Imaginary Still Lifes (after Joe Brainard)

                     


         Imaginary Still Lifes

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               ( No. 1 )


I close my eyes. I see a miniature painting of a cat bending back with the flexibility of a dream to lick its fur. Half-abstract, cat melts into cat. Into art. I marvel at the simplicity of the impossible gesture. Atop a small book case. A young girl painted this. The cat's almost entirely black and white. A tiny bit of orangey-pink in the ear. On a tiny elaborate brass easel from India. The child could be Toulouse-Lautrec. Okay, Marie Laurencin.





               ( No. 2 )


I close my eyes. I see a pot metal horse standing, facing a round clock framed in an upside-down horseshoe. Pot metal looks like brass having a bad day. The horse has a gold-colored beaded chain--like the pen chains you'd find at the bank in the old days--running through its nostrils and hanging from its snout. The rectangular base covered in a reasonably good fake-up of crocodile skin. A tiny female Mon-Chi-Chi has taken shelter under this horse. She carries a saucer with a tiny teacup of dark coffee or cocoa. I wonder whom she is carrying it to. She has a pink bow in her plastic hair. Gay men. Are so gay.






               ( No. 3 )

I close my eyes. I see a desiccated baby seahorse inside a little square plastic box like a tomb. I found this at a craft store with you. Are you still alive? It rests on bright purple tissue paper and is pressed up against the plastic which encases it. It's only a spine with a tiny horse's head atop it. Nature is funny. Isn't it? Who knew all you needed is a spine with a head stuck up on top.





               ( No. 4 )

I close my eyes. What do I see? A white plastic Cupid about five inches tall. It's a god. It's a baby. It has one knee on the ground and for a diaper just a swaddle of cloth passing between its babysmooth white legs. God, that sounded awful, didn't it? The baby looks upward with the serious face of a god. It's, nonetheless, a baby's face. Cupid holds an empty Greek vase. But I have put tiny violets from the yard in it. Several summers ago. They dried up but remain. It's supposed to resemble alabaster and from even a few feet away it does. It's probably from the forties. I'm guessing it was in some sort of funeral arrangement. WARNING: Objects may be closer than they appear in mourning or poetic detachment.



               ( No. 5 )

I see a kitchen junk drawer. A drawer that's been collecting things for thirty years. Once it was useful. Now it looks like a Joseph Cornell. If I went to her house today. Clothespins. Crackerjack toys. Tiny plastic alligators. Paperclips. Metal jacks. Plastic tracer ammo from the Stark Trek phasar gun I had as a child. Injuns. Cowboys. Maybe even an old radio tube. Some sticky toy you throw at the wall that walks down it. (Getting into a later generation now.) A tiny plastic ear of corn. A dead dog's i.d. tag. Some cat's flea collar. Why? No reason. A drawer is a drawer.





               ( No. 6 )

I close my eyes. I see...a photograph of you! There is a baby harp seal in front of you made of cardboard covered with real seal fur. The eyes are just black beads glued on. But the tiny nose was clearly made special. I mean it has nostrils. Imagine. Somebody's life in a factory somewhere. Making these noses. Real seal fur. I know. I realize this imaginary cutie required an actual murder. Sorry.






               ( No. 7 )


I close my eyes. Calm Tabs. I see an ugly pill bottle you gave me. The terrible art on the label. Sheep are shown jumping over a fence. It's made from the death of flowers. Calmness you wanted to give me. I put it on a bookshelf. The bottle appears black but it's actually the darkest brown--translucent if you really stretch the eyes' imagination. Old mercurochrome bottles. When light was the enemy. Light is the enemy.






               ( No. 8 )

I close my eyes. I see a rickety old chair from a schoolroom in the twenties or thirties. The right arm of the chair is the desk itself. There is no left arm. Painted the brightest primary red. Every square inch. Blood fully awake. A Pfaltzgraff white vase rests there with a few branches of dried money plants. Old cabinet photos of babies in long death-nightgowns stacked like a deck of cards. A Japanese cat with polka dots guards them. You have to pretend its legs are folded under it so you don't see them. This real old ceramic has a real red ribbon with a real bow tied around its imaginary neck. No one has ever sat in this chair. Okay, maybe once. An ass or two ago.




               ( No. 9 )

I close my eyes. I see an implement used in my drafting class a lifetime ago. It looks like a little blue plastic garbage can. An odd black hat on top with a little black spout. It says GERMANY on it. It still looks brand new. Oh, failure. I can smell the blueprints of buildings I studied. I remember my big melamine white desk where I worked through the night at home. And those in the studio at college. Are any of those kids architects now? Where are my drawings. The rolled tubes. I remember how good my South elevation was on that one building. The teacher a chubby, handsome woman with a successful firm. Praise was not easy. The straight boy working at the table next to you. The one from Duncannon. He had a mustache that was too old for him and you jerked off thinking about him. More than one occasion. He helped you. His accessible straight boy cologne. He dared to eat lunch with you once. Always rushed in a way you longed to be. Who's cruising who in time's dark backward abysm and dream yadda. Dust mites are too funny.




               ( No. 10 )

A very small hardcover. Little Red Riding hood in Spanish. Caperucita Roja. The art is demented and alluring. It's a pop-up book. Opened to a scene where the paper wolf stands before the door. The imaginary wolf casts a real shadow. Does too.





               ( No. 11 )

I close my eyes. I see old salt and pepper shakers shaped like fat fish. Heavy but silverplate. Tiny corks underneath. Do they still hold somebody's salt or pepper. Probably. Atop the toilet's porcelain shelf. A copper colored plastic bottle. VASELINE cocoa butter. Color of that crayon we used to color Indians as kids in school. The unenlightened period. Some plastic dust roses standing in a skinny white hobnail vase. Grandmother things. Or just gay. Raised detail on each fish. Little escutcheons with the Empire State Building inside them on their sides. Old hick souvenirs from the forties. Shine up. Enjoy my art museum while you're taking a crap.




               ( No. 12 )

Icelandic postcards. Some new. Some ancient with brief, freezing lives on the other side. Gods behaving badly. Wild horses that couldn't drag you away. Merry Christmas! gledileg jol!



               ( No. 13 )


The Buddha head from Pier One. So real Lee's kids used to be afraid. I see why. Creepy Chester the Molester smile. It really does seem he could open his lifesize eyes at any time. (Run!) Gimcrack. Wears a Russian fur hat that's beautifully made. He's worn it six years. Come snow or come shine. He gathers dust. He sees everything I do when I sit in this room. With his eyes closed. He absorbs me. Just like you. He has the dot between his femme trannie-teased eyebrows. His ridiculous ears (stretched earthwards in boundless compassion?) are as long as a gifted man's flaccid cock. This is to let you know how important listening is. Do you hear what I'm saying? While I'm talking to myself, I mean. (Run.)