A Poem With a Painting And A Dead Poet, A Poem With a Hole
Sadness aches, hurts at the top of the throb / pulses at the bottom.
Profoundly sad. Sadness aches, hurts at the top of the throb
pulses at the bottom. I can’t do anything correct. A problem
my programming says. The painting I painted of a woman emerging
out of the aether, which I thought was my partner, the woman,
but is instead me, the woman, looks different today. And not just the muse,
but the painting, upper center just under her ear, an eye of black
paint.There is no black paint in the painting. It is a study in blue.
It is the light. At this moment. Which is as sad as I. I do not feel
as if I am made for poetry, the commerce of, I mean. I cannot do anything
right. When Larry died the boozehound poets downstairs talked depression.
My partner did not disagree. So profoundly sad, he was. The Larry I met again
and again talked hoops and jazz and kept it light at the bar. No one understands
what another goes through. Not really. There is always one removed.
An audience. Did the first playwright watch someone suffer and think
if I recreated this would I feel? Would I understand to heal? Would others?
Would I be able to stay sadness and otherness and the great wheel of loneliness
that spins spins spins? I cannot do anything. What If I didn’t? What if I did?
Would it matter? All that breath has to have a body, right? There are no answers
but more answers. CBS gave Marjorie Taylor Greene a lift. The media drinks venom
to be immune? It’s embarrassing, really, this basic white fascination, what the fuck,
America? I mean what the fuck? I am not made for the currency of our cruelty
and yet here I am, a brick out there to be picked out
for being queer. My programming says I will feel better
in the morning. I do enjoy sleep, I do.
Cassandra Whitaker (she/they) is a trans writer from Virginia whose work has been published in Michigan Quarterly Review, Beestung, Conjunctions, and other places. They are a member of the National Book Critics Circle and an educator.
