A Great Artist Has Passed
By Fawn Parker
I’m taking it Jonas told me on the 504A because it’s a good line. You didn’t think of it he said you said it and you would’ve let it go. I the curator saw the value. Yes but it’s mine I said because I said it.
The line was as follows I’m looking for another Monet with a hideous body of work. We were preparing our speeches for the funeral of esteemed poet Peter Norman of similar once-removed relation to us both. Jonas too was a poet or so he fancied himself to be and I was no poet so there was another thing working in his favour vis à vis the thieving of the line.
I hope someone hears it right now I said and that they sell it to the big wigs in New York. You think the line’s that good eh Jonas tried now to needle me into submission when all in all he just wanted the line. The line he told me once a ways back but also on the 504 the line is everything. A picture is a thousand words but a line is infinite there’s a line drawn straight through the history of time.
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You only want the line I said because you think it’s Frank-like. Frank who said Jonas Frank Herbert author of Dune? Poor Anne Frank? Oh that other one with the battlefield and the moon? O’Hara I said and I’m not even saying it does I’m saying you think everything should and any time you like the sound of a thing you think it does.
Ashbery said Jonas and Berrigan Ted Berrigan. I’ve been branching. Not too far I said those are just apples off the Frank tree. Jonas said you’re suggesting a mentor-style relation are you and I said oh no I’m no poet I don’t know enough to make a claim.
Funny how you and me a philistine and a poet get so tickled taking the streetcar to and fro even be faster for you to go underground. I’m not a philistine and I like to have the good strong signal up here for my phone I said and well I’m offended by philistine. Sorry Jonas apologized so can I have the line or what.
Take it I said I’m overwhelmed by melancholy and nothing is of any value to me. Now he said now you’re sounding like an artiste perhaps you were right to take offence just now. Oh I’m long over it I said but no more lines you can’t have any of that. I don’t want the melancholia said Jonas there’s enough of that in my work and besides you didn’t do much in the way of curious execution.
I’m looking into doing my own work I said O’Hara-like something like Ashbery meets Berrigan. The one with the battlefield and the moon was Stanford said Jonas I hate to forget a thing but I love to remember and speaking of could you refresh me on your line I seem to have forgotten.
No.
Now you’re squirreling.
I’m focusing I said. Focusing on what said Jonas on sorting your little nuts in the ground. Good one Jonas I said I’m composing my thoughts have you forgotten that a great artist has passed.
RIP said Jonas rest in poetry. Speaking of which buddy I’ve been thinking can I borrow something of yours something nice so I look sharp so I can impress old Petey.
Really Jonas I said really you think Pete’s lookin’ down you’re telling me you’re one of those believer types is that what you’re saying.
Look baby I just want to look good okay besides it’s what Petey woulda wanted don’t you think he always wanted to see us with the academic girlies and you know this death house is gonna be crawling with ‘em.
Death house Jonas I said sheesh.
So refresh me s’il vous plait on the line no more squirrelling.
I said it I said and I said it in a moment of audiencelessness and now you’ve added this readership a self-awareness like a qualitative bordering on quantitative value and now yeah I’m squirreling I want the thing for myself.
You’re an individual taken to improvisation said Jonas you get inspired because you leave yourself open to the hit of inspiration. Yes and so what I said what’s this got to do with the line.
The shall we say Bad Monet of the gallery said Jonas that’s where the realness is and you’ve got it the realness and I’m green with envy absolutely green. Besides he said besides you weren’t even putting it in the speech you were tangentially elsewhere and I the great connector put two and two together.
So now what it’s being returned to me is what’s happening am I the owner of the line again I asked Jonas. Have it he said I don’t give a good god damn really.
Well I didn’t mean to piss you off.
I pissed me off.
I’m sorry Jonas I said I’m just a philistine. I didn’t mean to get you pissed about poetry. I’m a poet said Jonas getting pissed is like having an orgasm getting pissed is like carving up tender duck. Earlier you said audiencelessness and I thought it was a poor choice though now I’m warming to it.
You’re still acting pissed Jonas I said.
I’m a leech.
You’re no leech Jonas and if you are a leech why don’t you leech something like the dictionary and you’ll write Lunch Poems one dozen times over.
I’m a leech and the government is the salt on my back said Jonas.
See there’s a line.
It’s no line it’s a flag.
A white flag eh Jonas.
Yeah a white flag said Jonas I surrender.
A lull and then he for the most part stopped looking pissed and he said anyway so what’s with the melancholy.
