we were
okay with all this sunshine.
Don’t explain the season
we planted fruit trees
and felt only cold stone rain.
Don’t explain. It was an honor
to have been your goat, small
brained and hungry, your wind
advertising all it touched.
5. The Critic
Spanish has a saying for wanting
to prove what needs not.
You’re just trying to make the water wet.
Suppose I am
sick of being a woman, each
word of us read aloud
like a 19th century letter
to rooms of distant relatives.
It seems I would
still call the road sister.
It seems rusty pipes shake
awake each morning
while the sharp river
holds hands with rain.
Walking home, the man
I believe to be scratching
at his lottery ticket
instead stares
into a flip phone, looking up
to ask how he spells deserve.
Like she don’t deserve it.
I wait for him
to find one letter at a time.
I like saying goodbye first.
This poem does not need
three reliable sources.
Today I want only to eat meat
and touch myself with clean hands.
6. The Last Woman to Sit for Matisse Speaks of the Sea
Now I understand
everything
we look at has
already happened.
Someone still
coughing
in next room.
I too read
the Mallarme
asking his wife
to nurse words
he stayed up
all night making.
Understand it was
always different
than we imagined.
Fist of bad luck
loosed like
a chant I can’t
do this I must.
To describe
women after the war
would require
more time.
Still the sea
was always
correct with me.
I would have
added detail—
goldfish
arabesque, or salt—
gradually.
Author’s Note: The title of this poem comes from Hilary Spurling’s A Life of Henri Matisse. Shortly after meeting his fiancé, Amelie, Matisse is reported to have told her, “I love you dearly, mademoiselle, but I shall always love painting more.”
Jenny Browne is the author of three collections At Once, The Second Reason, and Dear Stranger. Her poems and essays have been featured in American Poetry Review, The New York Times, Tin House and Threepenny Review. A recipient of fellowships from the James Michener Center for Writers, The Texas Writers League, and the National Endowment for the Arts, she now lives in downtown San Antonio,Texas, and teaches at Trinity University.
