Dignity, and: Artist's Statement

DIGNITY

Don't worry, one young mantold another young man.I'll do right by you.

But the second manjust said no, no, no.

Really, just hold still,the first man said, it'll be over in a moment.

But he wouldn't sit still.He tilted forwardand even tried to stand up.

This is why the bullet hit his neckand the job was anything but quick.

If he'd held stillhe'd have died with dignity.

The first time I fell in loveI was stupid and terrified.

The second time was dignifiedand, therefore, meant to last.

The third time—

And he scrubbed the bloodfrom the table and the flooruntil the kitchen winked

beneath bright windows.And he wrapped the body

in a white sheetand took it to the waiting car,

and laid it in the trunk.He shouldn't've tried to get away,

the one who shot himtold the one who drove.

And they drove that bodyfrom the subdivisionon the outskirts of the city

to the beautiful countryside—gray-lit farmland, yellowfertile light—

right into a memoryI'd put away for years,

a memory of telling my wifehow I felt about you.She was angry at first,

but then she laid her headon our kitchen table.

I wanted to write about how she cried,but that's not the word for it.

The rasp of an old barn dooropening after many years,

and there, among the rusting tools,the rotted hay—

those two men drove the bodyall the way to the farmlands,

where they found an abandoned barnon a property long forgottenin a dust-lit clearing.

They left the body there,behind the rotting hay bales,

where they knew no onewould soon find it. And for many yearsit remained in that darkness,

unobserved, a memoryof an undignified situation

pushed to the back of the mind.

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

The fad these days—your art's got to be hip tooppression,          my friend Günter used to say,sipping a glass of pinot gris on the noisy patioof the new Northern Italian bistro                         everyone was talking aboutback then.

               The waiters loved Günter, who broughtartistic friends,               who stayed late, smoking and drinkingexpensive wine.               Günter! they'd say when he arrived,and Günter, who was just realizing his starwas setting,             Günter would clap those Italians on the backand take his seat               and order a bottle of King Estateor Loggiato,             Günter! the manager would say, Günter!How's it hanging?

             And sometimes I got to sit with Günter,and then he'd hold forth                    on the failings of conceptualismand our vanishing debt to craft,                         the living fact of paint,how paint for him was organic,                     and I'd drinkwine I couldn't afford               and nod and sometimesask a question,

               until pretty soon the two of uswere drunk and stumbling to our cars,                         Günter having left a tipthe waiters could hardly believe,                    and it's hard to imaginehe's been dead these last ten years,

and, if we're going to talk about my own art,fine:     since then, I've had to adjustmy material to the current climate,working now in barbed wire,                    cow's blood,and the very sand these migrants crossto make their way               to this city—

a city which, reflected in my art,                    is troubled by unrest,poverty, unimpeded growth,               and the tensions that arisewhen people of varying backgrounds, languages,socioeconomic classes,          converge—my art interrogatesthis situation. It's art Günter would abhor becauseSeriously,     people spend money on that?

Still, I sometimes stop by that samebistro,     now past its prime,the clientele from the new high-rise across the street,the waiters,          Mexicans or Guatemalans—I stop byand order a glass of pinot gris,                    and think of Günter,who had his...