Oh I don’t know I said just Pete and all and I’m sorry about what I said earlier when I said what I said about the dictionary. I didn’t mean to monkeys on typewriters your craft as if that’s some sort of magic pill okay Jonas I understand it’s not like you’re building with pieces here per se.
Monkeys on typewriters as verb eh said Jonas I like it.
Listen said Jonas hear me out. You uh what say we call it you non-poets how ‘bout that no more philistinian talk. You non-poets you do this all the time you uh you drop these whatchamacallits these little uh genius jewels ‘cause you’re not too deep up your own behind to hear the ring of the magic bell in fact your head is about as far from your ass as it gets you might want to get that elongated torso checked out by a medical professional just a side note. Now see us uh we the royal we the artisans of poésie we can’t access it anymore you see. We can’t unsee the intricacy of the word. The letter even. It’s flowery. We’re in the business of flowers. We’re botanists no that’s not right we’re mere humble florists. See I’m even doing it in describing the thing. Oh god save the self-proclaiming poet. What I’m saying is you don’t want to see it okay once you see it you’ve been launched out and once you’re out you’re out you can’t get back into the thing. Or in maybe it’s in I’m going after as in in the ass.
You’re right Jonas you might be doing a little arranging.
Arranging.
Arranging the bouquet.
Oh for fuck’s see now you’ve done it again I want that one can I have it buddy oh can I have it please?
Surely you could do that Jonas. You could come up with another one like that.
Surely no. Contextually.
Because you’re a poet Jonas? The lines are lost on you?
Without a trace.
Alright Jonas you can have that one and you can have the Monet.
Thanks buddy you’re really doing me a big one here. The crowd’ll love me.
Actually I said actually now I’m ready to get back to the melancholy how about that.
Go for it I’m all ears.
But wait first and foremost I don’t want any poaching promise me that much Jo-Jo.
You got it buddy I’m all ears. No hands. No pen no paper. Pass right through me like water.
Well now if you’re not even listening Jonas I’m not spilling it right here on the 501 I’m not hanging back to clean up the guts what you think I’m a lowly janitor you think I don’t need some uh any like analysis here.
Lay it on me lay it like an egg. Oh but hey man we’re rolling up to your stop eh you notice that?
Oh I don’t care.
Don’t care?
Don’t give a hoot.
A hoot said Jonas what is that East Coast I always hear that from the young Acadians.
It’s something or other I said just like everything else.
Hey I was just thinking and oh so sorry to interrupt but I was just thinking you ever think about how a painting can’t be plagiarized like yeah I know you can fool the masses and all that like designer bags like cubic zirconia but the written word right the written word can be copied literally like identically like speaking from the perspective of the quote unquote new world we’re copying and pasting. None of it’s safe.
Photo by Aditya Chinchure on Unsplash
And Jonas that’s the freedom of the word.
Freedom said Jonas freedom in what how when why way. It’s a prison of injustice it’s my word against his. And uh hey who are you now educating me on the word.
Prison of injustice Jonas now if we’re talking about meaning that has absolutely none. And is it not you who is the uh the his in this word against word scenario.
The his.
The plagiarist.
Hypothetically baby I’m talking in the ultimate rights and the wrongs of things. Yeah I’m leeching. Yeah I’m the one who’s squirreling. I’m poaching. This here is a dark dark world we live in and let me tell you if you want to be the only player of the big game then you’re a fool’s fool. Sure you can skate baby but there’s no winning when you’re the only man on the ice.
You patronize me Jonas but you just want to hear the sound of your own voice.
Surely with such a look in his eyes Jonas was about to clock me a real sucker but a man slithered between us a real closest thing to Jesus you’d ever see on the 501 type guy.
I’m just saying I shouted to Jonas sort of through and around the head of Jesus I’m just saying maybe the cruelty is a bit of a shadow situation maybe if you step out of the path of the light you’ll be able to see it.
See what said Jonas.
Oh I don’t know I said just it.
What said Jonas.
What said the mouth of Jesus and then the body of Jesus turned to face neither myself nor Jonas and from the mouth came the phrase what again and then it said
you fools
YOU FOOLS’ FOOLS
TUCK THOSE WHISKERS
INTO YOUR CHEEK
I am the governor and if I find you’re a rat
I’ll clip your claws and shave you with them!!!
Wow said Jonas. Holy mother of wow.
What a line eh Jonas.
Truly said Jonas. Truly what a line.
