A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry

Picasso’s Heart

318 A Face to Meet the Faces Picasso’s Heart Molly Gaudry Part One His destructive mornings, ours. We mimicked his maneuvers, every quirk: sidearmed steaming croissants from the roof; used cricket bats to smash his thriftstore teacups, our still-boiling Darjeeling exploding high, splattering on sidewalks below. We cared nothing for the peasants who sidestepped our shards, who had learned and carried umbrellas, had ceased their vulgar gestures: raised fists, bitter complaints. We had been them, once. Were, still. Those mornings we forgot that. We wanted to be like him. It was our sanguine period. Who knew what that meant, but he called it, not us. Why did we care? Art? Back then, it seemed so magical. 319 The Muse Talks Back Art was everything, everywhere. It was in clouds (smudged), rain (dripped), puddles (pooled), rivers (streaked on our canvases), the sun, the sharp edges of buildings, shadows long leaning lines (our photographs), in the color of our breakfast fruits, our meats at meals, in the shine of our lipstick, hues of our blusher. We saw it in the tiny hairs on our toes and upper lips, plucked (our selves as models for the hairless bodies we molded from chicken wire, paper pulp, potter’s clay, marble). Truth is, we were godawful-terrible and knew as much. Hobbyists, at best. We were a machine: predictable, idealistic, full of noble ideas. Art pushed at us, but we were strangers. Until oysters. Before, in his presence, we silenced. He kept his back to us, hunched, unrelenting. We were bare before him. We played subtle. He wore earrings, ruby. He fucked 320 A Face to Meet the Faces a few of us, sure. Rumors, words. Who would believe? False, words. Besides, most of us were lesbians. Which brings me to oysters, fleshplumps that turned the surface of our skin into ochre longing. Picasso fell, sunk. We wanted to be like him, not with him, not like that. But he had a saying. It was, “Joy waits.” Was it his joy or ours? They wanted to know but I didn’t care. There was a girl and I was unmindful. I wanted her in my bed. I wanted her alone, but there were so many people in the world, infinite options of others for her to choose. I went want-mad. She was nothing. Wistful thinking. She was a sword. She cut. She wasn’t a lesbian. She said, “You’d like to lie beside me, but who’s to blame?” It was a slip. It wasn’t meant for me but him. I fed her oysters, made a crown of the shells, 321 The Muse Talks Back and we pretended we were artists, famous, as we unbuttoned her top, my top, while Picasso watched— the only way she’d have me. All right. I wanted to stay forever in his studio, I was so happy. But so quick, that day that ended, as they began, with tea. Impressive. Always, with the Darjeeling. Unfailing. Did he need it? What means? What fuel? It took me away. I drank too much to prolong the event, make it last. From the roof I watched her fall. “Who’s to blame?” she asked. “Joy waits,” he had said. What a night. Under those stars, an empty corridor in which I squatted, aching, trembling, thinking how one male in the bunch steals souls and sends them arcing, racing to the street below. I had fears, but they were no longer for my wallet but my heart. I might have left but nowhere else to go, I stayed. And paid. ...