Showing posts with label Michael Gessner - poet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Gessner - poet. Show all posts

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Looking for Picasso on eBay


artwork: pablo picasso


Looking for Picasso on eBay
by Michael Gessner

My wife loves art and it is her birthday.
Because of this, I am looking for Picasso
on eBay.  Among the thousands
of lithographs signed & numbered
in pencil, I find "Paloma sur fond rouge,"
& bid the balance of my bank account.

Now I am in electronic Picassoland,
among the mixed media, how prolific
he was, and varied, and how unlike
the literary artist, bound to one voice,
denied their periods during a life,
confined so often to a single genre. 

But this does not matter to my wife.
She will frame this tortured thing
I have ordered, praising Picasso,
his artistic gluttony, his infant self,
how he left his true believers, the women,
a man after his own heart.


~ previously published in Transversales (BlazeVOX)

Monday, June 15, 2015

OTHER ACTS

photo: ralph murre


OTHER ACTS
by Michael Gessner

After the carnivorous business
was completed out on the savannah
or in elegant suburban bedrooms,
after this, all this
memory forgot, forgave itself once more
as though wantonness & other acts
were sudden rends, small distortions
to say this never really occurred,
to conceal a family disagreement
so the other conversation could continue
like a pair of lovers among ruins
on a wine-colored evening
when all is agreeable & everything
said is certain.

~ first published in Wisconsin Review
  and subsequently in Beast Book (BlazeVOX)