Sheer; and: Cheetah

118 CALVIN BEDIENT SHEER Not a one doesn’t shrink from ontology, not a one is not let down by the peppering. Who hasn’t batted back leaves and not missed a plain geometry, a simple, tidy sum, like the count of one for once to keep off the fucking fury? Like Animal in Stalag 17 had a thought of Betty Grable, fell to the floor, why wasn’t she with him, bear though he was, the bore? Anyone would want to be in one of her nylons with her in it, too. And is it true a nylon fills with air when rubbed against a plaster wall? Anyone would want to end there, then, as that kind of one, a million netted in the gorgeous vanity of style. 119 CHEETAH “You take death to go to a star,” van Gogh said, he rode in a car of sunflowers, he could not go very far. How long our diaphaneity— the inside inside out to the outside? Are they enough, the lovely differences, the round clouds’ cheetah spots on the desert floor? See how they gallop away from Dead Rock. Who wants to be Miro’s Nu a la baignoire, just blue in the blue, swimming la la secret somewhere blue, swimming her own shadow blue, blue cloud shadows on her somewhere blue, blue wings closing blue on blue? Better the umber nipples in a see-through blouse, à la Renoir, the cheetah spots hunting on the tawny floor. CALVIN BEDIENT ...