PORTRAIT

While I cut out family portraits

I cut out all the self-portraits and sullen sitting girls out of my over-sized, slick hard cover Frida Kahlo book.

I taped them, all those people in their rectangles, onto my scuffed wall.

A bit of tape on all four corners.

And the wall looked a lot better.

It looked like a utopia of women. Except for Diego Rivera. But he’s fat and funny. So I

like him. He’s so malleable and feminine. And Frida’s got her mustache.

A family hallway. Everyone hanging there to stare. Sitting in the crooked grid of faces.

And then, at the bottom corner there’s Frida, sitting in a photo, in her wheel chair.

He reminds me of my father because he has a beard, and my father doesn’t.

His mouth is there and he can eat, and speak, but I’ve never seen his front teeth.

Even when he laughs it’s with his head thrown back, just a gapping hole flashing red and

black shadows.

Because he never really looks me in the eye. He never really looks at anyone, but then he writes about them like he was their guilt and their lover.

When he gets old he peppers and that makes him look tanner, and better than before.

He reminds me of my father because wrinkles look good when you’ve watched them grow.

His papery hands would sound like festival crepe hanging over the streets of somewhere foreign.

He could say “burn your suit” while wearing one.

He reminds me of my father because I don’t know him, only in passing.

He’s one in the group of faces you see every day -- on your way to wherever -- that get familiar.

An Austrian

An Austrian who sucked in phallic cigars wrote that hallucinations are an indication of Loneliness.

Some like capitalizing words that seem like entities.

Like you capitalize names.

The sane light of 10:30 in the morning.

The insane dark of 2:50 in the morning.

The humid air of disease.

I would argue that life is full of reasons to live.

But,

High cholesterol is an easy way to go.

No Pain.

And The Phone is getting eight hours of sleep each Night.

THE GERMAN GRANDMOTHER'S GOT A SMILE

Oma has got a strawberry meat smile. Ever since she dodged the green American fighter planes. Jumping off her bike, head long in to a trench, breaking the four front teeth, and the bike. She left her teeth and the bike in the dirt, even though the shot up metal was worth something. Walked home, and through the door into the kitchen where her aproned mother stood over steam. A beard of thick stinging blood dripping into a goatee. Coagulated and glazed. And she apologized for the bike.

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