(for Jackson Pollock and Ruth Kligman, artists & lovers, after Pollock’s last painting “Red, Black & Silver”)
It was the summer of illicit
love
circa 1956.
Those hands that dripped paint
would also hold Ruth (his mistress) on the rug
in her attic. His brush collecting
polar bear hair at each kiss would
later do the magic.
The tiniest
painting—orange, gray & bluish hues
suspended—
a present of liquid color
like quicksand.
She would hold on to it
(as to him) forever.
That’s what she thought,
the night he had stormed into that
crummy-looking bar as a blowing
trumpet. Given the chance,
she had told him how—
watching a black & white painting of
his months earlier—
she had surrendered to
the awe, the spiraling
beauty, the rivers of lines flooding her
chest
with his rage & the omnivorous breaking of his
heart.
That’s what she thought
when his Oldsmobile convertible
started colliding
and crashed, leaving
him dead
and her alive—
a canvass
full of scars—
much like that empty pool of color
holding polar bear hair in it:
his very last token of
legitimate love.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 17, Issue 3.
When she is not translating, Alessandra Bava is writing the biography of a contemporary American poet. Her poems have appeared in Plath Profiles, THRUSH, Empty Mirror and Left Curve, among others.Two of her chapbooks have been published in the States: They Talk About Death (a winner of Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook contest, 2014) and Diagnosis (Dancing Girl Press, 2015). She blogs at http://poetryrulesbyalessandrabava.blogspot.com
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