You think he’s gonna shave me baby you think he thinks I’m vermin? Might just I said might just think. Might shave you clean as the day you were born.
Naked as a tabula rasa said Jonas might be what a man like me needs. Might be I said. Not too good of a look showin’ up to old Petey’s service not a trace of scruff if you ask me said Jonas.
Pete’d understand I said and besides he’s dead. Anyway I said Jonas buddy it’s been a slice but I’m thinking it’s about exeunt time and I’ll take the rest of my trip up by foot.
By foot he said at this rate you’re gonna be a fat hour behind schedule frankly I don’t know how you live like this. Frankly I said there you go again with the Franks I wish you’d get off that one and what’s an hour at the end of the day when at least I let the mind go loose. Nothin’ of it buddy said Jonas just like to get where I’m goin’ and Jonas and I said and Jonas that’s why you’re a rat.
Laps around the sun said the mouth of Jesus and the body launched itself out from between us. Laps around the sun Jonas I said and Jonas said yeah uh laps around the sun.
Outside in the town centre, a small crowd is gathering. You stand at the back. There is a man in a purple corduroy suit on a raised platform. A magician. His assistant shuffles gracelessly by his side. You push further into the crowd.
The magician reaches into his pocket, silent, and presents a silver gun.
“An ordinary gun, take a look.”
He plucks out a bullet, flashing it between his fingers. “An ordinary bullet.”
He loads the gun slowly, clearly, and offers it to his assistant.
“And now, watch closely.”
You are fascinated by the elegance when the assistant shoots and the magician smiles. He opens his palm, wiggles his fingers, the bullet glittering.
You clap. The magician bows.
You believe it and it is easy to. It makes the crowd joyous and the magician proud. He must commit to the trick until it becomes real to him, too.
In university, you joined the Aspiring Magician’s Club and quit after a day. The club leader eradicated the joy: to sustain the illusion, you kill your inner self.
In the evening, after warming up in the Inn, you take a walking tour of Grafton because the various pieces are unsettling, and you want the wholeness, the entire web. You take out a camera you know you will not use. Sarah insists on joining you, and you exchange clothes beforehand like when you were younger, musing to the tour guide about the architecture and granite and marble with awful British accents.
“Superb, no, Beth?” Sarah gestures at the little post office.
You grin, shoulder against hers. “Marvelous, indeed.”
When your group stops in front of a library, you and Sarah repeat your rehearsed lines. The tour guide finds you funny, and the others ignore you. It makes Sarah try harder. You pat her arm.
“I think that’s enough,” you say quietly, accent gone, but Sarah is already off speaking to a stunned family, accent loud and flailing.
You find a bench to sit on, tracing circles into the snow. Behind you, the library is tall and white, resting on eight columns.
You remember your mother dragging you through aisles of books and leaving you in the corner of an unmarked section. You cried onto the floor, six years old and afraid. Left on the Russian beach, the spongy floor of an amusement park, the old theatre. Your small, wanting face. Strange, ornate childhood clothes, dry knuckles, collecting hair at the drain’s end. You used to peek into her art studio, trying to see things you could not feel with bare hands.
When you were sixteen and left home, you screamed in the tomato garden, counted the times you were lost and isolated and she knew.
Your mother remembers each instance as lessons. She remembers exhausted hours working on her designs, conceiving a business for you, waiting to inspire you. She remembers helping you.
You suddenly feel the heat of your skin.
Sarah is pointing at the library now, the family laughing at her ridiculous phrases, superb, superb, superb. Her accent has become overtly fake.
You look to where Sarah is pointing.
Amidst the white, a mural of colour.
The day of the family dinner, you fill your time with activities you normally hate. You go skiing and fall backward down a hill. You and Sarah and the sister of the bride, Claire, go to the mining museum, which Sarah establishes is called the Vermont Museum of Mining and Minerals.
“I heard you weren’t going to come—to the wedding, no offense,” Claire says.
Sarah looks from the hollowed mouth of a stone to Claire. “That’s a stupid thing to say.”
“Why?”
You step in front of Sarah and move to the next exhibit. “It’s true. I wasn’t.” Claire gives you a long, expectant look. “I changed my mind.”
“I heard it’s because of your mom. That you haven’t seen her in years. She’s super nice, though. I heard you were the not-nice one. She gave me this.” Claire tugs at a charm from her bracelet. It is yellow.
Sarah frowns, pulls the iron-burnt ends of Claire’s hair. “Jesus, you’re seriously a piece of work, last time you’re coming with me anywhere.”
