I’m in the bath with greasy hair.
My swimsuit on the towel rack,
is printed with Jacques Louis David’s
The Death of Socrates.
I drape one arm over the edge of the tub
and toss my head back like a despondent mare.
Now I look like Jacques Louis David’s
The Death of Marat,
staring up at Jacques Louis David’s
The Death of Socrates.
Was it Marat’s propensity to wrap his hair?
Or, did David wish to paint him like a noble revolutionary from a foreign land?
I remember the importance of drapery
from Fine Art History
One-O-One
With Professor Michael Koortbojian.
He gave me my first A
on an essay
at U of T
But cautioned me
to start using a dictionary.
Not as much for spelling,
as for unnecessary verbosity.
I never really listened.
Except! When he asked repeatedly,
“How best to know the intention of a free-standing sculpture?”
Then he would answer himself each time diligently ...
“You walk around it.”
And that I heard because,
what a lovely discovery
in the second slide of
the pensive
Farnese Hercules
Farnese Hercules
(Three tiny apples cradled in massive fingers behind his back)
Now, I’d reach around for the shampoo
But, when I went to the zoo,
a bottle of the same brand
was in a case by the orang-utans
beside it, an actual orang-utan hand
posed as an ashtray,
to illustrate the devastation
our use of palm oil wreaks.
Sometimes there’s nothing but despair.