You and Sarah and Claire stop in front of a case of stones. The silver plaque saysArrangement of Coloured Quartz. The stones are lined like a rainbow.
Secretly, the abstract rage satisfies you, stringing each muffled piece of memory into an encroaching, faceless dark. You have cultivated a need for it in the pearls of your spine.
“Good for you. She can be your mother.”
Once, your mother took you to a woman who painted your forehead with water and orange dye made of citrine. You called her a witch. Only beneath your tongue, and only when she stepped back and prayed. You watched her move her hands up and down until the dye dried and she closed her eyes. You felt her belief winging up in the dark room and you pitied her. You wondered why you were here, and your mother was not.
Outside, you washed your face in the rain.
You can no longer avoid her.
The family dinner is held in a private room at the Old Tavern restaurant, which you remember from the walking tour. The chairs are soft and there are yellowed maps and blue signatures fixed to the walls. Your mother is sitting at the other end of the long table, talking loudly because she always talks loudly. She looks at you, then away.
“Tomatoes?” Claire almost drops the dish, and you steady it on the table.
“Yeah, okay.” You spoon at the spongy red wheels, scowling.
Photo by Adam Bixby on Unsplash
Sarah takes the dish from you and passes it along. Beside her is your grandmother and she is forgetting colours and recipes and names. Her slow deterioration does not mean much to you; you never knew her well. Your mother was estranged from her. She used to call her that woman, wicked, vile. You look at your grandmother’s wrists and bones and faint curls of hair and imagine her younger, the picture of your mother, fading, impermanent.
Hours pass and you listen to conversations about the winter and Grafton and the wedding dress. Somehow, only sore, lonely sounds. Your mothers’ drifting gaze.
Dessert arrives in tiny cakes.
“Well, well!” Your mother claps. “They turned out great, didn’t they?”
One of the tiny cakes reaches you and you suddenly realize it is decorated with your mother’s signature design, a yellow flower, caught mid-bloom.
“Beth, isn’t it pretty? It’s going on the wedding cake as well.” A man you do not recognize asks from across the table. He must be from the other family.
You gaze at the line of faces. Your mother is watching you at last. You feel Sarah’s knuckle pressed gently to your knee. People start talking again; how visionary your mother is, how sharp the colours she uses are, how well she has adapted her business to the new shifts in technology. The winter and Grafton and the wedding dress.
The moment continues for you. You look at your mother, so visible, and you are reminded of carrying buckets of paint to her closed art studio door, severed from her for years.
“She hates me,” you say.
Sarah examines her fork, and you see her through the tines of its body. “Yeah, you hate her, too.”
Your mother was surprised when you screamed in the tomato garden bursting red. She was painting them; she would not talk to you. You had touched your forehead once pressed with citrine and left. She thought she was giving you space. You never meant for this to be an end.
No final straw, only a heaviness of a thousand pieces of grass. Little scratches.
You continue to look at her, and your mother looks at you as if she is searching for another child.
“She probably didn’t recognize the design,” you hear your mother say, still watching you.
You pick up the tiny cake with your fork and cut the yellow flower into a dozen shards.
At the wedding, you look over at your mother and see her eyes, the shiny fabric draping over her shoulders. Beneath, the loose threads of her dress.
You are on the bus again, hands curled inside your gloves. Sarah is outside, waving, and you smile and pat the glass. You look at the people around you, pale and dazed. You think about the sameness you feel.
The bus starts moving and you lean your forehead against the window; the children are kneeling by the side of the road, digging through the snow, fingertips by God. No one has told them that mud freezes in the winter, and they should wait until it melts, and everything will be easier. Or they have been told, and search anyways.
You take out your camera, untouched, and photograph the shrinking tip of the church, the field of children glittering in the snow. You turn it off.
In the dark screen, you notice your face invisibly split, scissored apart in a collage of pieces. The mouth of your mother, your hairline, your grandmother’s soft curls. The mismatched eyes are angry and sad.
They are cut from the same face. They somehow never touch.
You tuck the camera away.
Overhead, the sky tricks the snow: a forest of rain.
The truth is that it is not a real bullet. The magician uses misdirection to fool the audience, exchanging the real bullet for a wax bullet. Over the years, many magicians have died attempting the Bullet Catch, themselves believing the lie.
Translated by Alex Niemi from Vincent Tholomé
I revel for three days in shaggy fur
I stink a beast and a bug
a cow tail whips my brow